European Business Leadership Forum

Introduction

“Mental health is one of great issues facing the world today. I absolutely support the TARGET campaign and the Business Charter we are unveiling here today.”

Gordon Campbell

Canada’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom

The first European Business Leadership Forum for Mental Health in the Workplace was hosted in London on October 8th and 9th, 2014, by the Canadian High Commissioner and senior executives from Barclays, the UK-based international bank.

Dr. Paul Litchfield, British Telecom said of the Forum: “We heard from a range of companies that are all household names internationally and all of them, and this is very telling for me, have accepted that mental health is a business issue and a number of common themes emerged as they spoke.”

More than 100 influential leaders from business, science, government and education took part in this Leadership Forum – an outstanding response. These included:

• Barclays
• Biosector 2
• BT Group
• Buck Consultants
• Bupa
• Business Disability International
• Canary Wharf Group
• Clean Space Partnership
• European Commission, DG Sanco
• Department for Work and Pensions
• European Depression Association
• FedEx
• Ford
• Frontier Economics
• Futureproofing Language Service
• GE Healthcare
• Greater London Authority
• Heathrow Airport
• H. Lundbeck A/S
• Inventages
• Kimberly-Clark
• Lundbeck UK
• Kings’s College London
• McCarthy Tetrault
• Maudsley Learning
• Mind
• Nature
• Nestle
• Norton Rose Fulbright
• One Mind
• Ogilvy Health PR
• Queen Mary’s University London
• Royal Mail
• Royal College of General Practitioners
• TD Securities
• TD Bank Group
• Unilever
• University of Oxford
• UK Cabinet Office

The event attracted extensive media coverage and several of the participants appeared on national television and in news stories that appeared across Europe.

TARGET’s Business Charter for Mental Health in the Workplace

High Commissioner Campbell unveiled TARGET’s Business Charter for Mental Health in the Workplace specifying the characteristics of psychologically healthy and safe places of work:

• Preventative, healthy workplaces supported by good management practices.
• Informed, understanding workplaces shaped by improving employees’ knowledge of depression.
• Well-trained, responsive workforce with mandates and training for executives and managers to support employees in a constructive manner.
• Open and safe workplace where employees are encouraged to talk about mental health concerns.
• An adaptive, supportive workplace with ties to the community.

Moderator for the Forum, Sir Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief of Nature Magazine, said the Charter “provides useful guidance for companies in ways to help your staff.”

Download Business Charter

Highlights

• A call for leadership by Royal Mail CEO Moya Greene to advance mental health in the workplace: “CEO’s absolutely must do something when faced with the numbers (employees suffering and disabled, dollar costs).”
• The distinguished Lord Gus O’Donnell, Chairman of Frontier Economics, former Secretary of the UK Cabinet under Prime Ministers Blair, Brown and Cameron, described the business case for mental health as a “no brainer.”
• Lord O’Donnell also called for prevention strategies. “It is hugely better if you can stop this (mental illness) in the first place.” He urged employers to concentrate on “the enhancement of employee wellbeing.”
• Lord Dennis Stevenson said, “things are changing in this country, stigma is being removed. I, myself, ‘came out’ and it was bloody terrifying at first – I was running big corporations – but we’re moving in the right direction.”
• Lord Richard Layard, author of the ‘World Happiness Report’, said improving access to psychological care will be paid for by savings in treating “physical conditions” worsened by co-occurring mental disorders.
• Unilever’s (then) Chief Human Resources Officer, Doug Baillie: “We really need to build resilience into everything that we do” in the face of such troubled and uncertain times facing employers and employees alike.
• Sir Cary Cooper, Manchester Business School: “We know the generic business case, we know the costs, but what we need are specific interventions and what bloody hell works.”
• Mary Baker, European Brain Council, called for action to communicate to business the “evidence base” behind mental health and mental illness.
• Moya Greene, in turn, urged the “medical profession to take a bigger leadership role in letting the business community know what works and what doesn’t work in getting people back to work faster.”

