Welcome to the wellbeing, rebellion, the

podcast that's changing workplace cultures for good.

We're your hosts in Ghazi Wella,

and obey telephoto.

Let's get this rebellion started. We talked a lot about

trust in the episode we did about how you foster

psychological safety in the workplace. And it came up

recently, when we attended the D TX conference in Manchester. And

I was on the panel. And it was a panel on is workforce is

workplace well being the key to a successful workforce in 2023.

And it was a great panel was a wonderful event. I did not know

the DGX. Manchester was the largest tech conference in in

the north, I think. And it was phenomenal. And I was joined on

stage by some incredible panelists, there were reps from

and these are senior bigwigs from Kellogg's from infinity

works and beauty Bay. And the topic was really relevant and

the audience. Normally when you do these panels, audiences don't

ask that many questions. But this time, the audience had a

lot to talk about workforce wellbeing and whether it's the

key to the success of the future of work. But one question that

was really challenging, in fact, there were two. And they were

from two different perspectives on the same topic. So we I

thought we should talk about it was this thing about trust? And

what happens when it breaks? Right? So the question was, for

one person, what happens when employees don't trust their

managers and leaders? And then someone else asked about, you

know, what happens when employees take advantage of the

organization's generosity in supporting them with their

mental well being efforts and use it as an excuse to be lazy

or work shy? So yeah, it was also about how do you go about

rebuilding trust? So this trust issue is one that people

understand now that they have to grapple with both individually

and corporately? And so we thought it was something that

was worth us talking about? Because at least answering

the question, because, yeah, when you're on a panel, and

people have questions to answer it, and then everybody, the

panel would have to add bits and bobs. But it'd be nice to

actually just almost like, respond fully. What we would

normally have said, if we didn't have time restraint, that makes

sense. So that was, so I think the first question that I wanted

to, to answer

is the personal one, about employees who have, who have

experienced a breach of trust, who've been hurt. So I can't

even break confidence because I don't know this person's name.

She had worked for a previous company, had had suffered,

having told her managers about her mental wellbeing concerns.

And their response was much less than favorable. I don't know

what the company was. We didn't know

anything about that. But clearly it worked in tech. But the words

he was asking, was that what do you do? What is how can you see

an employee? What could you have done differently? Because her

issue was I told them, what was going on with me? And they acted

like they didn't believe me, I would lie. And what did that

leave? Where did that leave her basically? So it can interesting

to ponder, what did the employee do when that happened to them?

Before the organization? What can you do when an employee

who's either left or actually doesn't feel the contract the

manager to your leaders to support them in their time of

need? Okay, you could have two perspective, one for the

employee himself, and two, for the organization. When you have

employees like the saying that they're not happy, or they're

not listening to openly by their leader and manager. What can you

do about that?

Okay, so for an employee, it's a very personal thing, first of

all, to have the courage to say, I'm really struggling this thing

is not easy. I know from firsthand experience, I wouldn't

tell anybody at work because of the fear that they would say,

well, that's just because you're crap, or that they wouldn't

believe me, or that it'd be held against me all the things that

we've talked about previous episodes that stop people from

coming forward. I didn't tell a single soul. I just didn't show

up for work when I got signed off. That's it. So the fact that

if you come across An employee who has had the confidence, or

is either that desperate courage, the courage Yeah, that

they have been able to tell you, as a manager, that they're going

through a difficulty, doesn't know what strength that took,

it's very, very difficult if you if you do that if you take that

deep personal risk, and then you're met with either apathy or

even worse, a lack of belief, if that happens to you, certain

things will happen. First of all, you will never risk

exposing yourself like that to that individual or possibly even

to anyone in that organization ever again. Because you have you

as the manager has just proven that they're not safe to do so.

And to, they then will likely not be able to get the help that

they need. So the problem will exacerbate My advice to you if

this is you going through this is, first of all well done, for

telling someone as the kill kidsave for speaking your truth.

