Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a number of high profile stars of the sports world come out and express publicly their mental health challenges.

We saw US Gymnastic Simone Biles pull out of the olympics to ‘prioritise her mental health’. Tyrone Mings said he was seeing a psychologist before the Euros, as everyone else would have him believe he wasn’t good enough to be England’s centre back, and he started believing it causing him mental health issues. More recently, we’ve seen England Cricket star Ben Stokes take a break for his mental wellbeing. And then Adam Peaty, gold medal winning Team GB swimmer, announced a month away from the pool to prioritise his mental health.

What is common with all of the above, sadly, is the response that such big actions get from social media and the wider world. Accusations of ‘being a quitter’ of ‘letting your team down’ and that ‘champions don’t quit’ were phrases heard and read wide and far.

The question for me, though, is how should an employer in a workplace deal with mental health issues like these?

I have a comprehensive guide to managing stress and mental health at work so check that out.

What happens if an employee wants time off due to stress or mental health issues?

Let them take it.

Dealing with stress and mental health at work requires compassion and understanding, and if you as an employer take a Piers Morgan approach and simply say that someone with mental health problems is a quitter, not strong enough to work here, or heap more pressure on them to return, then there are likely to be problems and issues for you as an employer down the line.

All employers have a duty of care to employees under health and safety law. Moreover, there are potential disability discrimination rules to comply with.

Every employer should consider the benefits of having a mental health at work policy or action plan. One major part of that will be carrying out risk assessments for work-related stress, which in short look like this:

1. Identify the stress risk factors
2. Decide who might be harmed and how
3. evaluate the risks and develop solutions
4. record the findings
5. monitor and review the action plan and assess effectiveness

The ACAS Guide to promoting positive mental health observed that to fulfil employers objectives they will need to:

• Recognise what mental health is
• identify the causes of mental ill health
• recognise the stigma associated with mental health
• consider how this can be removed from its workplace

When an employee reaches a point where they need a break, like the superstars above did, they will usually go to their GP and get signed off from work due to stress, anxiety, depression or other mental ill health conditions. That means the issues have got too far and so its probably too late to start your risk assessment for this specific individual.

However, that’s not to say you can just ignore it.

This is where occupational health comes in, whether this is in house or external. An occupational health advisor will speak with the employee who may tell them directly what changes will assist them. Otherwise it will be for the OH specialist to suggest what can happen. Some possible adjustments might be:

• Changes to how the employee performs their role
• flexible working
• changes in the workspace
• changes to the role
• reallocation of some tasks
• time off for therapy/counselling
• more support
• access to mental health support
• and much more.

The point is, a good employer works with a stressed employee to help them through it together rather than to deny then their right to be mentally unwell.

What if someone is abusing the ‘mental health’ card as a way to get out of work, take time off frequently, or not ‘pull their weight’?

I get this often. Mental health issues are important to people, but as an invisible illness many employers still just don’t believe what their employee is going through is true. Or, that an individual has a bit of a track record of taking time off.

I’d still maintain that the first option has to be to take it seriously and work out what can be done to help alleviate the symptoms.

If, following doctors assessments and occupational health specialists reviewing it, you conclude that an employee is just ‘trying it on’ as it were, then you may want to consider a disciplinary or capability process. However, do note that such action is fraught with problems and many a Employment Tribunal have heard similar matters through the years.

Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with dismissing someone who is incapable of doing the job. Provided that a fair process is followed, and the decision to dismiss is reasonable (that is there are no other alternatives) then such a dismissal can be fair. But one needs to be careful and it is perhaps best done with HR support or legal advice.

What about long-term sickness due to mental health?

However, I’ve also come across employees who are struggling mentally due to non-work issues. I had one guy whose problems stemmed from a loss of a child, loss of a parent and a divorce in the space of a few months. He was depressed, on medication, and just couldn’t get going, so he had taken extended time off.

For him, it was a relief to have a discussion with his employer about a settlement agreement which terminated his employment and gave him some money to use while getting better. It meant one less thing to worry about – yes, he was getting stressed and anxious about not going to work, because of what people might think of him.

So certainly one option where someone is off a long time may be to consider termination of their employment. But as a drastic step, I would only recommend doing this if the employee wanted it. That is, if an employee is off with stress and the employers response is to terminate their employment, you can be sure that will not make the employee’s mental health any better!

For the larger business, having someone on long term sick may not cause too many problems. It does usually for smaller businesses though, as capacity can be an issue and the employer cannot afford to be paying two people for one job.

That said, an employer should not simply give up on a long term sick mental ill health employee but rather still try to work with them, their medical team and Occupational Health to try to get mental health improved.

Does mental health mean more duvet days?

I’ve also seen the more frequent rise of the duvet day for mental health issues. “I’m just not feeling it today”. It’s said to be a token millennial work perk, but with one in eight UK employees having had time off for stress, it is more common.

So what does an employer do?

I’d say allow a duvet day. But recognise whether someone is taking too many, and that may mean a deeper stress at work scenario. That means you should be going back and doing risk assessments, and really considering whether there is a fundamental problem and whether the employer can change things to improve all employees mental wellbeing at work.