Senior Reporter
andrea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt
The American Chamber of Commerce of T&T (Amcham T&T) and the Centre of Human Development held a three-day workshop this week to sensitise workers and managers on the impact that mental health can have in the workplace, including job performance and productivity.
The workshop entitled Unmasking Mental Health in the Workplace was facilitated by the president and chief executive officer of the Centre of Human Development Hanif Benjamin.
Benjamin gave the various work groups projects to complete on the last workshop day which was held yesterday virtually.
General manager of InfoLink Services, Glynis Alexander-Tam, said her group worked out a policy for a company, as the board of directors and managers recognised having a mentally healthy workforce, will, increase profit productivity and absenteeism will decrease.
“They want to decrease their turnover and foster family care. It was recognised that family goes hand in hand with a healthy workforce because that is the tenant of healthy living and having a good family base. So, the stakeholders behind the scope of this policy were all the employees, all the stakeholders, inclusive of managers, the board of directors, and any contractor who worked with the company. So you’re talking about permanent and non-permanent staff because they all have a stake in the healthy workforce,” Alexander-Tam explained.
She said that the policy for the company that the group created would have the mental health definition and the mental illness definition for people to all be on the same page, to understand what they are dealing with, and how the company can be singing from the same hymn sheet.
“Then we went into the policies and principles that the company must have.
“The policy will be built along this. You’re going to have a consultation with all stakeholders. You’re going to employ proper mental health service providers to guide the company through this policy development.
“You must have training, including mental health first in because you must have that infused throughout the organisation for people to be able to relate to each other. You have to recognise and identify roles and responsibilities and there must be a selection of a mental health champion,” Alexander-Tam added.