People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1 - 44

tional health and mental health practitioners,
recruiters, and outsourcing agencies. We
also examined mental health issues and what
is being done about them in some depth with
Pete Philp, head of people proposition, and
Jacinta Negri, wellbeing partner at the Royal
Bank of Scotland (RBS).
RBS, a City giant, and until the 2008 financial
crush, one of the world's biggest banks, had to
be rescued by the U.K. government at taxpayers' expense, and consequently dealt with a
public image portrayed in the media as the
"least trusted bank" in the "least trusted sector
of the economy." Staff at all levels in the organization have faced ongoing uncertainty about
their personal and professional futures, as
branches closed, divisions merged, and headcount was reduced.
With the banking crisis lingering on and the
national economy at its lowest ebb in 2010,
RBS observed a shift in the way employees
engaged with its employee assistance program, Lifematters, reflecting increasing
levels of employee stress. Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) are the first line of
defense when resourced competently and
managed discretely. In most organizations,
EAPs are associated with HR departments
or medical departments. Encouraging
employees to access these programs freely
and confidentially at an early stage of an
emerging personal or work-related problem
may often provide the key to a solution.
Prior to 2010, the majority of employees
calls to Lifematters (67 percent) were to
source support for practical, day-to-day life
issues. By 2013, 59 percent of callers to the
service sought counselling for emotional
issues, and of those, 57 percent presented
with anxiety and depression at the time of
their first contact with the service.
"There is a clear understanding of the connection between employee satisfaction and
customer satisfaction, hence executives are
very interested in mental health issues, as
personal well-being is seen as an essential
link in effective delivery of the bank's
strategic goals," explained Philp. RBS's
approach to positive mental health is led
from the top, with CEO Ross McEwan in the
know and supportive of the bank's plans to
sign up to the "Time to Change" pledge,
which will reflect its commitment to removing the stigma associated with mental health
issues in the workplace. "Once the condition
becomes known, the member of staff is
referred to suitable help, whether counsel44

PEOPLE & STRATEGY

ling, CBT [cognitive behavioral therapy], or
to temporary disability arrangements. The
prognosis and treatment is targeted at supporting the individual's return to health first
and then their return to work."
Staff's personal stories on mental health
challenges, (what it felt like being at work
with a mental health problem, how they
dealt with it, and what support they received)
are published in the in-house online magazine and are open for other employees to
comment on. This already goes some way to
opening the internal dialogue on mental
health. On the preventative side, the RBS
Choice program places an emphasis on flexible working times and locations. This people program is seen as key to ameliorating
pressures employees experience both at
home and at work. Other City institutions
are developing similar initiatives to RBS.
The City Mental Health Alliance, supported

ience," and a swift return to work, rather
than promoting a priori and axiomatically a
healthy workplace for people.
This attitude is not confined to the City. As
part of the U.K.'s overhaul of welfare provisions, a new National Health and Work
Service will come into place in 2015 to assess
people's "fitness for work." Intended to help
employees and employers manage absence
with a particular focus on mental health,
employees on sick leave will receive an occupational health assessment when they reach,
or are expected to reach, more than four
weeks of sickness-related absence. A resulting return-to-work plan, administered by a
private contractor, will be shared with their
employer and personal physician. In practice, the new policy, with its focus on a
return to work, is likely to amount to a new
target-driven sickness absence system. The
fact that it is outsourced to a private contrac-

Encouraging employees to access these programs
freely and confidentially at an early stage of an
emerging personal or work related problem may
often provide the key to a solution.
by top management at several major City
organizations, aims to increase literacy and
openness about mental health, provide practical advice to employers, and combat the
stigma of mental health problems.

Mental Health and the
Good Employer
In the epilogue to their book, Harder, Wagner and Rash (2014) note their frustration
with the lack of resources available to address
mental health issues in the workplace and
their experience "being unable to even get
workplaces to discuss mental health and
what it would take to create mentally healthy
workplaces." The good news is that mental
health issues are now discussed in the City.
That's a promising beginning. However, the
terms of discussion are clearly confined to:
a) it's an individual's problem, not an organization-culture-induced malaise, and b) the
language posits the policy of intervention
programs, whether preventative or postcrisis, as aiming to achieve "fitness," "resil-

tor will do little to reassure people. The
experience of similar reforms with the recent
Work Capabilities Assessment administered
by Atos, a private contractor, is not encouraging. A large number of people being
assessed reportedly have considered suicide,
or died prematurely. (Gentleman, 2013)
The inbuilt tension between productivity
and well-being is expressed in the following
interview excerpt: "They made a big song
and dance about work-life balance. I've
already said that I don't particularly want to
do any more [overtime] during the year,
because it gives me a lot of wear and tear. I
am committing about 105 percent of my
effort already. [My manager] just talked to
me about work-life balance and then told me
that I need to spend 12 hours a week developing myself and others, in order to be measured against other people, and to do it in
my own time" (Robertson Cooper, 2013).
Which brings us to the role of line management. We know that a person's immediate line
manager is crucial to enabling a satisfactory
People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1

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