Contextualising Mental health and wellbeing in our industry

Over the course of our many Industry Trends articles, we’ve talked a lot about the challenges and developments within supply chain as they pertain to effectiveness. The challenges we have highlighted are both international as well as those that demand a more localised focus.

The challenges our industry has faced include geopolitical concerns, modern slavery, governance reporting standards as part of ESG, innovations that are continually creating new paths to efficiency, expectations (both internal and external), technological advances that spawn data, data and more data, and the accompanying cyber security concerns and remedies. These items make up the lion’s share of concerns heaped on our already overflowing plates as we look to meet and exceed ever evolving customer/consumer/societal expectations.

That’s an overwhelming list and deliberately presented as such because many of us have lists just like this (some longer, some more in depth, some more concise) waiting for us every time we enter the workplace and oftentimes as we leave it. Add to that, a pandemic that accelerated procurement and supply chain teams towards breaking point in some cases. The compounding panic buying and geometrical growth of ecommerce three and four years ago, certainly held our industry’s feet to the fire. Some will argue that that was then, and this is now. Even if that was the case, we still face challenges (like demand for housing) across our states that has infrastructure struggling to keep up.

Credit where credit is due though, our industry and others that also value the mental health and wellbeing of our professionals have come to understand that there are at least three areas that we need to continue to monitor, modify and optimise:

• Strategies – the importance of equipping our leaders, managers and staff with the necessary training, tools and resources to build resilience cannot be overstated because we are operating in a new normal.
• Action plans – also called implementation plans, our industry needs to implement steps towards increasing leadership capability in this area, working smarter by design, and creating a workplace culture the truly values wellbeing.
• Ongoing evaluations – This must include logical recommendations as a result of understanding what has worked, what could work better and what will keep working for those that work in our industry.

Regularly reviewing these three points helps organisations that aims to create an empowering culture that truly values both productivity and wellbeing.

Identifying and addressing risk factors impacting mental health

Thankfully we are well past the era of ignoring mental health and wellbeing issues and dressing up our collective stoicism as a viable approach. Instead mental health support has been made available. Commendable, but this approach only deals with symptoms as opposed to a systematic, upstream strategy that helps prevent issues through education and equipping leaders and managers.

Once it was collectively understood that this was untenable, particularly in our industry, the focus switched to:

• awareness and de-stigmatisation
• preventative strategies
• support and recovery
• nurturing increased resilience

This is approach helps address risk factors that may impact mental and physical wellbeing such as:

• trauma and critical incidents
• fatigue and fatigue related to shift work
• high expectations around job performance over extended periods
• isolation (important point – this does not relate solely to FIFO or DIDO workers).

It is critical that any strategies or implementation plans must be evaluated through the lens of these triggers and risk factors.

Things to do and think about

As leaders and contributors to the sustainability of our industry, it’s important that we think about a range of measures that contribute to a working environment that supports the long-term physical mental and emotional health of our people.

First and foremost, there’s health and safety protocols that have helped reduce the frequency of injuries to contractors and employees over the last 35 plus years. These measures should never be far from our collective minds. However, there are other considerations that can be taken to reduce the risk of stress anxiety and unmanageable workloads. In the workplace, don’t underestimate the long-term value of:

• the availability of natural light for those that work in office settings
• ongoing education on how to reduce stress
• workplace design 2 better affect collaboration and process optimization
• how best 2 accommodate schedules and ways of working for the mutual benefit of team members and the organisation

These factors are not solely reliant on huge outlays of investment in terms of funding allocations or technology. They are however rooted in genuine inquiry with a view to optimising health and wellbeing. As we head towards a new year and all that it holds, let’s commit to thinking deeply about how best to support mental health and wellbeing within your teams, your organisation, and the wider industry.