Safe to ask for help
Suicide awareness, manager wellbeing and resilience foundations.
Around four hours on noticing when colleagues struggle: stigma and psychological safety, suicide awareness, manager wellbeing and burnout, three applied cases, and the foundations of resilience.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 4 hours
- Where
- Managing well
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Content Note.
This topic is about mental health at work. Part 3, Safe to Speak, Safe to Seek Help, talks about suicide and how to respond when someone is in crisis. It follows the Samaritans' guidance on talking about suicide safely and gives no detail of methods. Take it at your own pace, pause whenever you need to, and come back to it later if that helps.
If you need to talk to someone now, call Samaritans free on 116 123, any time, day or night. For urgent mental health help, call NHS 111 (in Wales press 2, in England choose option 2; in Scotland NHS 24 is also on 111). In Northern Ireland, call Lifeline on 0808 808 8000. If a life is at risk, call 999.
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Managers and supervisors in health, housing, local government and the voluntary sector
Overview
Many people struggle quietly at work, and a manager who notices and asks can make a real difference. Taken from the Immerse Well at work, this Focus opens with why people stay silent, through Patrick Corrigan on stigma, Amy Edmondson's psychological safety and Sidney Dekker's just culture at Mersey Care. It approaches suicide awareness gently and with hope: noticing, asking directly, connecting people with help and Samaritans' safe messaging guidance. It then traces the path from pressure to burnout with Maslach and Leiter and the World Health Organization, reads cases including Barber versus Somerset County Council and pandemic moral injury, and closes with Coutu's building blocks and the Stockdale Paradox.
Aims
It is designed to give managers the care and confidence to recognise when a colleague may be struggling, to ask directly and listen well, to connect people with the right help, and to look after their own wellbeing so they can keep supporting others over time.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Explain how stigma and low psychological safety keep people silent, and identify what managers can change in their team's culture.
- Use a careful, direct approach to notice, ask about and respond to possible suicidal distress, connecting colleagues with help and following safe messaging guidance.
- Assess your own path from pressure towards burnout and apply resilience foundations, including Coutu's building blocks, to sustain yourself while supporting others.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Distinguish public stigma, self-stigma and structural stigma, and explain how label avoidance keeps people silent.
- Explain why asking directly and calmly about suicide helps rather than harms, using the evidence on common myths.
- Describe the pathway from pressure to strain to burnout and identify Maslach and Leiter's three dimensions of burnout.
- Explain why, following Barber v Somerset County Council, knowing that someone is struggling creates a duty to take the initiative.
- Distinguish wellbeing as a state, resilience as a capacity and adaptability as a skill, and explain why each needs a different intervention.
- Explain why resilience depends on context and distinguish its individual, team and organisational levels.
- Apply Edmondson's three moves of setting the stage, inviting participation and responding productively to build psychological safety in your team.
- Apply a five step route of notice, ask and listen, keep safe, connect and follow up when you are worried about someone at work.
Built from 3 parts.
4 hours of learning.
- 01Safe to speak, safe to seek helpPsychological safety and suicide awarenessBitesize · Mental Health at Work for Managers2 modules
- 02Caring for your team and yourselfManager wellbeing and team support in practiceBitesize · Mental Health at Work for Managers2 modules
- 03What keeps us standingResilience explained: the foundationsBitesize · Resilience, Wellbeing and Adaptability2 modules