The last 20 years has seen an increasing focus by employers on employees’ “wellbeing”. There is widespread recognition of the relevance of employees’ wellbeing to the workplace, the problems that can arise when employers do not engage with the issue, and the potential that employers have to play a positive role in supporting employees to improve and maintain their sense of wellbeing.

This article was first published in Reward Strategy Magazine on 10 February 2022.

To some extent, this growing recognition will have been spurred on by legal developments over that period, as well as the business case for taking proactive steps to support employee wellbeing. In 2010 we saw the introduction of the Equality Act, which consolidated and unified the extensive anti-discrimination legislation already in existence.

There has been a growing recognition over this period that mental health conditions can amount to disabilities triggering an obligation on employers to make reasonable adjustments where a disabled employee has been placed at a substantial disadvantage compared to non-disabled employees by virtue of a physical feature, the lack of auxiliary aid or the application of a provision, criterion or practice.

Arguably, employers now are also more likely to be familiar with the concepts of indirect discrimination and discrimination arising from disability, particularly in relation to mental health conditions which amount to disabilities.

Read the article in full here.

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