April is stress-awareness month. What better time to review your company’s commitment to mental health.

1. Set clear mental boundaries between work and home. Adopt policies that ensure that managers respect their own work life balance and that of employees’.

2. Make sure employees take leave. Covid has seen large tranches of leave-time being accrued, leaving employees exhausted. Encourage employees to take a proper break. Many are reluctant to take leave during Covid as they want to travel when restrictions are lifted, or they fear being on call if they spend it at home.

3. Acknowledge that mental health is an issue that needs to be managed in the workplace. This is not mental illness, but the sort of periodic depression, stress and anxiety that anyone can undergo, just as healthy people can contract a virus or suffer a sprained ankle.

4. Set an example. Executives must be able to talk openly about mental health. If burn-out is treated as a shameful weakness, no-one will seek help regardless of the measures in place.

5. Measure employee mental health and well-being through surveys and mood trackers. Report on findings internally in order to encourage discussion throughout the organisation and increase accountability of the organisation to employees for delivering against the mental health core or enhanced standards.

6. If you consider developing a daily mindfulness practice, it is essential to make time for it. There is no point in having lunchtime mindfulness sessions if employees are too stressed to leave their desks for 20 minutes, or their line managers treat it with derision.

7. Develop a healthy relationship with tech. While being open to apps and AI that can help to strengthen mental health and provide more administrative assistance is crucial, it’s equally important to have a policy that deals with the potential negative impact of tech on mental health, such as limiting back-to-back video calls and streamlining tech platforms.

8. Encourage employees to upskill to manage stress – including learning meditation or related coping techniques – exactly as you would if they had to master new processes and technology.

9. Remove the taboo from mental health by reporting on it on your website or other channels.

10. Adopt workplace mental health indicators in employer rating initiatives and equip managers to have conversations with employees about mental health.