Table 3 15 key approaches for organisations that employ PHEM practitioners
Provide clear messages about the priorities of work and care for staff within organisations | |
Ensure every employee has a person or a place to which they can go for immediate support and ensure staff have space and time for reflection | |
Ensure that work is based on effective teams and that team cohesion is supported by employees training together | |
Ensure that leaders are effective and supportive to enable people and to develop team cohesion | |
Develop care pathways that link the wellbeing, psychosocial and mental health aspects of the organisations’ workforce support plans | |
Intervene early with staff who are distressed; this requires strengthening the working environment, and listening rather than initially providing therapy or counselling | |
Adopt a practical approach to early intervention based on the acronym PIES; that is providing interventions in proximity to where people work, with immediacy and expectation of recovery and by using simple interventions first. There is evidence that this approach lessens the risks of staff members developing mental health disorders later | |
Yse active listening skills | |
Seek out and remedy secondary stressors | |
Ensure that employees are offered opportunities for integrationg with their peers because social support is key | |
Remember that colleagues’ sustaining their senses of personal efficacy are important in their recovery | |
Consider setting up peer support programmes because they bring staff in departments and teams together and may prevent development of more serious problems [46] | |
Be clear about who will and will not benefit from a ‘medical’ approach (a minority of people may develop diagnosable mental health disorders for which they require specialised medical care, but most do not) | |
Support staff in the face of negative public perceptions | |
The actions in this list are all critical to creating environments at work that are conducive to staff giving of their best. Policies and actions for supporting staff must be separate from those for staff discipline and performance management |