BY NIKKI ADEBIYI, FOUNDER @ BOUNCE BLACK
Content warning: distressing topics
In June, I attended the This Can Happen Global conference at Allen & Overy’s London office. If you haven’t already, you can read about the panel discussion I facilitated in the first part to this blog series.
In this blog, I share some highlights from other conference sessions:
Gambling and grief
My time as a Money and Mental Health Policy Institute Intern was my first exposure to the mental health and financial impact of gambling addiction. So, I was all the more intrigued to hear how gambling affects those closest to people with addictions, known as ‘affected others’.
I learned that for every one person with a gambling addiction, there can be 6-10 ‘affected others’.
Panellists with lived experience shared personal accounts of the disastrous effects gambling can have on families, revealing the extent to which it can be a life and death issue. Sadly, sometimes addiction comes with domestic violence.
What is more, these ‘affected others’ still have show up as employees. To quote one panellist, “I had to go straight back to work” after experiencing gambling related hardship. Another panellist explained how trauma can affect confidence, so concerns about performance should be approached with gentle curiosity and sensitivity. Similarly, the panel discussion about grief highlighted the impact of trauma and loss on concentration and memory.
These stories demonstrate why employers need to better understand grief and treat their staff as humans first. That doesn’t have to mean a compromise in work standards, but rather that compassion not be absent when enforcing those standards.
Boundaries for managers
With all that said, the discussion about blurring lines between being a line manager and a therapist was equally necessary.
As much as employers can and must make an effort to cultivate a healthy culture, the fact remains that employers, too, are humans. There is only so much they can do. Panellists shared about how hard it can be to be a manager, some recalling that they did not receive training on how to be one. Learning managerial skills entirely on the job runs the risk of poor decision making.
Nevertheless, it’s important that managers recognise they can do something because they have a duty of care to their employees, which includes both physical and mental wellbeing. They can, for instance:
- Proactively promote employee assistance programmes to employees, rather than only in response to crisis
- Prioritise investing in relationships and team culture
- Extend compassion while maintaining boundaries
- Frame employee support carefully
- Listen, support and signpost
Workplace bullying
The most lively of discussions was about harmful behaviours in the workplace and their impact on mental health. The fact that this session went on for longer than planned, with many questions, umms, ahhs, claps and nods, speaks volumes.
It is said that 1 in 4 employees have been bullied at work.
The other widely known ‘1 in 4‘ problem is how many of us struggle with our mental health sometimes. It goes without saying that there are overlaps between these two statistics.
Bullying in the workplace can have significant and lasting impact on victims, both in terms of wellbeing and career progression as it can take time to heal and recover from.
The panellists described experiencing loss of confidence, confusion, paralysis, fear, walking on eggshells and looking over their shoulder. In other words, psychological trauma. It can drive people to contemplate taking their own lives, and in the worst of cases, some actually do.
Some survivors of workplace bullying in the audience made powerful contributions, such as the call to stand up to bullies and speak out about it, which drew widespread applause.
Naturally, there was also discussion about the problem of retaliation, which is when employers or employees react negatively to reports of bad behaviour. Most of the time, this happens covertly. For example, acts of sabotage or gossip.
In extreme cases, current or former employees may be subjected to excessive monitoring, harassment, cyberattacks and hacking, tracking and stalking by private eyes, and other intimidation tactics.
The larger the company and/or the more resources they have, the farther they may be willing to go to orchestrate illegal and immoral cover-up activities, particularly if the perpetrator is a senior leader. Of course, this level of cunning and cruel behaviour involves corruption and collusion at all levels of an institution, but the toxicity and deceit typically flows top-down.
Scary, yes. Unfortunately, it happens!
I asked the panel about the phenomena of ‘superstar jerks‘ who are internally known to cause attrition but who remain protected rather than held to account.
The response to this was to ensure investigations are external and independent. However, the integrity of those investigations often only goes as far as the integrity of the individuals involved.
For example, an expert manipulator who knows exactly how to conduct themselves so as to discredit their accusers can evade detection by even the most skilled investigator. Their greatest fear is exposure, so they will try to get ahead of their victim’s cry for help by attempting to control the narrative and claiming they are the one being defamed. Some use others as ‘flying monkeys‘ to join their smear campaigns with a view to isolate, disempower and silence victims. It’s the classic ‘deny, attack, reverse victim and offender’ (DARVO) tactic used by abusers.
Needless to say, it’s toxic. For the victim and the workplace culture alike. Unfortunately, victims experience detriment to their wellbeing twice over, from the bullying itself and the retraumatising response to the bullying. This is known as what one panellist referred to as ‘institutional betrayal‘, when organisations inflict trauma on employees by their actions or inaction. This, too, is often denied by perpetrators.
In short, many rocks may be thrown by hidden hands. This makes it harder and unlikelier for victims to receive justice, rendering them with no recourse but resignation.
Substance and the power of one
On a lighter, more hopeful note, I was encouraged by the emphasis on implementing wellbeing strategies of substance, that work, that deliver on their promises.
The resounding call was for leaders to be held accountable for the wellbeing of their teams as opposed to “putting projects before the person”.
Whatever plays out at the top, plays out at all levels of the organisation.
Jill Ford, HR Director, Bauer Media Group
Change begins at the top, and leaders can foster a healthy culture of transparency by speaking openly about mental health to demonstrate that it is safe for others to.
Still, sometimes it can take just one person to transform the mental health of a company. One panellist’s painful experience of a miscarriage inspired her to innovate thoughtful gifts for the company to send to other employees navigating grief.
Just as toxic work environments can yield untold amounts of damage, so too can the drive to transform pain into purpose, and be who you needed, have far-reaching positive effects.
So, the biggest lesson I took away from all the inspirational panels is not only that positive cultural shifts for wellbeing in the workplace can happen, they are happening. And they begin with stories, so don’t be afraid to speak up and share yours!
It’s okay not to be okay, but it’s not okay to do nothing about it.
Jill Ford
Check out these resources for more information about the above topics:
- Article: How to correctly deal with bullying in the workplace (Making Business Matter)
- Article: How to recover from a toxic workplace, whether you’re staying put or moving on (Stylist)
- Article: How to Expose a Narcissist in the Workplace (Unfilteredd)
- Article: Being a jerk is contagious (Inc)
- Article: Gaslighting at work (Pumble)
- Article: The Price of Incivility (Harvard Business Review)
- Podcast: Dealing with toxic workplaces (Homecoming by Dr. Thema)
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