Suicide risk in universities flagged by national review and new workplace standard

As we reported last week, a new suicide prevention standard is on its way to help employers manage the risk of suicide in the workplace. BS 30480 is currently open for public consultation and is expected to be published in its final form in November. It is designed to help employers across all sectors embed good practice around mental health, provide practical guidance on leadership, training, and risk assessment. We’ve been highlighting how it can help clients in sectors where the risks are particularly acute. Last week we looked at construction. This week our focus is on the university sector and comes on the back of a review commissioned by the Department for Education published in May looking at looking at the risk of suicide among students. We’ll speak to a health and safety expert who is advising a number of universities on that risk and HR can help.

As for the new standard, BS 30480, it has been described as a “game-changer” for employers because it moves beyond policy statements and provides a structured way to build healthier workplaces and make sure that mental health is treated with the same seriousness as physical health and safety. Crucially, it also looks at how organisations should respond after a suicide – what’s called postvention – emphasising the need for compassionate and effective action that supports others, prevents clustering, and demonstrates accountability. 

As for the research into student suicides this was an independent review of suspected student suicides in higher education, commissioned by the Department for Education and led by researchers at the University of Manchester. It’s helpful in so far as it sets out 19 recommendations for universities to take onboard, sound practical steps which can make a real difference if they are implemented properly. Alongside BS 30480, it provides universities with a clear framework for being proactive on mental health and suicide prevention, and for responding properly when tragedy occurs. Three recommendations stand out in particular as far as HR is concerned:

First, staff training in suicide prevention – the review says all staff with student-facing roles should be trained to recognise the signs of risk and know how to respond. That matches BS 30480’s emphasis on workforce training.

Secondly, recognising academic struggle as a risk factor – the review calls for greater awareness that workload and exam stress can be key triggers. It urges universities to target support around peak stress points.

Thirdly, strengthening serious-incident investigations – universities are told to treat reviews after a student death as a strategic responsibility, with proper independence, family involvement and leadership sign-off. That aligns directly with BS 30480’s postvention guidance: showing how you respond after a suicide is a vital part of institutional accountability and learning.

So, between BS 30480 and the recommendations in the May review, HR in the university sector has both a national standard and sector-specific guidance to draw on. The message is clear: this is about embedding mental health into the university’s culture and being able to demonstrate it in practice.

So how do employers actually go about doing that? Earlier I spoke to health and safety expert Zoe Betts who joined me by video link to discuss it:

Zoe Betts: “We are advising our clients to be active rather than passive when it comes to risk assessing their workplaces, when it comes to mental health and stress, and trying to be proactive. We’ve got to take steps to reduce the stigma around mental health and to make sure that we are providing proper workplaces where we've thought about how to manage long hours, we're tackling unmanageable workloads - that's how we prevent the problem in the first place - but we also need to provide training. We're not trying to make people into mental health experts, but we are trying to make sure that they can spot the signs if somebody's starting to suffer from mental health condition and you can get that early intervention approach. That's how we also reduce stigma by keeping those conversations alive, and it's also about support. If we've got an employee who has an existing mental health condition then what reasonable adjustments might the employer need to make in the workplace? Or if somebody has been off for a period of absence with a mental health condition and they want to return to work, how can the employer support that? This isn't just about helping people to cope, I think it's about helping people to thrive, because that's the way that the employee will become the valuable and productive worker that they want to be, but also that the employer wants them to be.”

Joe Glavina: “I see IOSH magazine has highlighted research showing as many as one in four employees in the UK have experienced suicidal thoughts while at work and one in five don’t feel comfortable talking to their employer about possible struggles with mental health. And now we have the report into student suicides highlighting the problem in higher education. I know you work with a number of clients in the university sector. Can you tell me about that?”

Zoe Betts: “Yes, I can, and it's sad in a way that we, myself, and my colleagues, have so much experience in this. Just to put the problem into context. I'm aware that there is a suicide every 90 minutes in the UK and that is simply unacceptable, every 90 minutes, and that's compared with the more traditional deaths in the workplace, if I can put it that way, the catastrophic safety incidents, they generally occur, on average, every one or two or three days and we still regard that number, quite rightly, has been too high. So, a suicide, a loss of life to suicide every 90 minutes, is simply staggering and you're right, we do have experience in advising our clients in the higher education sector because of student suicides, incredibly distressing cases that clearly need to be handled with a great deal of sensitivity and there are some really tricky issues here. There’s a tension between letting what is, in effect, an adult, live their life, make their choices and, to some degree, make mistakes. Students for the first time want to be away from the prying eyes of parents and adults and yet at the same time you have an employer, you have a duty of care, and you've got to provide a degree of really effective and appropriate pastoral care and guidance. So, these cases are really difficult to navigate but I've also got cases in other sectors. So I had a client recently where, very sadly, a former employee took his own life and the issues that were explored at that coroner's inquest were all to do with periods of absence from work and then return to work. So I think there has to be a really greater acceptance that mental health is a multifactorial issue and it would be naive to think that work isn't going to be one of those factors. So that's the sort of advice that I've been giving recently.”

Joe Glavina: “In cases of suicide, Zoe, there will be coroner's inquest so there will be close scrutiny of any failings in supporting the individual, lack of due care, etcetera. So, you’d hope the employer is able to evidence the fact they’ve been proactive and taken the right steps. Is that right?”

Zoe Betts: “Yes, I think that's right, Joe. I’m always one of those lawyers that wants to be quite pragmatic and quite commercial. I don't want health and safety to become a paper exercise, or a tick box exercise, and I think there is some concern amongst wider society that certain policies and procedures - and that will extend to mental health within the workplace  - are simply that, just a nod, or paying lip service to the issue. However, I have had enough experience in this to know that you're absolutely right, there is a place for paperwork, there has to be an evidential audit trail, if an organisation is going to try to demonstrate how it has taken steps to, first of all, assess the scale of the problem, that's your risk assessment, and then to put in place those reasonable controls to either eliminate the risk completely or reduce it to a level which is which is acceptable. You do need to be able to show what you've done and that does generally start with policies and procedures. You've got to show how you've implemented that because policies and procedures are simply documents but what we like to see is how do they live in practice? What is it that the organisation does to give life and to give true meaning to those documents? We don't want to be seen to be paying lip service, we want to be able to demonstrate that, insofar as we can within the scope of our business, we've accepted this as an issue, we've dealt with it appropriately, we offer the support, the training, we signpost people in the appropriate way, and then you would hope that even if there is some sort of investigation that you have a credible story to tell and that you can demonstrably show that you've supported your workforce. That really is what every client wants to be able to do.”

That National review of higher education student suicide deaths was published on 21 May and is available from the government’s website. It’s useful because it includes 19 recommendations many of which are aimed at what universities can do to lower the risk, practical steps HR can lead on. We’ve included a link to it in the transcript of this programme for you.

- Link to National review of higher education student suicide deaths