Zero Suicides in the Workplace
If your company agreed what was an acceptable number of suicides at work, what would that number be? It's likely that the response would be 'zero'.
Most of us will spend a third of our lives at work, so it’s important that workplaces are psychologically safe environments, where mental health and employee wellbeing are seen as core business issues.
Most people who take their lives each year are employed. In a supportive workplace environment, the involvement of leaders, managers and all employees is an important component in suicide prevention.
For this part of our Zero Suicide strategy, our actions are specifically aimed at engaging with companies and organisations of all sizes. We aim to continually raise awareness of what actions employers and managers can undertake to improve the wellbeing of their employees and reduce the risk of suicide.
We achieve this by delivering talks on topics like how to have difficult conversations or how to identify when a colleague is struggling and provide the necessary support and signposting.
We will collaborate with HR and wellbeing teams to design suicide prevention and postvention strategies, as well as considering how internal policies and procedures impact on the wellbeing and mental health of employees.
We will design and run any events, workshops, conferences and educational talks which help raise awareness and also provide practical guidance so that everyone understands how to create and sustain a psychologically safe workplace, where the organisation and its employees can thrive.
Contact: hello@thejordanlegacy.com
5 practical actions you can take now.
Here are 5 easy to implement actions your company can start taking today, which would help create a psychologically safe workplace:
- Everyone to take away these 2 key messages: “Anyone can be affected by suicide” and “Everyone can help prevent suicides”.
- Ensure all senior management and line managers receive mental health and suicide awareness training – a minimum of 2 directors to be trauma informed and to have undertaken a certification in mental health and suicide prevention training. Click this link to see details of our training partners, Tara Powell and Steve Carr.
- All employees to be encouraged to take the free, NHS approved, 20-minute online training provided by the Zero Suicide Alliance. Access via this link.
- Ensure that the R;pple Suicide Prevention tool is downloaded to all workplace PC’s and laptop devices. Access via this link.
- Ensure effective signposting for all employees to the organisation’s Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), encouraging use of EAP, or appropriate external mental health support where no EAP internally.
For information and support concerning mental health or suicide related issues, access this link.