Ellie Cole's Couch - Curtis transcript

Curtis: If you boil it down to people, people being well in the workplace, you know if people are well and they're engaged in their work, they're going to be more productive.

My name's Curtis Guglielmana, I'm the general manager of operations at Konekt, based here in Perth, Western Australia. Konekt are a workplace rehabilitation provider and injury prevention provider. We help organisations across Australia to keep their workforce safe and well.

Ellie: With your experience working at Konekt, what are some of the key strategies that businesses can implement to help support the mental health of those that are working in their workforce?

Curtis: I think working in this space, quite often our services are turned to when things don't quite go as planned or they might think about us naturally when injuries or illnesses arise and people need extra support. But I think ultimately, in an ideal world, organisations would invest and spend time and energy in the preventative space.

So we call that, you know, primary intervention. So ensuring that everything from day dot with job postings or inclusive hiring practices, those things are well embedded within an organisation.

Ellie: And so what's your advice for organisations who are looking to support their employees in this space in particular, especially around mental health, on the steps that they need to take to begin to implement those strategies?

Curtis: Particularly small to medium employers aren't necessarily well resourced in that space. So investing in in your leaders is, is probably a really good place to start. And the better equipped your leaders are to identify and understand the workforce, you know, the better your chances are of identifying where things might not be going so well.

Ellie: How can investing in mental health initiatives actually benefit business?

Curtis: If you boil it down to people, people being well in the workplace, if people are well and they're engaged in their work, they're going to be more productive. And on the flip side, if people aren't well or if they're battling, you're going to see impacts in terms of productivity, absenteeism, and your risk with claims and other burdens from a financial perspective are quite significant.

We want organisations to be investing in the front end preventative space, but also reaching out for support when it is required can create pretty good return.

Ellie: What kind of training can a manager or a CEO or a leader in that space undertake to better understand the support they may need to provide to their workplace?

Curtis: Yeah, I think it can be quite diverse. I think awareness and inclusivity training, in whatever form that looks, it is really important to undertake. We need our leaders and senior management to understand that we are and we should be working with a diverse workforce, and that we need to work proactively to accommodate their need.

Ellie: And it's one thing that I've really seen come through speaking to people that work with APM or who work as partners of APM is that the employees are always very well taken care of and in turn, it makes them better able to deliver the services out to the communities as well. Is that something that you've seen in Konekt?

Curtis: Yeah, absolutely. You and I both heard one of APM’s employees recently speak so glowingly about their role and the passion that they have. And again, particularly within our health brands and working together with our employment services and disability employment services teams, we're all there with a similar outcome in mind.