An engineering company in Norwich with 150 team members was experiencing high sickness absence rates and low staff engagement.
The absences recorded for the past year, purely related to mental health or muscular-skeletal, were 900 days across the team, averaging six days per person. It’s essential to look at your muscular-skeletal absence reasons as, on average, only 5% of people will record a mental health absence as mental health. 95% of them will tell you they have a migraine, a bad back or something similar.
The recent staff engagement survey showed poor results, too, with the overall engagement score as just six out of ten across the business.
The company already had an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) to support their team with counselling or online support modules if they were experiencing any stress or mental health issues. Still, they found their absence rates were increasing, and their staff engagement continued to drop.
No Time Like Now® worked with Directors and Senior Managers while consulting the team across the business to discover the root cause of the way they were feeling. We developed a tailored wellbeing strategy for the company, which included proactive mental health and resilience support – rather than the reactive counselling approach.
Line Managers all received training, coaching, and support, helping them feel confident and competent when having those ‘difficult’ conversations—showing them how to spot the signs and symptoms of poor mental health and build resilience across their teams. They received comprehensive training on completing stress risk assessments, which are now part of the annual appraisal process, which didn’t impact their current workload. Conducting the assessments annually also met the Health and Safety Executive requirements, so the company knew they were on the right track. With the training they received, the line managers supported their team members during the assessment process. They empowered them to make personal changes to build their resilience and reduce their stress levels.
With the assessments completed, we trained the line managers on how to analyse the results, covering the seven critical areas for positive mental health. They produced an action plan for change based on the direct feedback of their team. The action plan is then shared across the business, supporting and increasing staff engagement. The company then measured staff absence and engagement levels following the changes.
The Results!
Staff engagement eight out of ten
Sickness absence halved and running at 432 days or 2.9 per team member.
