Did pilot depression cause tragic plane crash?

Mental health problems such as depression and workplace stress not only cause chronic diseases, they can even contribute to the kind of disaster seen this week.

For example, the BBC reported (24th March 2015) that staff absences for mental health problems have doubled at hospital trusts across England in the past four years.  There’s no doubt that the relentless pressure of a target-based culture, with reduced resources available to meet increasing demand, is a key factor.  However, could the management culture, the ways in which employees are generally being managed, also be a factor? In an environment where ‘caring’ should be the watchword, are managers taking a caring attitude to their own people, are they quick to spot the symptoms of a worker under undue stress and ready to provide the needed support? Does the ‘system’ enable managers to actually do that?

Few employers will be immune to this critical issue as mental health problems for employees increase.  What can and should be done about it? Here’s one informed view:

"The problem is that tackling stress can mean changing working practices, increasing staffing levels or changing management systems and so it is clear that the majority of employers are just sticking their head in the sand and hoping the problem will go away…the result is (400,000) thousand workers have to live with totally avoidable depression or anxiety."
Hugh Robertson, TUC

Across the board, then, management practice is under the spotlight.  Regrettably, very few managers receive formal training in this area, other than perhaps how to remove ‘problem people’ from the organisation using some form of performance-management procedure. However, as employee anxiety, stress and depression continue to increase, concerned HR leaders must ensure that people-managers are trained and supported to identify potential problems.

The NextGen Manager programme has been assisting many hundreds of managers to develop the awareness and skills to spot emerging problems and to provide the needed support. For example, here are some straightforward observational guidelines for managers, covered in the programme;

Behavioural Symptoms - increasing irritability or aggression, becoming more 'difficult' in the workplace, less co-operative, more accident prone, less sociable, more withdrawn and neglecting their personal appearance.

Physiological Symptoms - increasing incidence of headaches, migraines, stomach disorders, back/shoulder/neck pain, reporting a sense of feeling unwell, body language showing a lack of enthusiasm to work.

Attitudinal Symptoms – conversation revealing a feeling that the workplace is felt to be threatening, a place of anxiety and tension and the cause of the person’s irritability, low self-esteem or forgetfulness.  Expressing growing anxiety about work problems and feeling powerless to change the situation.

Where managers need to show discernment is that these changes in people’s behaviours, attitudes and feelings may not be recognised by the individual, so are rarely pro-actively raised with the manager.  It requires a degree of emotional intelligence and sensitivity by managers to initiate a discussion, and explore what assistance and support the individual may need.

The NextGen Manager programme focuses on assisting all people-managers to develop a new way of managing their people so as to bring out their best, whilst also providing the needed human support so needed in today’s high-pressure workplaces.

For more information, visit the NextGen  and  Training Foundation  websites.