The mental health of employees must feature prominently on corporate agendas in a Covid-19/post-Covid-19 world, says Yeleni Bruinders, senior associate at law firm Bowmans.
Michael Yeates, director of employment practices for the commercial law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, said: “There has been a significant increase in mental health cases. I think the majority will most likely be depression related to Covid, and obviously associated with mental health would be substance abuse cases as well. Some employees find it stressful to work from home because they don’t have the sense of security they have in the workplace – and because supervision is not there”.
Grobler, who sees about six claimants a month, says Covid has created great uncertainty for insurers, who are seeing an increase in claims. “Covid is a dragon with a very long tail,” he said. One of the challenges from a legal perspective, Bruinders said, is that employers follow a standard improvement plan. “Obviously, if the underlying reason for a person’s poor performance is a mental disease or mental disorder, then providing them with additional training is not actually going to fix the underlying issue,” she said. “What you are required to do in terms of our law is to deal with depression as a form of ill health.
“We encourage early intervention,” Van Wyk said. “We train line managers on how to identify somebody who might need help and we are partnering with a company that is developing an app based on cognitive behavioural therapy. It is a treatment app that allows you to identify symptoms by asking questions. It has a triaging function and will recommend a counsellor if that is what you need.”