What If Your Job Was Good For You? - Business in the Community

What If Your Job Was Good For You?

What If Your Job Was Good For You? report identifies how business leaders can create an environment in which employees feel supported to do their best work.

Business in the Community’s (BITC) What If Your Job Was Good For You? report identifies actions employers can take to transform wellbeing at work. The report sets out how business leaders can create an environment in which employees feel supported to do their best work. It also outlines how to achieve good jobs for all, that drive sustainable positive mental health outcomes.

The What If Your Job Was Good for You? report was delivered in partnership with the BITC Wellbeing Leadership Team and Affinity Health at Work, and supported by CIPD.

The report was also informed by statistical analyses from the BITC Mental Health at Work 2020 Survey, conducted in partnership with Bupa and BITC’s Wellbeing Leadership Team, as well as a literature review looking across academic, practice and policy literature. This provided insights into the best ways of working to promote sustainable mental health outcomes and was conducted by Affinity Health at Work.

A range of case studies have been produced to accompany the What If Your Job Was Good For You? report. These provide inspiration and guidance from public and private sector organisations across a range of sectors. These examples show that even in a time of stress and uncertainty workplaces can be proactive about ensuring work design and organisational culture drive positive mental health outcomes.

Now is the time to address systemic causes of mental ill health

In the 12 months before BITC’s Mental Health at Work 2020 survey, developed in partnership with Bupa and the BITC Wellbeing Leadership Team, 41% of employees experienced poor mental health caused by work1.
This is a statistic that would be seen as utterly unacceptable if discussing physical injury created by work. Before the pandemic, many organisations attempted to tackle mental health by a series of often reactive and standalone initiatives. Rather than continue to deal with the symptoms, now is the time to address the systemic causes of mental ill-health at work, focusing on prevention and creating work that is good for wellbeing. 

What If Your Job Was Good For You? has two calls to action for employers

  1. Achieve parity between the management of physical health and safety, and mental health and safety with an open and accountable culture.
  2. Enable employees to co-create their own “good jobs” supported by managers and aligned with organisational practices and policies.

The report gives in-depth guidance on how these calls to action can be initiated.

What If Your Job Was Good For You? builds a framework to enable organisations to achieve Standard 2 of the Mental Health at Work Commitment, “proactively ensure work design and organisational culture drive positive mental health outcomes”. The Mental Health at Work Commitment, and the standards which underpin it, are a roadmap to achieving better mental health outcomes for employees. Standard 2 had been perceived as the most challenging to tackle. However this report shows how even in these unprecedented times, you can achieve it through ways of working that enhance mental health and wellbeing.

Self Assessment Tool

This self-assessment tool enables you to assess and identify your organisational offering and the extent to which you are enabling better work for your people. The results can be used to benchmark against different areas of your business or to set and measure your entire organisational progress.

what if your job was good for you?

References
  1. Business in the Community (2020) Mental Health at Work 2020: key findings.