Fiona O’Donnell, Jacob’s Head of Health, Safety and Environemnt (HSE) outlines her organisation’s efforts to break down the barriers that hinder honest conversations about mental health and encourage an open culture of support around the globe
How would you feel if you had a tool that allowed you to check your mental health regularly to spot early warning signs, avoid prolonged suffering and treatment and increase your mental resilience? That’s what our One Million Lives campaign is all about, and I’m proud to be its champion…
At Jacobs we’ve been supporting the mental health of our colleagues for a long time by hosting a mental health resilience programme, dealing with topics such as navigating the challenges of lockdown, how to build resilience and coping with grief.
However, insights from the programme, combined with feedback received from mental health champions, employee surveys and conversations with mental health experts all highlighted the need for more proactive and preventative solutions. And that’s where we decided to develop ‘One Million Lives.’
Launched in December 2020 One Million Lives is a complimentary campaign accessible to everyone, no matter where you live, or who you work for. It’s as relevant to people working in the Highways sector as to any other area of activity. Many people don’t have access to corporate resources or Employee Assistance Programs, so we wanted to develop a tool that detects early signs of mental distress and offers proactive strategies, such as sleep, exercise, and social media behaviours.
Our goal? To break down the barriers that hinder honest conversations about mental health and encourage an open culture of support around the globe.
To complement the app we developed a website with additional resources to help you to engage with the One Million Lives campaign and help you with your mental health growth. By inviting people to routinely check-in to see how they are doing and encourage their own networks to do the same, we hope more people will become aware of their state of mental health.
While still in its infancy, the data collected to date (14,000 check-ins) has already helped us at Jacobs to gain insights into the mental wellbeing of our employees, and allowed us to make informed, data-driven decisions in response.
We, and many other organisations believe that this campaign has the potential to transform our collective approach to mental health. But ultimately One Million Lives is more than just about an app or a website. It’s about encouraging everyone to have open and honest conversations.
To learn more about One Million Lives make sure you look out for Fiona’s session at Highways UK running on the Big Thinking Stage at 2pm on 4 November. Highways UK is free to attend, book your place now