Susan Bright is Global Managing Partner for Diversity & Inclusion and Responsible Business at law firm Hogan Lovells, and a Non-Executive Director at the City Mental Health Alliance (CMHA).

An upstream shift

“Shortly after taking on a management role at the Hogan Lovells about 10 years ago, I learned that we had good provision to help people back after being mentally unwell. But as the daughter of medics, I’ve always been taught the importance of prevention, so I wanted to see what more we could do to help people remain healthy and avoid crisis points.”

The firm concentrated on three areas to work towards this: creating a culture where it was OK to talk about mental health, embedding this work as business as usual, and providing tools to help colleagues help themselves.

Creating a culture

So, how did Hogan Lovells work to embed a mentally healthy culture?

“Leadership is critical to this – you need leaders who believe it matters and realise it’s central to business strategy. However, it also has to permeate right through the organisation. You can have top–down buy-in and a swell of support and interest from employees, but if line managers aren’t engaged it can be really damaging.

“It’s not easy to bring everyone along, but language is key. For those who don’t engage with the wellbeing narrative, we talk about performance and the financial, as well as human, cost of mental ill health. As a law firm, we’re nothing but our people. It’s critical that each of our people is able to perform at their best, and there’s a huge business risk if people are unwell.”

CMHA research has shown the importance of line managers being engaged in this area too. It’s a vital piece of the puzzle, and one that Susan admits the firm hasn’t always got right first time.

“We’ve had to learn the hard way at times. We delivered some wellbeing training for new partners, and it didn’t land at all well. For these people – who were newly promoted and flying in their careers – the suggestion that they needed help with wellbeing wasn’t welcomed. We’ve learnt from that, so now it’s part of normal leadership and high-performance training, and part of managing your team.”

Small change, big difference

While shifting organisational culture takes time and requires work on many levels, Susan says the impact of simple and practical steps can be surprising.

“One of the changes we put in place that had the most immediate impact was to make our counselling service more accessible. In the past, you had to walk down the road to another building to meet our counsellor. We brought the service on-site and people could self-refer. It was transformational, to the point that our health insurer contacted us to ask what we’d done since payments relating to mental health issues had fallen dramatically. We also introduced and trained Mental Health First Aiders, giving our people greater access and avenues to support.”

Hogan Lovells was one of the first law firms to become a signatory to the Mindful Business Charter in 2018, representing a collective commitment to change avoidable working practices that can cause mental health and wellbeing issues for employees.

The impact of COVID-19

Reflecting on the extraordinary times we’ve lived through over the past couple of years, Susan believes its effect on employees’ mental health has been mixed.

“A challenge for many was the blurring of boundaries between work and home. Many people converted the missed commuting time into work time, meaning they did longer hours. And I’m very concerned about the impact of the pandemic on young people at the start of their careers. CMHA research has revealed there’s a high rate of poor mental health among this group. They’ve joined businesses where they may not yet have been able to meet colleagues face-to-face, and they may be missing out on the development opportunities that help you to make the best start in your career.

“However, on the positive side, more leaders have recognised that wellbeing is critical to the health of their business. There’s been more overt compassion from many, more authenticity. The move to online meetings has meant you suddenly have your workmates seeing into your home and your personal surroundings, and that has made colleagues more ‘human’, which makes people more prone to sharing.

“I hope that we can retain the greater acceleration in mental wellbeing visibility and prioritisation that has come from the pandemic. This is not a project that you complete and tick off, it’s part of day-to-day business for any successful business. And it’s not a competitive sport, but an area in which businesses can collaborate for everyone’s benefit.”