At Automechanika Birmingham earlier this year, PMM’s Kieran Nee caught up with Ben’s head of awareness and experience, Ellen Plumer, to find out about the charity’s recent mental health survey.
Q. Hi Ellen, tell me about the new Health and Wellbeing survey Ben has recently released
A. Every year we do a survey across the whole industry where we try and get as many people to take part as we can and that is so that we can inform the industry of the issues we’re seeing. It also means that it allows us to develop services in line with what the industry’s challenges are. So we are reactive to what we are seeing but we try our best to be proactive and develop support. We don’t want people to have to come to us in crisis. We want people to live their best life before they get to the point where they need our support. But we are always there if they need us. This year we have seen a rise in sleep being an issue across the industry.
Q. What’s behind that, do you think?
A. We don’t know why, but it is connected to everything else. So within health and wellbeing, nothing stands alone, it’s all connected. If we’re stressed, it’s generally not just stress. It’ll be because there are money issues or sleep issues or work-life balance issues. It’ll all be intertwined. And it is those layered on top of each other that then creates an issue. We all have ups and downs. It’s when we can’t get ourselves out of the down that becomes the issue. So this year we’re seeing a lot of sleep issues and the resounding problem was stress. 57 per cent of the industry is dealing with some level of stress.
Q. That’s shocking. Is it higher than previous years?
A. It’s the biggest change we’ve seen this year and we’re not sure whether that’s because people are identifying sleep and are more aware of their sleep and the cause and effect that has on their wellbeing or whether there’s so much going on that they can’t sleep. We’re not sure if that’s reactive or how that sits but it shows us that we need to do more to help people manage that and if they can’t sleep, that is going to affect everything else. They’re going to go into work, not going to not be as productive as an employee, everything’s going to get on top of them quicker, it just adds up.
Q. People probably aren’t going to ring up Ben after a bad night’s sleep, so what can you do to raise awareness that there are things that people can do to improve their sleep?
A. The survey and things like the Steer Guide really help us to talk about the issues. If we start talking about them, people become more aware of them in themselves. So if we say it, people might think, ‘actually, maybe my sleep hygiene isn’t brilliant and maybe I need to do some things to improve that’. Reducing your screen time before bedtime, similar times of going to sleep every night… There are quite simple things you can do to improve your sleep hygiene.
But that, we are well aware, has a physical impact and a mental health impact and we are here to support your health and wellbeing as a whole, not just your mental health or your physical health. So sleep impacts everything about us as humans. It makes us grumpy, it makes us not able to work as a team and not able to problem solve, not function, makes our dietary choices poor. So all of those things wrapped up generally have a negative impact on every aspect of our life. So it’s just about highlighting those so people can be consciously aware day to day that these are having an impact on your health and wellbeing.
Q. Would I be right in assuming that if you go back a few decades Ben was not dealing with sleep issues and anxiety?
A. We probably were. We probably just didn’t identify all of the elements that went into that. did we know scientifically that sleep was having such a negative impact on our health 10, 20 years ago? Probably not. There’s much more research in that now. But I’d say that issue hasn’t changed. It’s just maybe people are more aware.
Q. Are people in the industry drinking less than they used to?
A. Good question. We know we have lot of alcohol related issues within the industry and we know that people have historically drunk to de-stress. And we now know that that is a terrible de-stressor. It has health impacts, it has mental health impacts, you can’t adjust your mental health when you’re drinking it. It is a depressive substance.
It’s teaching people again to recognise that in themselves. Is this becoming an issue? Is me opening a drink when I get home to cope with the day actually going to help? Are there better things I could do to support my health and wellbeing than reaching for a drink? Yes. So it’s providing people one with the acknowledgement that that is a recognising that in themselves and thinking, is this too much? Where is the line?
Q. I think that’s very useful advice. Changing tack, what’s new with Ben?
A. We’ve got lots new, so obviously we’re launching Steer here at Automechanika. We’ve got lots coming on this year, our main aim for the next five years is to raise awareness. We want to move awareness above one in five people in the industry – 20 per cent of the industry are currently aware of Ben and our services. We want to move that to one in three. It’s a huge task. By doing that, we want to double our fundraising so we can help more people. We want to triple our impact. So we want to help three times as many people.
We know there’s a need and we want to provide those services to people. By raising awareness it means that more people can fundraise for us and more people can access our support so that is the key for me and that is my sole purpose is to raise awareness.
Q. Any idea how you’re going to achieve that growth?
A. We’re getting much more visible on social media so everybody needs to follow us! Partnering with other organisations such as the Motor Ombudsman is key. It’s about speaking to the industry and making it really clear that we can’t do this on our own. We are not the solution, we can provide a solution but you have to work with us on that. We can’t infiltrate the industry and raise awareness without the industry taking ownership with that and helping us with that.
