8607-533 Managing Mental Health in the Workplace

Unit Overview

8607-533 Managing Mental Health in the Workplace is one of the units within the ILM Level 5 qualification in leadership and management that helps to build the ability of the leader to influence the mental wellbeing of individuals in their areas of responsibility. Mental health is a critical element that impacts the performance of individuals within the workplace. It is important to ensure that leaders create a culture and practice within their areas of responsibility that aims at creating conducive and enabling environments that support mental wellbeing. This includes being able to identify factors that could compromise mental health and stressors within the areas of operations and setting strategies to overcome such constraining factors.

Leaders should also put in place effective strategies that are flexible enough to ensure the team members r employees suffering from mental health issues are provided with the necessary care and support to facilitate a full recovery. Focusing on mental health ensures that the organisation is compliant with the legal and ethical frameworks governing health and safety within the workplace. 8607-533 Managing Mental Health in the Workplace is a unit that focuses on providing the leaders and stakeholders within organisations with information they can use to effectively handle mental health.

The unit guides them to understand the needs of employees and the role of leaders in setting up the desired standards of health and safety with a focus on mental health. Learners are also guided to appreciate the impacts of advocacy on the mental health of staff on employee wellbeing. This unit has the purpose of boosting the ability of leaders to apply knowledge and understanding of mental health issues in the workplace in addressing critical challenges associated with it. The unit is taught in 8 hours of guided learning and has a credit value of 3.

Suitability of the Unit

8607-533 Managing Mental Health in the Workplace is a unit that is highly suitable for different stakeholders within the workplace. All stakeholders must understand their role in creating an environment and workplace that promotes mental wellbeing among the staff and employees. This includes being able to effectively adhere to the legal and ethical frameworks established within the workplace to guide the mental wellbeing of the employees. It is important for leaders to ensure that they create effective approaches that are designed to improve mental health in the workplace and advocate for the mental health of staff within the workplace and at the industry level.

These approaches ensure that the organisation improves its brand image and facilitates effective approaches towards handling of health and safety standards that have been established fr0m the legal and ethical frameworks implemented within the workplace. The unit is designed to meet the learning needs of the middle managers within the workplace. It provides these stakeholders with information that they can use to effectively handle and manage the employees and staff within their departments, regions and lines in the workplace.

This ensures that the employees are able to effectively contribute towards organisational and team goals and objectives. However, the unit is not limited to these leaders but is also applicable to other stakeholders. Executive managers and junior managers can use the information to make effective decisions in their respective areas of responsibility. The information is also useful for external consultants and employees who play critical roles in informing and supporting decision-making within the organisations.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learners should be able to:

• Analyse the organisation's current approaches towards mental health

• Assess the approaches implemented within the organisation to deliver mental health strategies by providing effective examples of best-case practices within the organisation and industry

• Develop a plan that is designed to meet the requests for reasonable adjustments of members of staff in relation to the mental health aspects

• Describe approaches that can be used to improve mental health within the workplace

• Advocate for mental health of staff as a valuable resource for improving human resource performance

• Communicate effectively with staff about their mental health and focus on providing them with the support that they need to improve their mental health

• Assess personal mental health and its effects on other stakeholders within the workplace.

Key Learning Areas

8607-533 Managing Mental Health in the Workplace is a unit within the workplace that revolves around providing the leaders with information they need to create a conducive working environment in their areas of responsibility. This unit covers critical areas of learning that include:

Strengths and Weaknesses of Mental Health Initiatives

This area of learning contributes to understanding the principles of mental health initiatives and their role in ensuring that the organisation is able to adhere to the set legal requirements and frameworks. The area of learning focuses on providing the learners with an understanding of the role that the initiatives and policies play in shaping the brand image as well as influencing the development of policies that aim at promoting the performance of stakeholders. The area of learning also helps to relate the mental health initiatives to different organisational goals and policies hence ensuring that all stakeholders understand their role in creating the desired levels of mental wellbeing within the workplace.

Implementing, Holding and Recording Mental Health Initiatives

This area of learning helps the learners to understand and appreciate techniques that can be implemented to effectively handle mental health initiatives within the workplace. The learners are introduced to approaches that they can use to improve t eh mental health standards within the workplace. They are guided on specific and relevant techniques that they can use to manage conversations with staff and other stakeholders about mental health. This involves establishing confidentiality agreements and promoting positive mental health elements within the workplace.

Evaluation

On completing the unit, the learners are required to complete an evaluation. The evaluation includes a written assessment to determine the mastery of theoretical and practical information on the unit. The evaluation process includes formative assessment that includes supervised practice and simulated exercises which test the ability of the learners to practically implement the concepts that they have learned within the classroom.