JRC has worked with forty local employers to develop a training programme to create mentally healthy workplaces. The JRC Mental Health at Work programme has been designed in partnership with local organisations and those with lived experience of poor mental health.
If you're interested in training and letting us help you create a mentally healthy workplace get in touch - hello@recovery.je.
Why this matters
- Two-thirds of people with a mental health problem say that work either caused or exacerbated their poor mental health.
- One in four people will experience a mental health difficulty every year and workplace absence due to mental ill health and presenteeism is rising.
- The number of sick days lost to stress, anxiety and depression in 2017 cost the taxpayer over £3 million. The cost to businesses was more.
- 80% of local businesses have no mental health strategy or policy in place to support mental health in with workplace.
- We spend one third of our lives at work. How we are treated at work can significantly impact our wellbeing.
The programme
Please note these courses are still in development so content may change slightly.
Mental wellbeing in the workplace
Good mental health starts with us. This module will focus on how we take care of our own mental health. It will cover self-awareness and emotional literacy skills, personal responsibility, work-life balance and wellbeing toolkits. This module aims to empower individuals to better manage their own mental health.
Suited to all employees
1 full day’s training or two half days
How to support colleagues
This module is designed to promote a culture of compassion and provide employees with the skills to support each other’s mental health and wellbeing. It will cover general mental health awareness, the importance of talking about feelings, how to approach a colleague who is struggling, active listening, emotional literacy, suicide awareness and how to look after ourselves while supporting others.
Suited to all employees
1 full day’s training or two half days
Managers guide to mental health
How an organisation responds to someone who is struggling with their mental health has the power to support or hinder recovery. This module will explore what good and bad management of mental health in the workplace looks like. It will cover legal obligations, how to support someone who is unwell at work, how to support someone signed-off with mental health issues, how to support employees back into the workplace, how to address poor performance and the communication skills needed around managing mental health.
Suited to those with a line management or HR responsibility
1 full day’s training or two half days
Senior leaders and mental health
Getting mental health at work right takes a fully cultural and systematic response. This must be led by senior management who should set supportive strategies, working policies and practices and drive a positive culture. This module focuses on the critical role senior leaders play in supporting their workforces to flourish. It will help senior leaders to create, enable and lead a mentally healthy business. It will touch on supportive cultures and how to implement change.
Suited to senior leaders, visionaries and culture creators
1 full day’s training or two half days
Individual Wellbeing Menu
These are short sessions (usually 3 hours in length- sometimes split over a few days) that focus on empowering your employees with wellbeing management skills.
Goal Setting, Resilience and Wellbeing
We can all set goals to enhance our wellbeing and apply strategies to build resilience and positively support our mental health. This course will provide an overview of positive mental health and the concepts of resilience and wellbeing. It will provide concepts and strategies to encourage you to set your own goals to better support your emotional health and build resilience.
Understanding and Managing Anxiety
It is natural to have anxieties in the current climate; whether they are health related, work related, family related and/or everything in between. We will look to understand what Anxiety is, how it impacts your life and what you can do about it.
Overcoming Fear and Stress
Stress affects most people at some point in their lives. This course covers the major factors why we believe we are experiencing stress, the effects on our body, mind and daily lives and ways to manage and interrupt the stress response.
Living with Low Mood and Depression
Depression is the most commonly diagnosed mental health difficulty. We will explore this topic and how it affects our lives. Through individual and small group work we will cover what depression is, what causes it and strategies to overcome it. This course is helpful to anyone experiencing low mood.
Sleep Management
This course will outline the basic need we have as humans to sleep and what natural sleep looks like. We will cover the benefits of sleep and the detrimental impact of sleep deprivation on both our physical and mental health. The course hopes to offer practical solutions to common sleep difficulties with an easy to follow plan. We will look at sleep medications and the impact that these can have on our natural sleep cycle, alongside common sleep disorders and signposting students to where they can seek additional support should they suspect these.
Growing into Change
We all experience change; it is a natural part of life and yet we all have our individual responses to it. On this course, we will explore why we struggle with change (resistance), how we can work with it (awareness) and move forward with our lives (adaptability). We will do this though a range of individual and group activities and discussion.
What Makes a Good Life?
Positive psychology is the science of what makes life worth living. It focuses on how to increase positivity, rather than just decreasing negativity, as well as focusing on what’s strong, rather than what’s wrong.
In this course, students will have opportunities to develop their knowledge of positive psychology and how to apply concepts to building a good life. We will develop our understanding of our personal strengths, the benefits of gratitude, the key features of a good life, helping others and more. We will explore these topics together through a variety of activities and discussions over two sessions.
Some of the benefits of practicing positive psychology are experiencing more positive emotion, better relationships, more empathy, better sleep and greater self-esteem. Practicing positive psychology also makes you less likely to suffer from depression, addiction and burnout, and be better at dealing with difficult situations.
Mental Health Awareness Session
Our mental health awareness session/sessions give provide a flavour of our MHAW courses. During these sessions we cover general mental health awareness, the importance of hope and mental health in the workplace. We briefly explore some tips and insights into supporting someone with poor mental health inside and outside the workplace.
Supporting those impacted by mental health difficulties
The JRC Mental Health at Work programme will financially support JRC’s core community service which provides free-to-access educational courses for those experiencing mental health difficulties and the people who support them in our local community.
The recovery college has changed so many aspects of my life this year. It has been a difficult year but the recovery college have offered me something different to focus on, something that is mine, that costs nothing but offers me a great sense of empowerment, and positivity.
JRC courses support students to better understand mental health conditions, recovery, wellbeing and life skills. Since opening in 2017 JRC has registered over 900 students on its courses.
How it will work
Every Mental Health at Work module will be delivered by a JRC Peer Facilitator with lived experience of a mental health difficulty and recovery and a JRC Practitioner Facilitator with a professional business/training background.
Businesses can book individual employees on the pay-as-you-go programme or book one or more modules to be delivered inhouse either in isolation or as a package.
Testimonials
"I attended the MHAW module 'How to create and lead a mentally healthy business'. I found the course to be a valuable opportunity to reflect on mental health in the workplace, assess how your actions can positively impact the wellbeing of others, and learn practical techniques to help maintain a balanced perspective and manage your own reaction to stress when it occurs."
-Ports of Jersey Senior Leader
"I attended the MHAW module 'How to support an employee’s mental health'. It has taught me some really important skills in identifying when someone might need support and knowing what options are available. The course was really enjoyable and the tutors were very knowledgeable using their own experiences to add another dimension to the training."
-Ports of Jersey Manager
"I attended the Jersey Recovery College course ‘Goal Setting, Resilience and Well-being’ which was put on in our workplace, solely for people who work within our business. The trainers were very knowledgeable and helped set an open and honest environment for sharing. I have found the tools I learned useful but for me, what I gained most from the course was support from my colleagues and learning from others first hand experiences"
-Employee from corporate
"As being a person that was bullied at work i would love to see a course or an opportunity for people to learn a few skills in how to deal with the situations without feeling they are on their own. Or their voice is not heard. Specially if the individual is one to not know how to express themselves."
-Employee from corporate
Interested in booking training?
Let us help you create a mentally healthy workplace.
Contact hello@recovery.je or call 01534 505977 for more information.
