Duke of Cambridge Announces New Workplace Mental Health Platform

The Duke of Cambridge has introduced Heads Together’s workplace wellbeing initiatives at a conference.

The new initiatives highlight the importance of mental health support at work and include a digital platform with resources for employers.

“Data from the Heads Together campaign showed that the number of people who felt they were able to talk to their HR departments about their mental health was a mere two per cent.” Prince William said of the new platform, Mental Health at Work.

“For me, this is quite personal. I worked as an air ambulance pilot recently where a lot of my colleagues were dealing with a lot traumatic and stressful situations.

“But in my place of work, mental health was taken very seriously. We could be open about our experiences and support our colleagues when they needed it.

“That is what we need in every single work place in this country. I am delighted the Royal Foundation and Mind will be launching a new workplace wellbeing programme in September to support employers across the country.”

📽 The Duke gives a speech introducing the new @heads_together & @MindCharity workplace mental health initiative. pic.twitter.com/cUGa3Ni0NA

— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) March 1, 2018

The workplace wellbeing initiatives were created in partnership with mental health charity Mind. The digital platform will be a ‘go-to’ resource for employers to find information like PDFs, blogs, videos, podcasts, documents and brochures containing information about mental health at work.

The initiative aims to make it easy for employers to find resources on different mental health issues in order to better support employees and offers online training for small and medium-sized businesses.

The platform gathers together resources from several different charities, studies and publishers so that those accessing the platform can purchase or access the materials from the site. The platform also includes case studies, ideas for improving workplace culture, mental health first aid resources, mental health toolkits for employers and general information and support for line managers and staff.

The resources are searchable by time it would take to implement, paid and free, public access or member access only, and more. Each resource is rated using a star system from people who have used it or purchased the resource.