Renfrewshire Council

Our range of supports for colleagues can help you take care of your wellbeing and have those all-important conversations about mental health. Read on to find out why talking honestly about mental health matters and how you can get help from our employee counselling service, mental health first aiders and more.

Talking about mental health

One in four of us are likely to experience a mental health issue at some point in our lifetime, yet we tend to cover it up for as long as we can.

When asked how we're doing, we often respond with something like "not too bad", or "getting by...". But what do we really mean?

For Time to Talk Day 2024 (Thursday 1 February), Scottish mental health charity See Me, are encouraging you to have honest conversations about mental health. Their mission is to end mental health discrimination and combat stigma by raising awareness that the words we say often don't reflect what's going on beneath the surface.

Read more on their website.

Supporting your mental health at work—Wellbeing conversations

Employee counselling service

Our free confidential employee counselling service can offer you a safe space to talk about work and personal issues that might be affecting your mental health. The service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You can:

• call their helpline on 0330 202 0283
• message someone on their live chat service
• book counselling online.

Visit the Time for Talking website or download the Time for Talking app to a mobile device to access counselling and other ways to support your mental health through videos, podcasts and other resources. 

Our Mental Health First Aiders

Our Mental Health First Aiders have an important role in supporting colleague wellbeing. They can offer a friendly and confidential conversation either in person, on MS Teams or simply over the telephone.

As well as lending a supportive ear, they will point you in the right direction to help you access specialist services within Renfrewshire and other workplace supports like employee counselling or Occupational Health.

Find out more about our Mental Health First Aiders.

eLearning for managers - Wellbeing conversations

If you are a manager, did you know we have a Wellbeing Conversations e-learning course to guide sensitive one-to-one conversations with members of your team? You can find it under 'Leading People' in the Leadership and Management section on iLearn alongside several other helpful courses on similar topics.

Employee wellbeing hub

The health and wellbeing of our employees will always be our priority. As outlined in our HR &OD People Strategy, we will continue to build our support so look out for lots more on this and upcoming initiatives throughout 2024.

In the meantime, you can find lots more helpful advice and guidance together with details of our current support on our employee wellbeing hub.

Published on Thursday 01 February 2024