Well done. And I am very sorry that you weren't met with the

kind of grace and compassion that you should have been, or

that you weren't given an effective avenue for support and

help. It is not your fault. likely it is not your fault,

right? So don't stop being brave. Just find someone who

just deserves that courage. And if that's not in your workplace,

find it outside,

you know, other workloads. I think that's a good point there.

Also, if it's not your actual manager, because I'd like to

think if I'm, if I was speaking to her on the side, and two came

up, it took me one on one on the side, I forgot what are say,

your manager did not believe you what the next How do you

escalate it, who's the next person that you could tell? It

could be another manager from another department, it could be

the money manager, it could be HR. So just a question of what

are the procedures and for organization, you should have a

procedures for this. If a manager is not doing what's

required, what to can employ you do neck with the next person

they can talk to, or who that person they can talk to, if

they're not getting what they require. So that's one. And the

second thing I would have been asking about access to her EAP

she's access to mentors, you know what they are, and what

offers to see, qualify for any of those things. I've been

coding, let's go and check them out. And if t an encoding her to

you them based on what you offer it, that do not be afraid to do

is to consider external support lockdown or coat of dental

therapy would depend on what's going on firm for them. So that

they can think about you and only you know the word, you are

the priority, you come first. So that way you have opportunity to

think about what you need, what you need for your career, what

lifestyle, you're looking for all of that stuff and makes it

about you in a way that you may not have that confidence with

your manager to discuss it. And clearly, if trust had been

broken in this way where they don't believe you or think

you're lying, I wouldn't be trying to encourage them to go

back and talk to that manager about their future planning.

That's not something I'd want to include. Because I don't want

them to feel even more unsafe than the data we say, if a

company no longer feels right for an individual, right? If

you've not worked out, this is not the right place for me, I

don't feel safe here, give or take whatever departments I'm

going to be, then I'm going to encourage this person who asked

me to figure out how she can safely exit from this

organization, people get worse when they're not being supported

at work, they feel less motivated. Dado is not helpful

to her or the organization really. So it's in her best

interest to figure out how you can safely exit from a company

to somewhere else where she can be more herself and get lost in

it. But what I will be encoding when that time comes for her to

leave to be honest, and kind about why is she leaving during

the exit interview. If they exit interviews, they should be if

your organization don't have one, you should definitely have

one for every employee who hides in there notice because that

will give her opportunity to let the organization know the real

reason why she left the support she had or didn't have any

recommendation district to make them no longer her business

anymore. But I wondered if she does that then say Oh, I got a

different job. Different pay. I'm gonna be honest about what

it was that contributed to it. Well, the key thing that I

always say to Hey Charlie did I And I always said, people who

have mental health issues or struggles, or whatever it is,

and physical health issues, they will eventually get well, right?

Eventually, they'll get well, they'll figure themselves out,

they'll get treatment, whatever. But they will never forget how

you treated them, how you supported them. And if you

didn't support them appropriately, or well, they

will actively look for a way to leave. Today already seen what

you like, if other people have watched them go through this,

what them struggle, what how their managers responded to

them, they also know that it's not a place I can trust, either.

And they will be seeking to leave. Because when people don't

feel safe in their space, when they attend, they spend a lot of

energy, trying to figure out how to get themselves safe with me

constantly working their back all of that stuff. So that's

what I wanted to, to wrap up that what I would have to say to

an individual person who is struggling, we get this all the

time. We're psychologist and coach. So therefore, I will have

individual people asking for support because their HR isn't

providing that for the organization. It's not providing

that they could do exactly the strategy are we getting them to

do? We wanted to share that with you all?

