Acting swiftly to help employees who may be dealing with a mental illness can pay dividends for print bosses, says PIAA senior workplace relations adviser Mary Jo Fisher. Printing companies can get back as much as $15 for every dollar spent on minimising the impact of mental health issues among their employees, including workplace exercise, resilience training, coaching and mentoring programmes and cognitive behaviour therapy, she says. Employees who are suffering from a mental illness like depression or bipolar disorder can cost their company an average of $9660 a year in absenteeism and lost productivity, not to mention lower morale and disruption to other workers.
L-r: Mary Jo Fisher, Bill Healey (PIAA) and Deborah Kennedy
While the average return on investment is $2.30 for every dollar, it can reach up to $15 for small businesses, provided the symptoms are identified early. Deborah Kennedy, program development manager for mental health promotion organisation Superfriend, says suicide rates are particularly high in jobs like manufacturing, including printing, and the best way to deal with it is to assume a worker showing symptoms has a mental illness until proven otherwise. Fisher says it is important to encourage the worker to seek professional help, but not to try to do it themselves. However, owners have to consider their business first and decide whether it is worth investing in an employee. Some 30 print managers attended the PIAA mental health seminar in Sydney; many said they would use the information to improve their businesses. Paul Freeman, managing director of Ebis Print, says his company has faced mental illness in recent years, with four or five employees struggling with different conditions. He says, “This seminar identified a real issue and anything that can help it is positive. This gave me an understanding of the best actions to take and it’s definitely something we will include in business planning.” Geoff Selig, managing director of Blue Star, says his company will soon launch an employee wellness programme across his 950 staff, including some of the seminar’s points.
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