“Mental Health in the Workplace” podcast

This podcast originally appears in The Business Post.

DLA Piper Ireland’s Head of Employment, Ciara McLoughlin, has featured in the Phoenix Talent Talks podcast series, in partnership with The Business Post. In this episode of the podcast series, Ciara speaks to Elaine O’Regan (The Business Post) alongside Ruth Lyndon (Managing Partner, Phoenix) and Caroline EcEnery (Managing Director, The HR Suite) about mental health best practice for employers and how COVID-19 has impacted the approach to employee wellbeing.

The legal risks of employer getting their approach to mental health wrong include a number of potential claims, such as a psychiatric injury claim, stress claim or disability discrimination claim. Ciara notes that “we have such a broad definition of disability in Ireland, it’s very easy to attract the protection of the disability protection legislation, and it immediately triggers an obligation on the employer to make reasonable accommodation for that disability. Training managers to respond well is absolutely imperative.”

Ciara also considers that “mental health tends to be an invisible illness and it is even more invisible when it is at home. A key leadership skill is being able to connect with your team. Ensuring that level of connection is there is absolutely key to mental health, and The World Health Organisation and the Irish Government are publishing psychiatric evidence that it is important. The second key leadership skill is to spot those who aren’t connected and see what you can do to reach out to them. It’s all about preventative measures, putting structures in place now and really engaging with them.”

You can listen to the podcast in full below.