Danielle Mik (00:00):
Hi everyone. Today, I’m here with David Burroughs. David is a workplace psychologist who’s worked extensively in the mental health space. Dave’s got a particular passion for working with mental health in the workplace. He’s currently a director at Australian Psychological Services, partner at Psychological Safety Australia, co-founder at Mantle Health, and chief mental health officer at Westpac. So as you can see, Dave is very well credentialed to talk about mental health in the workplace. So thank you Dave, for joining me today.

Dave Burroughs (00:30):
Oh my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Danielle Mik (00:32):
No problem. So today the miniseries is called Pearls of Wisdom. So we’re going to look for your pearls of wisdom today in replace to mental health, sorry, in relation to me mental health in the workplace. So Dave, obviously looking at the statistics as we know, currently, and of course statistics vary, depend on where you read them, but you’re saying a fifth of Aussies are experiencing mental health conditions at the moment, less than half seek help. Three quarter say mental health’s an important consideration when applying for a job. Half believe employer should be doing more in support of mental health in the workplace. And the return on investment that PWC showed, for every dollar invested. There’s $2.30 returned. So given that there’s such a good return on investing the money, what do you think is the biggest barrier for employers to creating a mental health program in the workplace?

Dave Burroughs (01:23):
I think there’s a few different barriers, and look the statistics. I think you got to take with the grain of salt. I think I’d actually reckon that if the organization does this really well, the return on investment is probably even higher. If I was to think around what are the biggest barriers that prevent employers for creating a mentally healthy workplace, I think it is doing what we’ve always done. I honestly think that we’re 20 years behind where we should be when it comes to workplace mental health because we’ve been focusing on things that are easy and things that are popular rather than the things that actually work. So an over reliance on employee assistance programs, resilience training, mental illness awareness, mindfulness and those sorts of things that focus on the individual, but don’t give enough consideration to those causal contributing factors that influence people’s experience of work. That’s the biggest barrier there is. I think we’ve been seeing.

Danielle Mik (02:16):
So like systemic workplace structures.

Dave Burroughs (02:16):
Yeah. And look, most organizations really want to do the right thing, but they often we see the popularity of a program or initiative used as a proxy for its effectiveness, when it’s just not. If you look at the research-

Danielle Mik (02:27):
Having the flu shots, having the bowl of fruit in the kitchen, and doing some stress management training. The typical sort of things.

Dave Burroughs (02:35):
Yeah. And that, even if we just have just not having an EAP, I mean, we create a tertiary cycle of despair. We see a symptom, we address a symptom. We make the individual responsible for what’s going on. We put the person back into the same workplace system. And the issue emerges again because we haven’t actually looked at causal and contributing factors. Now good work is good for people. And people’s experience of work is a determinative of mental health outcomes, but there’s not enough work being done to understand the things that influence people’s experience at work from a mental health perspective.

Danielle Mik (03:04):
Okay. So if you were to describe mental health workplace, what does it look like? What does a good employer with a good mental health work program in place, what does that look like?

Dave Burroughs (03:16):
A mentally healthy workplace for me is an area, is a workplace where people have a positive experience of work. It’s not going to be sunshine and rainbows all day, every day. They’ll be stressed, they’ll be strained, there’ll be friction, but people feel supported, people feel respected, and people are equipped with the right capabilities to meet the demands that we’re asking of them. So we’re not burning people out. We’re not making people work 13 hours a day, there’s good work life boundaries, but there’s compassion care and respect. And I think that’s the, the, the sort of core elements of a mentally healthy workplace for me, where we understand the importance of work for mental health and wellbeing. We understand that work is not just a pay check, it’s an area of social connection, where we get purpose and meaning, it provides structure and routine, a sense of identity is entwined with the work that we are doing. So a mentally healthy workplace is one that recognizes those sorts of things and understands just how much time we spend at work, which is typically too much.

Danielle Mik (04:12):
Well, yes. And certainly the majority of our waking hours tend to be at work. I mean, obviously COVID has impacted that and people have been working a lot more from home, but as things return towards that normality, as they will sort of slowly, I guess, as we go along, there will be that return to people being back in the workplace and spending that time in the workplace. So what do you think is the biggest misconception about what it takes to create a mentally health workplace? I mean, as you say, number of employers think it’s a bit of a stress management training or an EAP or whatever, then do you see that as the biggest misconception? Or is there something bigger than that?