Great. So that answers the individuals question about what

do I do? Because they didn't help me the answer and summaries

continue to get help pursue that because you deserve. You deserve

to feel well continue to pursue all avenues available to you for

help go up if you must go around if you can go external, but get

the help. But then there's the point of view of the company,

the company, what does a company do or an organization or a

leader do if they feel that they're, they are providing that

kind of level of support, the psychological safety, all of the

things as it said, but their employees are taking the mick

and are using their generosity as an excuse not to work or to

shirk. Now, we get this question a lot less so nowadays, I must

admit, but in the first few years, people would say but if

you're doing this, if you're if you're always showing them that

you care, and you're showing the soft side, then they'll just

take the mick, which is a very old school approach is a very

paternalistic approach to how you view the employer employee

relationship. Yeah, but the truth is, as I said, always,

always focus your attention where you're going to get the

most reward. Why would you focus on the tiny fraction of people

who may take advantage of your mental health support, which

might be 1%? Even if it's 10%? Why would you take to focus on

how you can stop that from happening when you should be

focusing on the bigger prize, the vast majority of people who

have mental health concerns, under report, they don't access

help, they don't take time off work. Only a small number of

people, a tiny fraction of healthy employees will use the

mental health excuse to stop them from doing work. Right?

You're not trying to manage the worst performance, you're

focusing your efforts on how you can bring the best performance

out of your employees. So if someone brings up their mental

health issues and concerns, believe them, it is 99% more

likely that they're going to be telling the truth and a lie.

Don't assume that it's just an easy cop out. If you can assume

that they are telling the truth because you've created that

environment of psychological safety and trust. If you assume

that they're telling the truth, you have a good relationship,

then assume that if they tell you that they can't manage their

performance because of their mental health struggles, that

they're telling the truth, the two are not mutually exclusive,

right? Then recognize that this is going to have an impact not

just on them, but on the wider team. You're going to have to do

something to manage it. You can't just do it. They're there

as the show Have you have you thought about calling the EP,

you're gonna have to make sure this person gets help as quickly

and effectively as possible because whilst They are not at

their best, they are going to be underperforming. And that's what

we call them well being black hole, one person is affected.

Everyone sees what your response is to that, it's generally to

divide the workload amongst the remaining members of staff who

are fully operational, it will, it will reduce their

productivity. But if you also, another element of the well

being black hole is, if you view the way you're treating this

individual as something that's not private, between you and

them, it's visible to everybody. Everybody's going to see how you

respond to employ X, when they came to you with their problem,

and decide whether or not they can truly, truly trust you with

this. So make sure that you know that you're on show and what it

whatever you do from that point onward, will either grow or

erode the trust that you have between yourself and your

employees

will not get the unacknowledged. Exactly. To be fat. I'm going to

be very honest, when I hear this question, we hear it a lot, who

says what do you do when employees are taking advantage?

I know for a fact that your managers have not been trained,

I know that for a fact, I can almost set the clock on it. In

other words, there is no way a fully transformational train

manager would assume that if they did, because this person

already had history of mid case, you're looking at about one

content about one person or two people. When if you be concerned

about the majority of people who do their work and want to do

well. So they didn't want it to something comes up because they

don't know how to train them. They assume that if someone even

had mental health issue, that is an excuse to an opportunity to

execute poor performance. It's not really it's possible to

support somebody with mental health, at the same time

performance manage them, because performance management isn't a

punitive exercise, I think the idea we think it is. So this is

why it's always clear to me, when managers say that the tools

are going to take the player to because they think saying I'm

not I got mental health issue and giving you carte blanche to

not do your work or show up. That's not true at all. You can

learn how to do boat, you can learn how to be empathetic to

someone's mental health, make sure to get treatment, and make

sure that you have at the manager agreed that scope of

work that this person is going to be doing based on their work

going on with them based on whether or not they're getting

treatment or not getting treatment based on what they've

agreed with the team and how the team is going to help out. This

is very clear to me when someone said somebody taking the pill

just for taking the pill state that they haven't been trained

properly. So if you get I'd hate to get managers coming to you

saying that, Oh my god, I think the people are ordered mental

health issues causing issues. People are just not wanting to

work. You know, you have a training problem. Indicator. You

know what you think about that?

Me and my damn ADHD I can't remember the really great point

that you've you just made, which was you were saying that if

people come to you saying that, Oh, yeah, all this mental health

stuff is there they're taking the piss. One reason might be

because people do often think like, I guess I am talking about

the old school. They think well, you know, bloody out there was

no mental health before now everybody's off sick. Sandra's

obviously, that's the well being black hole. So even if they're

saying, you know, it was one person on the team now it's 10.

