New British suicide prevention standard imminent as confidence gap exposed

New figures published on World Suicide Prevention Day show a troubling confidence gap when it comes to employees opening up about having suicidal thoughts at work. New data from MHFA England released on World Suicide Prevention Day show only four in ten employees feel comfortable talking about suicide at work, even though nearly three-quarters say they would ask a colleague if they were worried they might be having suicidal thoughts. For HR, and health and safety professionals, that matters. It points to a culture where staff want to help but lack the skills and confidence to do so. So, how should employers respond? We’ll ask a health and safety expert that question. 

As Personnel Today reports, MHFA England’s survey of 2,000 workers found that younger staff were far more confident raising the issue of suicide than older colleagues. It also revealed persistent myths. For example, nearly a third feared that asking someone about suicide might “put the idea in their head,” which experts warn is dangerous and untrue. And fewer than four in ten said suicide prevention featured in their employer’s wellbeing strategy.

As you would expect, the Health and Safety Executive is alive to the issue. At its AGM, this summer it confirmed that tackling mental health remains a key priority, with stress, anxiety and depression now accounting for half of all work-related ill-health cases. The HSE has also said it may investigate suicide “in appropriate cases,” even though suicides are not currently RIDDOR-reportable.

Writing for Out-Law, health and safety expert Jonathan Cowlan highlights what this means in practice. He points to the HSE’s current guidance, which lists psychosocial factors like bullying, job insecurity, work-related stressors, and discrimination as risks that employers must address. He reminds employers of their duty to safeguard workers’ mental as well as physical health.

That links directly to BS 30480, the UK’s first workplace standard dedicated to suicide prevention which is expected later in the year, probably in November according to the BSI’s website. It sets out practical guidance for organisations, with toolkits for managers and HR teams and advice on supporting those affected by suicide. When it arrives, it will be an important benchmark for employers and something the regulator is already watching closely.

So let’s get a view on this. Earlier I caught up with Jon Cowlan who joined me by phone. First question, why the focus on this now?

Jonathan Cowlan: “I think you can see, and from probably the UK government's perspective, getting people back to work, keeping them healthy, is a wider aim and we've seen, particularly during and post Covid, a greater awareness of stress management requirements. They've always been there, but they came to the fore and a general societal move to wellbeing in its broader sense and I think this is just a natural extension where people are seeing workplace culture affecting how they are within their job roles and I think at the extreme parts where we now have mental health champions, they're starting to see some of these things, I would say, at the sharp end, where it's not just about things, necessarily always within the workplace, but a mixture of outside the workplace and inside and, unfortunately, some of those things do eventuate in suicides, and I think that's how it's come to the fore in terms of those ideas anyway.”

Joe Glavina: “As the HSE makes clear, whilst suicide is clearly a huge issue, going by the latest data, it isn’t RIDDOR reportable. What does that mean?”

Jonathan Cowlan: “What it means is in terms of the sort of strict HSE accident statistics, suicide will not be captured, and the same is true for stress as well  - that’s not RIDDOR reportable. So the reporting of injuries, diseases, dangerous occurrences, regulations, which is what it stands for, looks at workplace accidents and injuries resulting from that. It also looks at dangerous occurrences and diseases but they're very well defined in terms of those categories. The HSE’s stress management data is captured through the Labour Force Survey and that's self-reporting, so it's not the same type of thing, and that's where you get the stress, anxiety, and depression statistics that the HSE quote that's having the effect on the economy and people within the workplace. So that's the link. But they're not strictly defined things that are reported and that's the difference. They're not categories the employer has to report so they can get lost, I think, in the mix and possibly, particularly from health and safety professionals point of view, HR tends to pick up a lot of this stuff because it's about the individual and return to work plans and how you're going to deal with those things. So I think this is very much an area Joe, where HR and H&S needs to work together to find appropriate management solutions to the issues raised.”

Joe Glavina: “Can you run me through some of the practical steps you think our viewers should focus on, Jon.” 

Jonathan Cowlan: “I think, from a strictly regulatory perspective and health and safety angle, obviously, taking account of the HSE’s management standards with regards to stress management is vitally important, and we have started to see the first enforcement activity from the HSE recently in that respect. Certainly, having an organisational level stress management risk assessment is very important and you would expect the health and safety professionals to lead on that aspect but quite a lot what goes into that will, by definition, be HR things about demands in the workplace, job roles, interpersonal relationships within the office, all of those types of things. I think when looking at that the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the back end of 2023 came out with a series of guides all around stress management and, indeed, looking at suicide prevention, so it's not new to them, and I think looking at that guidance and the practical steps about thinking how mental health workplace champions can help identify things, but also the routine HR things that one would expect in terms of one to ones, catch ups, opportunities to raise issues, are all very important. So I think it's a mixture of sort of defined things which you would expect in the modern workplace but also keeping a check sort of informally as well because, I think, by definition, people, when they're affected very significantly, can, for obvious reasons, be a bit timid when it comes to raising their hand in a workplace scenario.”

Joe Glavina: “You said the HSE has started looking at this issue. Do you mean they’re looking at the risk of workplace suicide specifically and what employers are doing to prevent it?”  

Jonathan Cowlan: “No, it’s to do with the stress management angle. So the HSE have started investigations into organisations’ ways of approaching this and I think it would be fair to say they're probably finding their way in the field as well because it's not their traditional territory. It's not like machinery guarding where you can see where the guards are on a machine, there's a lot more to it. But you can see that this is going to happen on a regular basis, I would say, for employers and building now the suicide element into what would typically be existing mechanisms for stress management I think is just a very sensible thing to do. It doesn't have to be over the top, but I think it would be remiss of organisations not to address that now, particularly with the draft British standard coming out as well.”

Joe Glavina: “You mentioned machinery guarding where it’s obvious whether or not the guard is in place whereas, of course, with this issue it’s not obvious if there’s a problem. So is it therefore even more important that you have the paperwork that evidences the precautionary steps that have been taken? 

Jonathan Cowlan: “Yes, I think it's the processes that are important. They've been well designed and consulted on with the workforce - I think you can't underestimate the effect of that - and it doesn't matter whether it's unionised workplaces or non-unionised but obviously there is a slight difference there. Yes, being able to prove the veracity of those systems, they do work, and they're cut into the chunks of, you know, pre and post issues, should things be identified, is very much something you will have to wave, I think, along with your stress management risk assessments and relevant training for managers, of course. You've got a package of things. I think you're right, it’s much more difficult in this field for an employer to demonstrate, or an enforcer to test, what reasonable practicability looks like, by definition. It’s not as simple.”

If you’d like to read up on this you can. We’ve included links to both the Personnel Today article and Jon’s Out-Law article in the transcript of this programme.

- Link to Personnel Today article: ‘Troubling gap in confidence to discuss suicide’

- Link to Out-Law article: ‘HSE looks to new standard in fight against workplace suicide’