Latest News | 9 December 2014
Ford & Stanley Revolutionises Employee Performance
Bondholder company, Ford & Stanley, has carried out an 18-month pilot project aimed at mental health problems in the workplace to produce “astonishing” results in terms of performance, worker happiness, and staff retention.
The GENIUS project focused mainly on de-stigmatising the issues of mental health and wellbeing by rebranding mental health support as “General Performance Improvement Coaching”, whilst employing a team of multi-skilled practitioners skilled at resolving root causes of mental wellbeing, confidence and performance issues.
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“One of the issues our research kept coming back to was that many of the one-size-fits-all help packages weren’t relevant to the individual’s needs and actually alienated them further at a time when they were already vulnerable.”
Research has proven that up to 80% of employees suffer in silence due to the fear of being perceived negatively by their employer or colleagues. Ford & Stanley experts decided to assess not just reasons for absenteeism, but also the new concept of presenteeism - where staff are at work but not performing well.
The GENIUS project grew organically and even morphed into being used by the company's high fliers who weren't experiencing trouble per se, but just wanted some performance coaching to become even better and develop their careers.
Ford & Stanley said the average cost per employee was £800, yet when factoring in the cost of time wasted for an under-performing employee and the cost of replacing staff, the overall investment was just £17 per employee per month.
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“A key success of this is providing something unique – developing a team of established, multi-skilled professionals who are non-prescriptive and will wait to talk to and see what the person’s needs are before deciding how best to help them.”
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“The evidence and message this pilot sends to employers is clear; provide employees with the right kind of support and the organisation will produce more, save more, and greatly enhance its reputation as a responsible employers. Fail to act and you’ll get the exact opposite.”
