Employers who fail to provide mental health support training for line managers, are running the risk of personal injury claims being brought against them.
This is according to Melanie Stancliffe, partner at law firm Cripps Pemberton Greenish, who told Health & Protection firms who fail to provide such support also risk reputational damage.
Stancliffe says firms should assess the harm to employees who are not receiving mental health support and whether they have made adequate reasonable adjustments for workers suffering from mental health conditions.
This is because failure to do so can result in legal action and damage to the company’s reputation due to the resulting adverse publicity of a case being brought against them.
But Stancliffe adds firms also need to think about the implications for the line manager in these cases.
If an employer fails to provide adequate support to a line manager, whose own mental health is compromised as they struggle to deal with the mental health of a member of their team and the line manager has previously raised the issue with the employer, then a personal injury claim can be brought against that employer.
And Stancliffe warned the resulting change to working lives caused by the pandemic has created a “perfect storm”.
“We have managers being asked to manage both virtual staff and workplace staff. They’re not necessarily being upskilled to do that,” she said.
“It is a different skillset. A lot of them are working long hours themselves so we’re seeing burnout type issues. There is a connection there.
“Reputationally for the company, once you get into the spiral of being identified as an employer that isn’t caring for the mental health and wellbeing of its staff, I think you’re going to have retention and attraction problems, which when you’ve got a reduced talent pool, is problematic.”