Happy World Mental Health Day from our team at Prospira Global!
Today, the World Federation of Mental Health and the WHO highlight the critical importance of workplace mental health.
Employed adults spend more time at work than in any other waking activity. At its best, work can provide meaning, purpose, and joy—it certainly does for me and our team at Prospira Global.
However, for too many, work falls short, failing to enhance lives and negatively impacting mental health and well-being.
Data consistently shows that prioritising workplace mental health benefits individuals, companies, and communities alike. At Prospira Global, we believe in fulfilling this potential by supporting not just our team but also our clients in enhancing the well-being of their employees and communities worldwide.
Different industries face unique mental health challenges. While there are similarities, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. We believe we need to both learn from best practices across industries and tailor our approaches to specific needs.
In the consulting industry we also know this can be hard to do. Consulting is both a demanding and rewarding profession, but it can also take a toll on your mental health. Long hours, frequent travel, high expectations, short term contracts and intense competition has been found to lead to higher levels of stress, burnout, anxiety, and depression.
At Prospira Global our clients and their needs are always the priority, and that also requires our team to be well.
So, this isn’t just an issue we advise clients on, it’s also a lived experience in our own industry and work. We are working hard as a small firm to build our own organisation to be mentally healthy from the inside out to fulfil the potential of both our clients and our team.
And, we also recognise that even we aren’t perfect – as the wonderful Poppy Jaman, global voice of authority on workplace mental health, has powerfully said - it’s important to be ‘brave, not perfect’. Prioritising mental health in consulting, even and especially when it’s hard. And, constantly learning and listening to our team and the latest evidence on what works.
Some of the practices we find are helpful in implementing into our own work include:
Building in breaks between major projects.
Maintaining a culture of regular check-ins both on team capacity and mental health.
Flexible working arrangements.
Providing additional mental health days beyond standard sick and annual leave, encouraging proactive use of these for the promotion of good mental health and prevention of mental health challenges.
Providing reasonable adjustments to team members when required and advised by medical professionals for their mental health.
Establishing clear principles with our clients to emphasize the importance of our team’s mental health and the integrity of our work. We now even include these principles in our new client agreements.
Respect Prospira Global’s commitment to a culture of working that promotes good mental health + kindness
Provide clarity around scope requirements and expectations, including scope adjustments
Not to work unreasonable hours outside of core working hours, unless expressly requested and agreed
This doesn’t mean our team doesn’t work hard, long hours and sometimes late or over weekends. We definitely do, and aim to go above and beyond to deliver the highest quality work for all our clients, something we believe is needed in order to achieve progress on global mental health together.
However, we always consider the mental health of our team as a priority as a crucial part of delivering this high quality work. We believe we can, and must do both. We know our team can only do world class work for our clients when we are being mindful of our team’s mental health in a holistic way.
We hope that sharing our experiences can inspire other colleagues in the professional services industry.
If you want to explore the unique mental health needs of your business, we’d love to connect. Our proprietary mental health diagnostic assessment has been designed to identify what truly works for your unique context – or our materiality reports are designed to identify unique needs across an industry.
Finally, we want to express our gratitude to our clients for partnering with us on this journey. We love bringing our unique expertise and amazing team to support your work on mental health and wellbeing - whether for short-term strategy projects, developing new mental health initiatives, philanthropic funding advisory, strategic corporate advisory, conducting research, or providing ongoing support working hand in hand.
Together, let’s commit to fostering a supportive work environment that prioritises mental health - from the inside out.
Elisha London
Founder & CEO, Prospira Global
Some of the practices we find are helpful in implementing mentally healthy practices into our own work as a small consulting and insights firm include:
1. Building in breaks between major client projects.
2. Maintaining a culture of regular check-ins both on team capacity and mental health.
3. Flexible working arrangements.
4. Providing mental health days in addition to beyond sick and annual leave.
5. Providing reasonable adjustments
6. Establishing ways of working principles with our clients, and include these within agreements.
We’d love to hear from you
If you’d like to understand more of the customised needs and challenges of your own business or industry, we’d love to hear from you. Our proprietary world first whole of business mental health diagnostic assessment has been developed by our team to help with just that - what really works, for your unique needs.
