Time to put your money where you mouth is
This week we're going to talk about the thing that no one ever wants to talk about. The dirty word starts with M. Money. In my work as a mental health consultant with organizations of all different sizes, I often hear clients say to me that they want to do things like change their culture around mental health, they want to look after people, they want to raise the stigma. And there are all these fantastic grand plans. In addition, they've usually paid for little pockets of activities such as yoga or fresh fruit or mindfulness or the odd Mental Health First Aider.
But when I ask them what their budget is, to actually do something proper, and relive all these grand plans and change their culture, that's when it often goes quiet. What you find is that there's generally a well being pot, but that part is being stretched over health and mental health. What you don't see is people spending money on consultants and on real expertise in mental health to write strategies. What I'm also not seeing a lot of is real spend on health providers, an organization may choose and some of the larger ones do have occupational health private health insurance in EAP. But when you unpick it, that's not really included in their health spend, it's often run by benefits realisation teams.
On top of that, they generally get them quite cheaply. So a lot of organizations that are most proud of their employee assistance program, when you unpick it, it's actually a free service that's being offered on the back of their insurance policy.
What I haven't seen a lot of is organizations upping their spend on mental health provision, paying for psychologists paying for psychiatrists paying for in house GPS paying for occupational health, the mental health spend seems to be low, and also quite on the fluffy things. What I believe is if you actually spend money on a proper joined up health and mental health strategy, and you pay for proper providers, and you commission your own health care, you will save money in the long term.
At the moment, many organizations rely on the NHS and NHS Care to look after employees. If someone calls in sick, they're suggested to go to their GP, it could actually be quicker and easier in the long term for an organization to spend money on health care. But what is even more frightening is many organizations don't even know how much they're spending on health, the cost of health, how much absence and retention and all of these numbers that we look at when we're building a strategy isn't worked out. And the real trouble in the UK at the moment is that organizations are winning awards, and getting great PR for the fluff for the mindful nurse and the activity, not for really spending money on health and mental health strategists that are going to change things on the ground for their employees. In the next couple of weeks.
We can talk more about money because it's often a very difficult topic, but I really don't think that despite all the talk in the last few years, organizations are spending more on health and mental health. I'd love to hear if you agree or disagree with that. Whether you think organizations should be spending money on the health care of their employees, whether or not it should be them paying for health care, or waiting for NHS policy to kick in. Right below. Let's hear your thoughts and let's get a good discussion going
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