Shamira Graham, Chief Commercial Officer and Principal CBT Therapist at corporate mental health provider Onebright is talking about one of the hottest topics in the industry at this year’s MAD World: the fact that demand is skyrocketing for mental health support but many employers aren’t providing enough support when it comes to mental wellbeing. (If you haven’t got your ticket yet to this event on 17th October in London, see full agenda and register here).
Despite 13.8 million UK employees being covered by an EAP, the majority (52%) don’t feel they are receiving enough support from employers on mental health. While the increase in awareness around mental health, and the fact more employees are now openly speaking about it, are fantastic achievements for the industry, this upsurge has created challenges. Namely that, often, the service delivered by EAPs is not personalised enough for certain employees and employers must recognise the need for more complex pathways, which come at a premium cost due to their sophistication.
Onebright is one such company which can deliver complex mental health provision, so we talked to Graham, ahead of her appearance at MAD World, where she will talk about meeting the need for personalised mental health support.
You’re talking about meeting the increased need for personalised mental health support at MAD World. Why is this an important and timely issue?
Organisations, in terms of workplace mental health, have historically had a bit of a ‘one size fits all’ approach. So, they’d send an offer out to all of the workforce, irrespective of age, life stage or specific life events experienced, for example.
Obviously, it was an advantage for an organisation to offer benefits at all, but it was initially quite a crude benefits structure.
Now, however, the evidence is showing that employees need an offering that is a bit more nuanced, especially around generational differences. Afterall, health and wellbeing needs will change during the course of an employee’s lifespan.
What message would you most like your audience at MAD World to leave with from you?
I would really like them to focus on looking at the service provision they have got in their organisation. Where do they fit on the wellbeing and mental health continuum? How do employees know when they should access these services? When and how should they?
They need to think about their core services, and then specialist pathways for employees that need something more personalised. There are multiple psychosocial factors which contribute to someone’s mental health and it’s different for different times in life. Organisations need to make sure their employees are aware of, and have knowledge about, these factors.
What kind of employee and health issue do you tend to deal with?
We work in the corporate mental health sector, which is different from working in corporate wellbeing, and I think it’s important to make a clear distinction between these two.
Corporate wellbeing programmes typically focus on helping employees stay well and thriving. These are delivered through things like Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs), Wellbeing Champions, L&D training and wellbeing apps.
We tend to deal with employees who are struggling with their mental health and experiencing compromised wellbeing, ill health or complex ill health. There is a bit of overlap between corporate wellbeing and corporate mental health with regard to those struggling, but fundamentally our services are more sophisticated, clinical services based on assessments and treatment. Typically, they are covered by private medical insurance, group income protection and occupational health policies.
Every workplace is different and the mental health requirements of employees are constantly shifting too, so our job is to evaluate where the gaps are in terms of things like mental health training, diagnosis and treatment for conditions.
We also work with organisations who may increase exposure to occupational risks for their employees , such as Blue Light organisations including Police and Ambulance services, and we provide specialist support for complex trauma and PTSD. These tend to be for a minimum 12 session pathway and would not offer PTSD treatment for 6 sessions as this would not be clinically appropriate or ethical.
Why wouldn’t it be ethical to take on a trauma client for just six sessions?
Well, we work with the NICE guidance which typically recommends 16 sessions of therapy to treat trauma effectively. We often tend to take less time than this but the issue with trauma is that when you start work it can be quite destabilising for the individual because you confront difficult memories.
These memories have often been avoided and not processed, so they’ve got PTSD and trauma symptoms. So, it’s difficult clinical work and it’s difficult for the individual going through it. The last thing you’d want to do is start therapy then stop it after six sessions with the issues unresolved.
Some people believe there should be more recognition that it costs money to offer the kind of specialist, in-depth clinical support that you provide, but that many employers aren’t currently paying enough for it. Do you agree?
I’m smiling because, yes, I think there needs to be more recognition of cost.
Employers need to recognise the commercial element to this and it needs to be talked about more. Especially as, due to the way the NHS has been chronically under-funded for so long, there is a gap in health provision and many employees are looking for their employers to fill this gap. And it makes sense for them to do so.
Do you feel it’s their responsibility, or a nice thing for employers to do?
I think it is their responsibility, and employees are increasing looking to their employers for mental health and wellbeing leadership and provision.
There’s so much data now on the impact of investment in employee wellbeing on productivity and engagement. The return on investment is between six to seven times, in terms of absence, presenteeism, quality of performance efficiency, loyalty, etc. So there’s a really clear commercial and productivity argument irrespective of it being the right thing to do.
Do you think employers need to do a better job of raising awareness of their wellbeing provision so it can be more preventative than just being used when employees are nearer to a crisis state?