Dave Burroughs (04:50):
I think it’s a big misconception. I think misconception out there is that you need to fix people. You don’t need to fix people. You need to influence their experience of work. You need to understand the demands upon them, the resources that they’ve got available, the way that work is designed, the other sorts of things. So I think the misconception is that workplace mental health is around an individual and their mental health status. Where the way I view workplace mental health is what can we do to address the workplace factors that either positively or negatively influence performance, productivity, engagement and mental health outcomes for an individual. Which is a huge one because our entire mental health system has largely been developed around a deficit model, which is the focus on the individual, the focus on the symptoms that they’re experiencing, not looking at the mental health needs of not just the one in five but five in five people. So I think there’s some of the real big misconceptions for me, is we’ve just paying attention to the wrong things.

Danielle Mik (05:46):
Yeah. Which has been, when you look at prevention models, having done prevention for a long period of time, we tend to look at those lag indicators, those numbers without really looking at measuring the quality of what we’re doing, and that’s harder to do for employers I think sometimes. So if you had to say, what would be the biggest mistake you’ve seen an employer make in looking to implement a mental health work program? Because I think sometimes with employers I’ve talked to, that’s something that holds them back, they’re scared of a mistake. You know, they don’t want to do the wrong thing. Because if they do the wrong thing, they’re potentially going to exacerbate people’s issues. And so it sort of can scare them and hold them back. What do you think is one of the biggest mistakes that they can make?

Dave Burroughs (06:26):
I think the biggest mistake they can make is looking for tokenistic solutions to systems based problems. So there’s this giant proliferation of apps out there around, it’s going to do this, or providers that are going to do this, but none of those actually deal to upstream issues. None of those address psychosocial risk, none of those improve people’s experience of work. All they focus on is reducing a symptom once a symptom has emerged. So I think the biggest mistake there is I think partially, looking at the branding and looking at the marketing that goes on in this space, because there’s so many grandiose claims out there around programs, initiatives, or apps or things that are going to change the world and fix all the things. But if you dig beneath the surface, very few have got any research efficacy, very few will actually improve people’s experience of work because they’re just not looking at things like psychosocial risk or job design and those sorts of things that are absolutely critical.

Dave Burroughs (07:22):
So I think you’ve got to dig a little bit deeper. And it’s hard though, because it’s such a busy landscape and there’s so many people with an opinion. And I think often the loudest voice is the one that people listen to instead of the voice that’s the most well informed. And experience does not actually equal expertise in this space. And so we need to move beyond that and look at what is these 20 plus years of research telling us around the things that we need to be influencing.

Danielle Mik (07:52):
Yeah. Well, I think we’re very much a society that wants the answers now and we want it to be a quick fix. So some of these things are definitely not quick fixes. I mean, the stuff you’re talking about, systemic issues, that takes a lot to, a lot of time and a lot of energy and a long term commitment to really investigate those things and design what’s needed to do to change them. And you know, for some employers, obviously, they need process changes as well, equipment change and things like that might be part of it. So it does become a big issue. So where do you suggest employers start? Where do you think they, what’s the starting point that we say, today, okay, I’m going to commit, I want to develop a, have a mentally healthy workplace. I want to implement a program. Where do they begin?

Dave Burroughs (08:37):
Okay. So one, I would say, what are you trying to achieve? So look at what is your strategy when it comes to workplace mental health? So the things that I really like is say a recognition that good work is good for people. So health benefits of good work agenda, wonderful place to start. Won’t tell you what to do, but at a conceptual level, it’s a beautiful thing. Next one for me is mental health as a positive concept. So the National Communications Charter for Mental Health and Suicide, recognizing that mental health is a positive thing and that mental ill health doesn’t discriminate. Nobody chooses to have mentally ill health and it doesn’t preclude people from being a great contributor or performer. I think starting with those sorts of things that look at why we want to do this and what are we actually looking at is a really important thing.

Dave Burroughs (09:19):
The regulators, Safe Work New South Wales, lots of others, we’ve got so much information there, it’s never been easier for an organization to take an evidence informed approach to these things. But looking at what are you doing to mitigate risk, improve people’s experience of work, and also address the needs of people who might have vulnerabilities. So looking at how you are doing those sorts of things, I think is really important, but starting from that position, for me, that good work is good for people and mental health is a positive concept are really important places to start. Because then you can look at all the different programs and the things that are out there and say, how does that fit in to what we are doing? How is that improving people’s experience of work? And I think that’s a really important thing for me when we look at how do we implement these sorts of things.

