Mental Health Matters

May is designated as Mental Health Awareness month in the US.  As a disability inclusive company, JEC knows the importance of ensuring that our employees and customers reflect that employee mental wellness is as important as physical wellness.

The biggest component of our business, by far, is helping companies hire qualified people with disabilities and other employment barriers.  Most of those candidates have hidden disabilities, meaning that no one can tell just by looking at the employee that they have a disability.  And mental health is one of the largest hidden disability types.

Challenges in the Workplace

The challenge comes in understanding how to create an inclusive workplace for something invisible but ever-present.  When we teach inclusion, the parts related to physical inclusion (like accessibility) are easily grasped.  The parts about specific etiquette and tips for effective communication with employees who are blind, or deaf, have learning disabilities or other recognized and accepted impairments are easily grasped.

Difficulties can arise when explaining how to be inclusive and ensure employment is accessible to people with mental health challenges.  And that is because there are no hard and fast “rules” for etiquette, nor effective communication with people who have mental health issues.

Awareness Training

We have provided disability awareness and etiquette training to employers for over 20 years now and when we describe how to make a workplace inclusive of people with mental illness, the feedback we receive is “well, that isn’t anything special, that is how we all want to be treated”.

And that is the point.

Contact Us

Interested in learning more about how to make your workplace better and more inclusive at the same time?  Please just ask.