Introduction

“Unilever is committed globally to the mental health and wellbeing of its people and I wish to encourage employers in all sectors to become similarly engaged at a time of difficult economic and social stress.”

Jan Zijderveld

President, Unilever Europe

The 2nd European Business Leadership Forum was convened by Unilever at its European Co-Headquarters in Rotterdam on November 12, 2015 and in this Forum, the company’s extraordinary global commitment to employee wellbeing was set forth by the firm’s European President, Jan Zijderveld.

Among the companies represented at this 2^nd Forum:

• Abbvie Germany
• Ascender
• BSI Group
• BPost
• British Telecom (BT)
• CSP Coaching
• Deutsche Post
• DHL Group
• European Central Bank
• European Commission
• European Association of Paritarian Institutions
• European Brain Council (EBC)
• FedEx Global
• Front AS
• GE Healthcare
• Heineken International
• International Criminal Court
• International Labour Organization (ILO)
• Johnson & Johnson
• LyondellbaseII
• Lundbeck Canada Inc.
• Luxottica Group S.P.A.
• Netherlands Ministry of Infrastructure & Environment
• Novartis Pharma
• Philips Research Eindhoven
• Royal Mail Group
• Springer Publishing
• Tata Steel Ijmuiden, BV
• Trimbos Institute
• Unilever Germany, Italy, UK
• Zilveren Kruis

Highlights

• Moderated by Unilever’s Doug Baillie, a special panel examined the prospects of joint-leadership by business executives and scientists to foster new and innovative practices for treating depression.
• The Acting Director of the US National Institute for Mental Health, Bruce Cuthbert, set forth a dramatically new approach to mental health research focused not on labels such as depression and anxiety, but on symptoms and problem-solving.
• The Country’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Social Affairs and Employment for the Netherlands, Lodewijk Asscher, spoke of mental health as a ‘national priority’ in his country.
• Just prior to the Forum, Mr. Asscher hosted the Policy Forum on Mental Health and Work challenges facing OECD countries at the Hague, and launched a national campaign on mental health targeting employers and employees in the Netherlands. The Deputy Prime Minister also led reforms in return to work policy.
• Yvonne Verwohlt briefed the Forum on her ‘review of psychosocial risks’ in the workplace of the European Commission.

Not Just Running a Business

Mr. Baillie and Tim Munden, head of Global Diversity, set out Unilever’s global ‘sustainable living’ strategy which includes a significant mental health component. The following is an abbreviated composite of their remarks:

“One of the key attributes that we’ve worked at, that we really need to develop in our organization among our employees our leaders, is resilience.”

“Those of you who know the Unilever sustainable living plan, you know the role we want to play outside of just running a business.”

“How do we improve the health of a billion people through our brands? How do we get to 500,000 smallholder farmers and improve their worth?”

“How do we get to 5 million women in our value chain and empower them to actually give them a better livelihood?”

“We know in Unilever the second biggest driver of employee engagement is a belief that the company cares for their physical and mental wellbeing.”

“An important pillar of this is leadership and management including ‘on-line’ mental health training for every manager. Face-to-face training takes place (as required).”

Introduction

“We can’t expect employees to become high-performing if we don’t focus on respectful workplaces.”

Ms. Janice Charette

Canada’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom

The 3rd European Leadership Forum was hosted on October 15, 2016, by Canada’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom at Canada House in London.

Among the organizations represented:

• Accenture
• Alliance of Suicide Prevention Charities
• Barclays plc
• ATOS
• British Standards Institute (bsi Group)
• British Safety Council
• British Telecom
• Business Disability International
• BUPA
• Channel 4
• Capgemini
• DAF Trucks Limited
• Deutsche Post
• DHL Group
• EY
• Goldman Sachs
• IOSH
• London Health
• Microlink
• MIND, the Mental Health Charity
• Morneau, Sheppell
• Nature Magazine OECD
• Royal Mail
• Sainsburys
• UK Department of Transport
• Unilever

TARGET’s CEO Leadership Guidelines for Mental Health, Wellbeing & Productivity

We have heard on many occasions that a critical factor in placing mental health and wellbeing front and centre in any organization is the active engagement of its leaders. These Guidelines flow from that:

1. A Vision That Matters

   Build mental health and wellbeing into your vision of a healthy workplace and give your people every chance to learn about and discuss the topic without fear or reluctance. Be an informed leader. Diffusing myth and misperception is ongoing work.

