This week (9^th – 15^th May) is Mental Health Awareness Week, an annual campaign that encourages people across the UK to openly discuss mental health and support one another. This year, the theme is ‘loneliness’ – which can be both a cause and product of poor mental health – and people are being encouraged to reach out to their family, friends, colleagues and communities to support, connect with and uplift one another. You can find out more about this year’s theme on the Mental Health Foundation’s website.

We at the York & North Yorkshire LEP and Growth Hub are using Mental Health Awareness Week as a way to connect with each other and combat the loneliness we can sometimes feel when working from home. We’re challenging each other to meet face-to-face as much as possible and make room on our agendas to grab a cuppa and get together for some social time. We’re also encouraging our team to reach out and talk with colleagues they don’t know well, so we can all get to know each other a bit more. Finally, we’re making mental health awareness training accessible to the team and pointing everyone to mental health resources and support.

We’re hoping to build more connections across our team and promote open discussions, and we encourage you to spread awareness and support through your workplace as well!

Below are some resources from our website that can help you think about mental health and how you can support both yourself and others in the workplace.

Mental Health & Wellbeing Toolkit

Our Mental Health & Wellbeing Toolkit is free to download and can help answer your questions about workplace wellbeing. The toolkit includes a range of practical resources that can help both you and your employees.

With the guide, you’ll learn:

• What is meant by ‘mental health’?
• Business owners’ legal responsibilities around mental health
• What to do if you are worried about a staff member
• How to avoid creating mental health problems in the workplace
• How to manage your own mental health

Click here to download.

On-demand wellbeing webinars

We have a wide range of webinars available on-demand for you to watch, including our new wellbeing playlist. The playlist is free to access and contains hours of content covering mental health, wellbeing and supporting your colleagues and employees.

Topics include:

• Employee wellness and engagement
• Maintaining positive mental health and wellbeing in difficult times
• Supporting the return to work
• Building resilience and supporting team wellbeing
• Plus more

Watch our playlist now with this link.

We also have individual webinars available for you to watch, which cover a variety of topics from wellbeing to leadership and building connections and resiliency across your team. All of our on-demand webinars can be found here.

Tips for creating a happier workforce

One misconception is that keeping employees happy at work is expensive, but you can create a more positive workplace by ensuring your employees feel valued and connected using inexpensive means. Our blog offers you some simple ideas to support your staff and create a happier, more productive and supportive workforce.

Read our blog here.

Connect with mental health support, training and programmes

Programmes exist to help you support employees who are experiencing mental health challenges and create inclusive workplaces.

Thriving at Work is a project that aims to support people to unlock their potential at work. The project can help you to create an inclusive workplace, and offers specialist coaching, training, webinars and 1-to-1 support. The project not only aims to support people with mental health challenges, but also offers training to help you support neurodiverse and disabled staff to thrive at work too. All support is free to access.

The Skills Support for the Workforce programme offers a range of free training, which includes support around mental health awareness, mental health first aid, promoting equality and diversity in the workplace and more. Skills training is also proven to make employees feel valued, improve productivity and confidence, and encourages teamwork. Skills Support for the Workforce offers training across York and North Yorkshire, for all sectors.