The importance of good mental health cannot be overstated. Last year, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said six in 10 people in the UK who are not in work because of poor health suffer from a mental health issue. Given that it has been a particularly tough three years for treasurers under pressure to protect the financial strength of their organisations, it is a timely moment to ask how treasury functions are looking after themselves.
Paul Wilde, treasurer of retail and commercial bank Shawbrook Bank, says that, by its nature, treasury is a function where mental health can be tested because of the heavy responsibility that goes with the job on issues such as maintaining liquidity. “Ultimately, we’re the first line of defence when it comes to making sure that an organisation can pay its bills and that’s quite a heavy responsibility.
“The numbers are large in things like interest rate risk. If you make an error, it results in a big number. That focuses people’s minds and does create an element of stress with the role,” he says.
With that in mind, Wilde says that, when recruiting, he screens candidates for resilience. “In an interview, I’ll be asking about foreign exchange or interest rate risk. Some people find it OK, but for others it can be difficult for them to sleep at night. “So, I ask: ‘Make sure you want to do this, as it’s not going be a job for you if it’s one that makes it difficult to cope day to day’,” he says.
Wilde says he can draw on broad support from the bank in the form of designated mental health first aid, health support lines, and specific resources on its Slack channel and intranet.
For many treasury functions, the pressures brought on by COVID-19 tested them to the limit. Take the engineering firm that recently became Parker Meggitt after being taken over by Parker-Hannifin Corporation. Peter Makepeace, group treasury manager of Meggitt, joined the firm in 2019 along with group treasurer Linda Williams, and was playing a key role in transferring ownership and knowledge of the function to a new head office when the pandemic struck.
“Meggitt was massively hit by COVID. We had to quickly move from a period of revenue growth across the group to shoring up the company’s liquidity, tightly controlling costs, micro-forecasting operations and tapping into government support schemes,” he says.
Makepeace says that, fortunately, a solid governance structure and support from the senior management team – along with tight risk management policies – ensured the firm came through the storm, but it forced a reflection on how much stress their department had been under. “It could have been very stressful and more mentally disturbing,” he says.
Meggitt had a network of mental health first aiders in place on its sites, as well as running a series of week-long events that looked at issues such as suicide prevention, and an employee resource group on mental health, of which Makepeace is a member. “It can be a really good sounding board and gives help on the signs of mental health issues to look out for,” he says.
“That also links in with my view of the treasury function being at the centre of the organisation, a place from which to see everything that’s going on and to interact with all our people.”
Another implication of COVID-19 has been how it isolated people in ways they weren’t previously, and this can be a particular challenge for treasury, which Makepeace says can be a very insular place to work. “With good systems in place, treasury work was well placed for operating remotely and there have been times in the past couple of years where I may go a week or two without actually seeing one of my colleagues face to face.
“There were times during lockdown where I could lock myself away and, while efficiently getting much work done, I would find myself falling into a rabbit hole of near depression quite easily, just by not being around other people.
“I’ve made efforts to break that. I’m now making the effort on video calls to sometimes converse about things other than work, as you would when spending time around others,” he says.
“I think people collaborate better and produce better outcomes the more talking occurs, whether that’s within the treasury function or across business functions. While it’s not always face-to-face contact, talking is easier face to face than down a phone line, or across a video call,” he adds.
Some sectors are known to have a history of mental health issues. Elina Beale, treasurer of Tideway, the company delivering the Thames Tideway tunnel, says that, as a construction firm, it is “aware of the mental health issues within the construction industry, especially higher suicide rates”.
“It is one of the riskiest industries in this respect, with construction workers working away from home for long hours without their support networks,” she says. “Just the fact we work in this industry means that mental health has been quite important to us as an organisation, right from the very start.”
On top of that, the tunnel is heading towards completion, and the organisation has been changing. “This has been a huge source of uncertainty for our employees, which, as an organisation, we have had to manage,” she says. Beale, who has trained to be a mental health first aider, says that the firm has put together a package of measures to address mental health, including work with the charity Mates in Mind.
There is great focus on health and wellbeing in the company: access to regular exercise classes, guidance on sleep, nutrition and stress management, other ongoing initiatives to allow staff to work on their personal and professional development and feel part of a supportive, diverse and inclusive organisation – a holistic approach to the issue.
But part of the problem is that there is still a considerable amount of stigma attached to mental health issues – especially in regard to treasury functions, says Alex Hyde, a consultant at BIE Executive, who has worked with some of the UK’s best-known businesses to appoint treasurers into leadership roles. Hyde, who struggled through a bout of severe depression after losing his wife to cancer, says treasurers may find it difficult to admit if their mental health might be at risk.
“They are understandably less likely to admit to struggling, as their role is to manage significant risk on behalf of the organisation and admitting to poor mental health could lead to them being perceived as the source of risk, rather than the manager of it. They are also likely to be anxious about speaking out because of the perception of their competence externally if they are managing multi-billion-pound deals while experiencing mental health problems,” he says.
“While there has been a lot more conversation about mental health in the past five to 10 years, and it is now less stigmatised, it’s still incredibly difficult for people to talk about it.”
Hyde says that, after sharing his experiences, treasurers responded positively, but admitted their own concerns about revealing problems. “They said: ‘That was amazing. It was really great that somebody did that, but I could never do that, even though I felt that way, because it would be a disaster for my career’,” he says.
“If people are feeling that way, it’s really important that they tell somebody so that they can do something about it – because the problem with mental health is that it can be very difficult to know if someone’s struggling. The turning point for me was talking to my partner about how I was feeling.” Hyde says that a powerful way of overcoming the challenge is developing a culture of honesty around the issue, and of recognition that it is an ongoing challenge; achieving mental wellbeing is a work in progress.
“We tend to talk about people when they’re in a mental health crisis, but we should be thinking about what we can do to manage the mental health of people so they can thrive,” he says. “Rather than creating environments in which people feel stressed, anxious and under pressure to perform, we should look to build cultures that give people the mental freedom to do great work.
“When I came out of my mental health crisis, I took a totally different look at mental wellbeing. It goes up and down depending on circumstances that are playing out in your life, be they work, home, or both. As a result, leaders who think about how they can create positive environments for their people at work are far more likely to be rewarded by high performance.”
Shawbrook Bank’s Wilde says it can be difficult detecting when someone may be at risk. “Pre-COVID, you would be seeing people in the office, several days a week, so could get at least a sense of how someone was coping – but with flexible working, you’re not in contact as much; it’s a bit more difficult,” he says.
He also suggests monitoring can feel intrusive. So he argues for striking the right balance through team members all keeping an eye out for each other and identifying concerns in a compassionate and supportive way.
An approach also requires recognising the limit of what a team member’s reasonable workload should be. “I have to think more holistically around this, generally,” he says.
BIE Executive’s Hyde says people work better if they are less stressed and worried: “If you can create an environment where people are freer from those things, they are better able to use them creatively to do their jobs.
“So, rather than giving your best person 10 projects and running them into the ground, give them six. Give them the time to do them really well.”
Lawrie Holmes is a freelance business and financial journalist
This article was taken from Issue 2, 2023 of The Treasurer magazine. For more great insights, members can log in to view the full issue. If you're not an ACT member, you can sign up for eAffiliate membership.