2. Zero Tolerance of Stigma

   Require your HR people to consult managers and executives to develop a policy of zero tolerance of workplace-based stigmatization of mental illness based on education, training and the principle of common decency.

3. Getting the Facts

   Audit the disability experience of your organization to ensure you have a factual understanding of the toll taken by depression and related conditions and what is being done to support employees in their recovery and return to work.

4. Targets, Results

   Set achievable and specific targets to reduce the rates and impact of disability associated with mental disorders.

5. Depression: Heart of the Matter

   Take steps needed to ensure all your employees and their families understand the impact of depression on cardiovascular health, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and other chronic conditions.

6. Being There

   Ensure your people are trained/informed on how to respond properly and empathetically to co-workers and direct reports for those who threaten suicide or who lose a friend or family member to suicide.

7. Part of the Job

   Introduce mandatory mental health training for executives and managers and establish accountability to learn and use these new skills as part of their performance-based compensation.

8. Best Practices at Work

   Put a value on research and inquiry. Be prepared to invest in workplace-based trials and pilot projects in search of best practices for reducing chronic job stress and accelerating healthy interventions to support employees in distress.

9. Venue of Prevention

   See the workplace as a venue for reducing the incidence of disabilities associated with depression, anxiety and sub-threshold stress-related problems.

10. Consistency as a Virtue

    Walk the talk.

Download TARGET’s CEO Guidelines

Leader's Insights

“Mental health is one of the key priorities for Accenture when it comes to the wellbeing of our employees and a particular focus for me as CEO of our UKI business. The CEO Guidelines are a useful set of principles and they are directionally in line with what we hope to achieve in our own organization.”

Olly Benzecry

Managing Director, Accenture, UK and Ireland

“The CEO Guidelines will begin a conversation within and between organizations.”

Moya Greene

Chief Executive Officer, Royal Mail

“The advancement of workplace mental health and the leadership of senior executives are both all-important to our shared goals of improving the quality of life and protective the productive capacity of people across Europe.”

Lord Sandy Leitch

Chairman of the Board, BUPA

“Institutions and business need to understand that mental health is a business issue. Poor leadership, management and the organization of work can lead to poor mental health.”

Dame Carol Black

Principal, Newnham College, Cambridge
Expert Adviser on Health and Work NHS and Public Health England

“The Guidelines are very useful. The relationship between the individual, the employer and the state is important in addressing the issues of mental health problems at work. We must give people permission to talk about mental health and mental wellbeing. Ultimately, this is about culture.”

Paul Farmer

CEO, MIND

“The mental health agenda should be more broadly called ‘wellbeing at work’ and we also need to consider the wellbeing of interns, graduates and apprentices just starting their careers.”

Adrian Gregory

CEO, UK and Ireland, ATOS

“There is a need for training in business on how to support mental health at work and there also needs to be training in literacy, an understanding of what depression is. And managers should be encouraged to understand their own mental health and develop their own cognitive skills in order to empower others to help themselves.”

Ray Ashworth

Managing Director, DAF Trucks Ltd.

“Through new approaches across the (UK) Civil Services, we have seen average working day lost being reduced from 11.1 days (2007) to 6.2 in 2016 (Dept. for Work and Pensions.”

Philip Rutman

Permanent Secretary, UK Department of Transport

“In some organizations, poor mental health could be seen as a sign of weakness. Therefore, it is important to have access to independent (outsourced) support such as an external helpline. The business case for these kinds of investments is there.”

Paul Margetts

UK CEO, Application Services at Capgemini