The Leading the Way project

In 2018 See Me was awarded funding from Scottish Government’s Workplace Equality Fund (managed by Impact Funding Partners) to trial a tailored consultancy approach for private sector employers to developing good practice on mental health equality in the workplace.

We started the pilot by recruiting four large private sector employers:

• Scotrail (currently under public control)
• Burness Paul LLP
• Apex Hotels
• Babcock

The companies completed a needs assessment, which included an organisational profile, staff survey and interviews, and highlighted issues around:

• The disclosure environment
• Managerial behaviours
• Organisational process challenges
• Cultural barriers
• Self-stigma.

See Me’s Workplace Consultant Tom Scott was working directly with the four employers:

“They all had unique challenges, some of them needed a lot of support, some of them were facing structural challenges or leadership challenges that meant that mental health kept slipping down the priority list. Some of them had absolutely superb support available for their staff but communication was an issue. The people didn't know that they had all of this stuff available to them. This was what made the tailored element of the consultancy really important, to make sure they got what they needed.”

See Me supported the companies to develop improvement plans based on the findings from the needs assessment and worked with the organisations to create a light and accessible tool to improve the quality of mental health conversations between managers and staff called Let’s Chat. You can get the Let's Chat tool, along with our other toolkits in the resource section of our website.

What happened next?

The companies have all committed to maintain and build on the early success of their improvement work to continue moving towards creating workplaces free from stigma and discrimination and continue to attend the See Me in Work Peer Learning Network and other partners’ events, sharing their experiences with other employers.