6 Sept 2022
Claire Brereton – a senior associate at employment law firm Brahams Dutt Badrick French LLP – discusses and reviews findings from various studies into the 2022 theme of Mental Health Awareness Week, which was loneliness. She also discusses initiatives employers can put in place to help reduce any loneliness that may be experienced in a workplace…
Image © IRINA / Adobe Stock
Mental Health Awareness Week was this year held from 9 to 13 May 2022. The aim of the week was to provide an opportunity to focus on achieving good mental health.
Each year has a theme – last year it was back to nature; this year it was loneliness.
The Mental Health Foundation, which hosts Mental Health Awareness Week, had chosen loneliness as this year’s theme because “loneliness is affecting more and more of us in the UK, and has had a huge impact on our physical and mental health during the pandemic”, and “reducing loneliness is a major step towards a mentally healthy society”.
Some studies, including material from the mental health charity Mind, have found that loneliness increases the risk of certain mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety. While some may choose to be alone and live happily without much contact with other people, others may find this a lonely experience. Mind says that feeling lonely isn’t in itself a mental health problem, but the two are strongly linked. Having a mental health problem can increase someone’s chances of feeling lonely.
Mind also states that some research has suggested that loneliness is associated with an increased risk of certain mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, sleep problems and increased stress.
A large part of many employment lawyers’ practices involves advising clients who are experiencing mental ill health and the corresponding impact that has on their working life. Therefore, it’s important to recognise that loneliness is not just something that is experienced by people in their home life – many people often feel lonely at work. This is not confined to people who are alone (for example, working from home) – it also includes those experiencing workplace issues. For example, anyone struggling with their workload or relationships with colleagues can feel incredibly lonely and unsupported.
In advance of Mental Health Awareness Week, Mind published the key findings of a survey it conducted into how the pandemic had affected people at work. A total of 42,000 staff from 114 organisations across the UK were surveyed as part of the Workplace Wellbeing Index 2020-21, including people who had been furloughed, worked from home or continued to work on site.
Two of these findings are particularly important when considering loneliness in the workplace:
By the very nature of their work, office workers were the biggest group of people who worked from home during the pandemic. They were also the last group of people to be permitted to return to the workplace.
You might assume that workplace loneliness will evaporate now that many of us have returned to the office for at least some of the working week. However, that is not necessarily the case – particularly in workforces where some people work in the office and some work from home.
Employers are under a specific duty to make reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities, but loneliness can affect all of us. Employers need to take care to ensure that loneliness among the workforce is not created, or exacerbated, while they adjust to the post-pandemic way of working.
Employers effectively need to adjust workplaces for employees and the new way of working, and a number of initiatives can be put in place to help reduce any loneliness experienced in a workplace. These include:
But there’s more – employers could:
Of course, these are just some of the things employers can do as part of an initiative to promote good mental health. But no matter the approach, it’s important to remember that while Mental Health Awareness Week runs just once a year, the subject is something that should be borne in mind all year around. Employers should find that a little time spent reducing loneliness within their workforce will pay dividends for all.