In this issue
Features
Employee benefits for the real world (free article)
Employers need to think outside of the traditional benefits box if they want to retain their workforce. Rosemary Lemon explains why and how.
Love it or hate it? (free article)
Employers looking to address workplace mental health can find that training mental health first aiders is one easy answer. Kris Ambler, BACP’s Workforce Lead, considers what this means for our profession.
Generation next
Colette Lewis outlines her work with counselling trainees setting up placements in organisations.
Better conversations about …
When babies need extra care. Jane Moffett looks at how employers can support parents when their baby starts life in a neonatal unit
Columns
Cyberwork
Sarah Worley-James: Online supervision
Talking purple
David Caldwell and Vanessa Hardy: Understanding intersectionality
Workplace matters
Sandi Mann: Asleep on the job?
Regulars
Notes from the Chair
Nicola Neath: Signing off
Divisional members and subscribers can download a pdf of this issue from the BACP Workplace archive.
Editorial: What are the benefits?
Millennials have been much maligned as a lazy and entitled generation, absorbed by their screens and too stressed to have sex. So, I was fascinated to hear a talk on the financial wellbeing of young workers at the Health and Wellbeing at Work annual conference at the NEC, earlier this year by Rosemary Lemon.
Charged with understanding how her organisation could make a difference to the lives of its young workers, Rosemary’s research into the world of the millennials reveals a more complex picture. For someone at the latter stage of their career, the typical ‘suite of benefits’ might work quite nicely, thank you, but offer little tangible benefit to a 25 year old, saddled with student debt, with little to no chance of buying their own home, and struggling to afford the deposit on rented accommodation.
Listening to the younger workforce reveals much about our rapidly changing society. In this issue’s lead article, Employee benefits for the real world , Rosemary identifies five pillars to a person’s sense of wellbeing, including: health, money, work-life balance, working environment and learning and development. Whichever generation you belong to, it makes good sense that if employees have a better sense of personal wellbeing, there are obvious benefits for the employer – increased productivity, engagement and improved retention.
Being sufficiently adaptable is an essential skill, given the rapid pace of change around us. Living for longer, it’s expected that more of us will have portfolio careers – and this leaves me pondering on how the five pillars of wellbeing fit for me, and the nearly five million self-employed workers, many of whom are therapists. I’m weary of hearing about the benefits of ‘flexibility’ for the self-employed and those working on zero-hours contracts. Despite the Government introducing draft legislation on workers’ rights, including changes to the legal protections for workers on zero-hour contracts, it’s yet to come into effect.
On the upside, the work that we do is abundantly rich in meaning and purpose. As our outgoing Chair, Nicola Neath, says ‘farewell’, she sums up what we do as, ‘invaluable in regulating the UK’s nervous system’.
Nicola Banning
Editor, BACP Workplace
workplaceeditor@bacp.co.uk