Campaigner and social entrepreneur Poppy Jaman believes the key to tackling mental health issues at work is to have corporate policies embedded at the boardroom level.
Jaman co-founded and has been CEO of the City Mental Health Alliance (CMHA) since 2015. The network of businesses was created after of the financial crisis and its aim is to remove the stigma of mental health problems at work.
With large-scale employers such as Deloitte, EY, Lloyds and HSBC as its members, the alliance is committed to championing best practice and equal treatment for physical and mental health conditions in the workplace. In November 2017, a second CMHA was established in Hong Kong.
The CMHA recently launched the Thriving from the Start Network, primarily targeting young workers entering the finance and professional services sector. The network aims to encourage open and honest dialogue on mental health challenges between new starters and senior management.
Recent research, undertaken by MIND, found that one in six workers experiences a diagnosable mental health issue in the workplace, while mental ill-health costs employers £34.9 billion a year through lost working days.
“If you were losing five million pounds because your IT didn’t work in a bank, what would you do?” posed Jaman in an interview earlier this year. “You’d get a consultant in and you’d spend £2 million to fix that problem. I don’t see why mental health is any different.”
Describing mental health as an “everybody issue,” she affirms the role her organisation can play in rallying big business to the cause: “They have the resources to try things out and give to the rest of society”, she says. “You’ve got big brands and big names making changes and influencing the rest of society. Then when we learn what works, we can publish it.”
Jaman is also a co-founder of Mental Health First Aid and was CEO of the not-for-profit social enterprise for nine years, before stepping down in May 2018. Under her stewardship, the community interest company grew to become England’s leading provider of workplace mental health training. What began as a small Department of Health project, was transformed by Jaman into a global social enterprise, with a network of 1,800 instructors, responsible for the training of more than 300,000 mental health first aiders.
She remains an ambassador for Mental Health First Aid and was awarded an OBE in 2018 in recognition of her services to the mental health sector.
In 2017, she was named as one of England’s mental health experts by the health secretary. That same year, the MHFA was recognised by the FT for being one of the fastest-growing SMEs in Europe.
Married with four children, Jaman was brought up in a traditional Bangladeshi household in Portsmouth. She left school at 16 and went on to have a daughter four years later, following an arranged marriage when she was 17.
After the birth of her daughter, she suffered from post-natal depression but later reflected that growing up in a racially divided and economically deprived area may have also been a contributory factor.
In 2007, while working in the Department of Health, Jaman was inspired by a Scottish programme for Mental Health First Aid training and felt that a similar venture could be rolled out nationally.
Jaman, who also holds an MBA from the University of Portsmouth, has helped develop the work of MHFA in Bangladesh, trained orphanage workers in Goa and has worked for the Ugandan government.
