New Foundation Counselling

Spotting signs of poor mental health is vital to reducing risk not just to the person affected, but everyone around them. It only takes seconds for a great project can turn into a disaster and there many threats that can trigger this. A key worker doesn’t turn up because of a hangover. A row breaks out between staff because one of the parties is highly stressed and can’t cope. A bad accident due to tiredness.  These type of incident can ruin your construction business and can stem from other issues that build up over time into explosive situations. For example:

1. Stress - as we’ve mentioned, stress can be a huge factor in destroying businesses all over the world. Construction employees are tired, sometimes angry, and just waiting for the ticking clock to strike home time. Not great for productivity. Check out the video below as a guide to spotting red flags associated with dangerous levels of stress.

2. Alcohol – the NHS has had a long running campaign so we all know the dangers to our physical well-being. So why do we see so many of our colleagues turn to drink to ‘drown their sorrows’. If this starts to happen then it can often be a vicious cycle. Alcohol is a well-known depressant and some say it’s more addictive and dangerous than Heroin. That’s why it can accelerate decline of mental health and pose so many risk on the construction site. Even if they’re no longer drunk, hangovers can be hazardous not only to the project, but also to the lives of the people involved. Click here to read more about the effects of alcohol in the workplace: https://goo.gl/yzKe4u
3. Drug abuse – we all know that under no circumstances can you have drugs in any workplace or have the workforce involved with drugs. At the same time drugs are harder to detect than alcohol and are an alternate option to those open to drug abuse as a coping strategy. Even though most legal highs are banned younger constructions workers are liable to be tempted. In the USA in the USA a 2017 National Safety Council survey that found an estimated 15 percent of construction workers have substance abuse disorders – nearly twice the national average of 8.6 percent. Chicago — Opioid-related overdoses claimed the lives of nearly 1,000 Midwest construction workers in 2015 – part of an opioid crisis that cost the region’s industry more than $5 billion in health care expenses and lost time and production, according to a recent report from the Midwest Economic Policy Institute. In the UK the threats have not been surveyed but it would be foolish to think that we don not have a similar issue.

The good news is there is a strategy that can make a huge difference to helping reduce the threats of all three factors affecting your construction business. As part of Mental Health Week our message is that by looking after construction employees’ mental health you can prevent them resorting to all these dangerous coping strategies. By eradicating these scenarios, you can make sure you increase profitability, reduce risk and ensure your staff are performing to their highest standards. Putting an EAP in place like the one we offer here at New Foundation Counselling could be all your organisation needs to point you in the right direction. Watch Marc Preston special live-cast ‘How to support mental health in the work place’ HERE.  Discover some of the ways his unique service is helping construction companies tackle this immense challenge and at the same time improve the performance of staff and companies as a whole. For more information on our unique Employee Assistance Programme, or book a Mental Health First Aid Training Course to support your employees, call us now on 0800 634 5521 or visit https://goo.gl/euWPMc

BACK