International Men’s Day: Fostering positive support and wellbeing

Today is International Men’s Day and this year’s theme is zero male suicide which opens the discussion around the importance of welfare, how we can look after each other and foster positive mental health.

The Oxford Dictionary defines wellbeing as “the state of being healthy, happy, or prosperous; physical, psychological, or moral welfare”. Gallup has been studying the area of workplace happiness for years, with their representative sampling allowing insight into close to 98% of the world’s population. The findings of their 2010 study into Wellbeing highlighted five common areas of wellbeing which are necessary for an individual to thrive, with a career being the most important and directly affecting the other four:

1. A career
2. Being social
3. Finance
4. Physical health
5. A community

For businesses, investing in employee wellbeing is proven to lead to increased resilience, better employee engagement and retention, reduced sickness absence and higher performance and productivity. Additionally, individual wellbeing in the workplace looks different from person to person, but the areas of impact are the same, such as job demands, autonomy over one’s role, healthy work relationships, fully understanding a role and being informed of organisational updates and changes.

At Locale, conversations are key. Involved employees contribute ideas/feedback to enhance processes and work conditions. Involvement promotes collaboration and communication among employees and management, enhancing trust and teamwork. When employees actively participate in decision-making processes related to policies and strategies, it promotes shared responsibility, ownership, and alignment of goals, bridging the gap between employees and leadership.

Lastly, the concept of ‘better working lives’ encapsulates the idea of ‘good work’, which centres on providing individuals with fair, fulfilling, and healthy employment conditions that contribute to overall wellbeing. It encompasses fair employment terms, equitable compensation, safe work environments, positive psychosocial wellbeing, job design aligned with employees' skills and aspirations, social support, and flexibility to accommodate personal needs. This approach emphasises the quality of jobs and employee welfare must come before business and profit.

Overall, as work is the number one contributor towards positive wellbeing, we must recognise that the workplace is more than just a place to do our jobs, it is a foundational platform for people to build good mental health, develop positive relationships and gain stability in life. Poor mental health does not discriminate; but on this International Men’s Day, we want to draw attention to the following statistics:

• Three times as many men as women die by suicide.
• Men report lower levels of life satisfaction than women.
• Men are less likely to access psychological therapies than women.
• Nearly three-quarters of adults who go missing are men.
• 87% of rough sleepers are men.
• Men are nearly three times as likely as women to become dependent on alcohol nd three times as likely to report frequent drug use.
• Men are more likely to be compulsorily detained (or ‘sectioned’) for treatment than women
• Men are more likely to be victims of violent crime (1.5 more likely than women)
• Men make up the vast majority of the prison population.​ There are high rates of mental health problems and increased rates of self-harm in prisons.

Knowledge is awareness is impact. Look after the men in your life!