Here’s some food for thought for Adland. Stateside that is. The UK ad community is taking steps to get agencies there to care more about employees’ mental health. 

The effort is being driven by the trade group IPA, or the Institute of Practitioners of Advertising, currently being led by Josh Krichefski, who is also GroupM’s CEO EMEA and the UK.  

The IPA did a survey recently that found that over three quarters of Adland employees agree that their employers should be doing more to support mental health and wellbeing at work. 

Only a third of those polled said their firms have a mental health policy and roughly the same percentage say their employer can make reasonable adjustments to support mental health. 

Krichefski is calling on advertising agency leaders to demonstrate their commitment to their people’s mental health and wellbeing by signing on to the People First Promise. The Promise is accompanied by a new Adland “Wellbeing Lab” which is underpinned by the IPA’s survey and research. 

The lab is an online hub that curates resources, advice and training to help support the mental health and wellbeing of employees.   

Find out more about it here. 

Says Krichefski: "I am a firm believer that it is much easier to put in place guardrails to help prevent poor mental health and wellbeing than it is to treat it. As the saying goes, prevention is better than cure. But this takes commitment – demonstrable commitment - and investment from the top down.”