Across Great Britain, work-related stress accounts for almost half of all working days lost and, in the last 12 months, over half a million working days were lost in due to stress, depression or anxiety, caused or made worse by work (HSE Go Home Healthy 2019).
As individuals we have a responsibility to learn how to look after our own mental health. Taking responsibility to care for self and stay mentally well will help individuals manage the above pressures; furthermore, we can all help individuals identify when they aren’t able to cope, or their coping strategies aren’t working. If this is true from an individual perspective, it also applies collectively in the workplace. We spend on average a third of our adult lives in the workplace with colleagues; we need to notice if another person’s mental health changes.
North Yorkshire County Council have launched the Taking care of YOU Toolkit to help you to start the conversation, because it is an important first step toward preventing work-related stress and actions employers need to take. This toolkit has been adapted from the ‘Taking care of you’ research (MIND, 2017), and a pilot across the NHS and is a useful tool for any working environment. Its aim is: helping you through your working day and beyond.
We've produced a useful overview of the toolkit, you can read it by following this link: taking care of YOU toolkit overview
Toolkit
- Introduction to stress management
- How to create a mantra
- Box breathing
- Going home checklist
- End of day checklist
Videos
We've produced a number of useful videos:
Taking care of you
Anchoring during the work day
Going home checker
Taking action and rest