It's ridiculous. Oh my gosh, it might be because it's the well

being black hole, which is, like I said, the impact the knock on

impact of one person's illness or productive incapacity on

everybody else, which increases their own stress levels. Or it

might be because you're doing such a good job creating

psychological safety, that people who are hiding it before

are now able to speak up about the fact that they're

struggling, and they need support. And it might be short

term pain for a very, very much bigger long term gain. But yet

people don't take the piss with telling you that they're going

through mental ill health. And if you've created a truly open

culture based on trust, based on mutual respect, based on an

adult adult relationship, you'll know when they're taking the

piss simple, but then how can you tell OB if your employees

don't trust their leaders? So the people who are listening are

good audience are in fact, in HR or in senior management? How do

you know if you haven't got a good level of trust between your

managers and their staff?

Yeah, I'm gonna say first and it behavior so what are people

doing? What are you seeing? I mean, we'll talk about country

office now, right? So two, three days a week people are doing

that. All of a sudden, people are often uncomfortable coming

back into the office just started doing it. And finally

suddenly or not, that might be one, the gossip by the

watercooler what's happening when people say in when people

go off sick, what? What is the? What are they saying about them

after they've been sick, right? When to when they've been off

sick for free to help your organization to send flowers and

cart when someone's off for mental health care nothing, why

the person come back and look like we had leprosy. That's why

the left is the weirdest feeling. So those are the

example your toes you we don't trust, you go out of the office

and be ill for physical health, but not mental health is to what

one in that. One thing I would say, if you also have complaint

include complaint, so gone from like a case of that lady saying

that the manager didn't believe her, then she might have got

escalated it to HR to say, Listen, I've got this thing, and

my manager wouldn't help. If you're getting more that more

complaint of the same manager, maybe the same department that

gives you an indicator as well. And also your surveys. So if you

do post obeys, and frankly, to be fair, if your organization is

one that it already, people want to audit trust issue, you may

not get a clear picture if you send a survey, but at least the

back and do nothing. So send a survey, make those anonymous,

right? And ask very specific question about trust and whether

or not I talked to my manager to support me, I can escalate

things, if I have issues, I'm actively looking to leave the

organization, Mike, you can ask very specific questions that

anonymous could have people can tell you what you need to know.

So that's kind of ideal in terms of behavioral or something that

you're gonna have to see or hear. But I for what one is

feeling inside, you can't possibly or less to ask them.

So to round up, assume your employees are lying to you, when

they say they need help. Assume you do need to continue to build

on the psychological safety that exists within your teams and

your organization. Because you genuinely always do assume that

your managers need to continually learn how to be

better people, managers in terms of creating and cultivating

trust between their employees and, and assume that they don't

just know this stuff by osmosis, but they need your support

through training and education. If that trust is broken, it

takes a long time to restore it, it's gonna take more walking the

walk and talking the talk, right?

Yeah, I think once the truck is broken in organization, it would

have a knock on effect from things on lower engagement, high

turnover, reduced innovation, it just so you have to be prepared

to allow time for that to happen. Okay. And for one of the

questions that actually we didn't talk about it, one with

what happened when someone has come from a different

organization. So they the last organization wasn't quite up to

par, they didn't trust them to come into your organization

having some level of lack of trust, because you're not sure

like based on past experiences, which is why is it important

when new people join your team, you need to be able to share

with them about what you're doing, how you're helping to

build trust, how they can come to who they can go to talk to

about thing, just to help them to let them have that baggage

that you might have come with from another organization to be

able to let them know, let that get that light, load lighter. So

that way, they can start to form relationship with a new team,

new manager, and don't bring old baggage into a new organization.

But that's the reason why we think it's important that worker

safety because that account for new people joining your

organizations or teams.

To round off, I'm gonna end this episode with a quote, because

everything we've talked about reminded me of my favorite

American author Maya Angelou. And that famous quote that she

had, I've learned that people will forget what you said,

people will forget what you did. But people will never forget how

you made them feel. loved that. Yeah, that's what it's about.

All right. Thank you. We'll see you next time next time. Thanks

for listening to this episode of The wellbeing rebellion.

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