Dave Burroughs (10:04):
It’s never actually been easier to look at like, a social risk and job design and all these things that people are just so frightened of. There are so many freely available resources and guidance material out there now that just makes this easier than ever to do, but it’s really not starting with your resilience, your mindfulness space programs, it’s not looking at those sorts of things, because if you’ve got a whole lot of other challenges and things going on, if you are telling people just increasingly tolerate things they should be intolerant to, that can really backfire. If you’re trying to make the person the problem to fix, rather than understanding the sort of other things that are going on, that’s when things tend to backfire as well.

Danielle Mik (10:41):
Yeah. So do you think, Dave, there’s any employer that’s just not capable of creating a mentally healthy workplace? Do you think it’s beyond any employers?

Dave Burroughs (10:49):
No, I think it’s, actually, it’s been over complicated. I think if you look at the resources made available from Safe Work New South Wales and Safe Work Australia and Work Safe [inaudible 00:11:00], all of these sorts of things at the moment, it’s never been easy to do it. And I don’t think it’s as complicated as what a lot of people are telling you it might be to do. Psychosocial risk is easier than ever right now. Looking at how to provide appropriate support is easier than ever right now. There’s so many freely available things there as well. I don’t think that anyone is incapable of doing it. And I think even if we’ve got workplaces where there’s high levels of psychosocial risks around things like potentially traumatic events or dealing with challenging customers and those sorts of things, those things are challenges to sort of address, they’re not obstacles that can’t be overcome when we’re looking at creating a mentally healthy workplace.

Dave Burroughs (11:39):
Mentally healthy workplace is not one that’s completely devoid of stress and strain and challenges. It’s not like that at all. But it’s one that actually recognizes what are those sorts of things and what are we doing to support people when they’re encountering those sorts of events as well, and what are we doing to minimize the stress associated with those sorts of things? I reckon it would be a cop out, if anyone didn’t try to actually create a mentally healthy workplace at the moment.

Danielle Mik (12:01):
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean there is so much information out there and I think sometimes that can overwhelm employers a little bit, like where do they go for that information? And then, yes, there is so much advertising around over complicating it because that serves a different purpose for certain people, of course, to make it very complicated and then you need me to come in and do it and fix it for you. And I think a lot of employers, too, are under the impression that it’s going to cost an arm and a leg to put these programs in. And so they sort of go, ah, it’s all to who scary and all too hard.

Dave Burroughs (12:34):
They do. And I think the other thing, too, a lot of them rely on, are you okay and an EAP? Which simply is manifestly insufficient. Now they’ve both got their place in some way, shape or form, but they’re not, they’re certainly not what creates a mental healthy workplace. It’s not a daily activity, it’s not an end state, it’s an ongoing piece of work.

Danielle Mik (12:53):
It’s a culture, isn’t it? It’s about embedding a culture of caring for your people, supporting them and not putting in place systems and processes that will push them down the path of developing a mental health.

Dave Burroughs (13:07):
A culture of care is where it all starts really, isn’t it? Why are we doing it? People are worth it. How much time do we spend at work? So much time at work? You know, we’ve got a sort of an ethical responsibility to ensure that work is a great as a place as what we can actually make it because we spend so much time there. It’s not about reducing all the stress and strain and those sorts of things. It’s about being a decent human being, I think that’s at the heart of getting this right?

Danielle Mik (13:30):
Oh look. Absolutely. Well, Dave, thank you so much. That’s been so enlightening, I could talk to you all day about this topic. Is there anything else that you want to add that I sort of haven’t asked you that you think is an important point to make for employers that are looking to do something in this space?

Dave Burroughs (13:45):
I think the questions you’ve asked are fantastic. I’d say where’s the evidence? If you’re looking at a program you’re looking at a provider, how is it influencing the psychological factors that influence people’s experience of work? I think they’re the really key things for me. If it’s shiny, if it promises the world, dig a little bit deeper and actually get a little bit more rigorous around the way they look at these things. No app, no mindfulness course, something like that, is going to actually help address these issues for you. It actually takes a little bit more of a deeper look at things. So be curious around what sits behind some of these statistics.

Danielle Mik (14:19):
Yeah. Thank you so much, Dave, so much appreciated. Thanks for your time. And maybe I can have you on another time again, to share some more pearls of wisdom down the track.

Dave Burroughs (14:30):
My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Danielle Mik (14:32):
All right. Thanks Dave. Bye.

Dave Burroughs (14:33):
Bye.