That’s part of the solution, but not the only solution. Generally, people that have got complex mental health needs are fully aware that they need support. However, what they need is the treatment and quick access to treatment. So I think it’s a bit of a double-edged sword; organisations do need to raise awareness more, but this needs to be paired with provision of appropriate services.
Because presumably it could do more damage than good if you realise you’ve got a problem, and you can’t access help?
Yes.
What do you see as the EAP’s role? What kind of situations should they be dealing with?
Things like a response to an employee dealing with a bereavement. Or low level stress, which has been experienced for a short period of time.
However, if somebody meets the clinical, diagnostic criteria for things like OCD or generalised anxiety disorder then, typically, an EAP will not be clinically appropriate for their needs. That is just the reality.
You’re a CBT therapist and you’re also Chief Commercial officer at Onebright. What do you think that brings to the commercial role?
I think it makes me a better commercial officer by being a practicing clinician. So, for example, when we are developing new products, clinical propositions and clinical pathways with our partners, I am able to see how these ideas feel as a treating clinician. That means there’s a continuous feedback loop from actual clinical experience into the development of pathways.
I also have to keep up to date with the latest evidence based development in psychological therapy which allows me to develop and innovate our clinical pathways.
What trends have you noticed emerging around health and wellbeing?
We tend to use the data that we’ve gathered in our clinical settings and services, all obviously anonymised and within the confidentiality limits. But yes, of course, what we can do is spot trends we are seeing in our clinical sessions and think about how we can use that insight to inform a specialist pathway, for example. Or how we could use that insight to improve early intervention and prevention, as well as solutions.
Can you give me an example?
Yes. We’ve used clinical insight to develop more gender health features, as well as specialist peri and post natal pathways, as well as menopause pathways. This means that, alongside our core products, our clients can consider offering these specialist pathways too.
Another good example is we were noticing lots of neurodevelopmental presentations or traits in our core clinical sessions and were able to take those insights and develop a different solution for these. We ended up acquiring a neurodevelopment specialist for diagnosis and treatment.
Another example is oncology. Again, we were noticing that people were coming into our mental health pathways but with an oncology presentation. They’d either been diagnosed themselves, or they were supporting partners who had been diagnosed. We brought in some specialist oncology support to help these employees.
We’ve written quite a bit about Men’s Mental Health recently on the back of World Suicide Prevention Day as the male suicide rate is three times higher. Have you noticed any trends around men’s mental health?
Yes, we’ve developed some specialist training around men’s health where a, team go in and deliver sessions. We know that men’s ill health is more severe before they will access help so we’ve done lots of work getting, for example, senior stakeholders in organisations to share their own stories about their mental health and how they accessed help.
You are on the Parliamentary Policy Liaison Group for Workplace Wellbeing. How are you feeling about the new government in terms of mental health and wellbeing?
Collaboration between the public and private sectors is essential for fostering a healthy, productive workforce.
When society fails to acknowledge that at least one in four people in the UK will experience a mental health condition at some point in their lives, the human and economic cost of more serious mental health conditions grows.
There are opportunities that we’re talking about, like strict guidelines that could be given to organisations to optimise health and wellbeing, and whether tax incentives should be applied.
Do you think that mental health needs to be regulated?
Well, mental health as an entity cannot be regulated, but I think it’s important that the clinicians delivering mental health services need to be regulated. So, for example, I am a CBT therapist and it’s an accredited profession but it’s not a regulated profession, but there’s a big lobbying campaign for regulation, and to make CBT therapists a protected title, at the moment.
I think regulation is absolutely the right thing to do. There’s lots of work to do in terms of reaching parity between physical and mental health and regulation would be one way of achieving that, at a minimum.
The Leaders’ Summit at MAD World is an event driving excellence in workplace culture, employee health and wellbeing.
The Summmit on 17th October 2024, will bring together speakers and attendees from across sectors and with a range of job titles for two tracks of leading-edge content that showcase best practice and provide insights and inspiration for all those looking to achieve maximum engagement with initiatives, optimise investment, stay one step ahead and really make a difference.
The stellar lineup of speakers, as well as Onebright’s Shamira Graham, it includes: Professor Dame Carol Black GBE FRCP FMed Sci; Peter Cheese, CEO, CIPD, Vanessa Harwood-Whitcher, Chief Executive, The Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (IOSH), Dhavani Bishop, Head of Group Colleague Health & Wellbeing, Tesco, Kirstin Furber, People Director, Channel 4,Dr Clare Fernandes, Chief Medical Officer, BBC, Christian van Stolk, Executive Vice President, RAND Europe, Andrew Gibbons, Group Head of Wellbeing, Recognition and Hybrid Working, HSBC, Karen Brookes, Chief People Officer, Sir Robert McAlpine, Jaimy Fairclough, Wellbeing Specialist – People Division, Sainsbury’s, Dr Femi Oduneye, Vice President Health, Shell International B.V. and many more. You can find out more and register to attend here.
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