Actually making sure that what you’ve learned actually changes how you work as a team, days or even weeks later, is harder than getting people to a training session in the first place.
Hold A Short Team Debrief
Schedule a 20 minute debrief session with your team within a week of the training session. Go around the group and ask them to share what they thought about the training, whether they felt that they had gained any useful information, and whether there was anything that they didn’t understand.
Update Your Signposting Information
An up to date contact sheet that includes details of who to speak to within your workplace and also helpline numbers for external support is something that should be reviewed after a mental health training session. A simple list that is stuck up on a notice board or inside of a cupboard is better than nothing.
Agree A Plain Process For Spotting Concerns
Agree a simple procedure to refer a member of staff who is struggling with their mental health, outlining who the staff member should refer to and how their concern will then be handled. Set this out simply and circulate to staff.
Keep Skills Alive In Team Meetings
Skills that have been developed by training all fade unless they are used frequently. This means that after the session held for your team the best way to ensure that what they have learned is used is to refer to it in your team meetings on an occasional basis. Just 5 minutes every month or so to review one topic that was covered would be far more beneficial than a long session which is never referred to again.
Check In Privately With Anyone Affected
A mental health training session is a sensitive subject. A manager may pick up that an employee was shaken up during the session but the manager must remember that an employee may deal with issues of a personal nature and so a manager must treat them with the utmost respect. Just a simple question of “how was that for you?” can reveal lots of information that would not have been revealed in a group session.
Make Flexibility Easy To Ask For
Training staff on how to recognise when colleagues are suffering with stress and other mental health issues is all well and good. However, if the process for staff to ask for time off from work for stress-related issues (or for adjustments to be made at work to help tackle issues affecting them at work) involves completing 3 forms and a meeting with HR, then all the good work of the above training will be undermined.
Consider Separate Training For Managers
Staff who have gone through general mental health awareness training can still come to a manager with serious issues that they need help dealing with. Managers need additional skills to handle such issues. They need to know what to say to someone in distress, what they can promise and what they cannot, and how and when to get in additional help. This would be worth running as a separate session.
Bring It Into Regular One-To-Ones
Use a simple check-in question in your regular one-to-ones with staff. Asking how they are and really meaning it, could stop them feeling that there is no door open to discuss how they are really doing after the training session has finished. For more information on supporting staff wellbeing at work see Mind’s guidance for building a positive wellbeing at work environment which can be supported through ongoing management practices.
It doesn’t have to be complicated – a debrief, a check of the contact details, a private word or two and then remembering to ask how people are on a regular basis in their one-to-ones. For Mental Health Training Courses, see Tidal training provide mental health training courses.
