Mental health at work for workers
An Easy Read guide about how your mental health can be supported and respected at work.
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In this guide, we talk about how to support mental health at work.
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Your mental health is about how you:
- think and feel about yourself
- deal with things in your life
- manage your feelings.
Why it’s important to support mental health at work
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A workplace that supports mental health is good for everyone.
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A workplace is any place you might work, such as:
- an office
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- a factory
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- a shop
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- a service.
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Everyone has the right to a safe and healthy workplace.
Rights are rules about how people must treat you:
- fairly
- equally.
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Everyone has a role to make sure their workplace supports mental health.
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This includes:
- workers
- employers.
An employer is a person who hires other people to work for them.
What workers need to do
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Workers need to help take care of everyone’s health and safety in the workplace.
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This includes:
- following the rules about health and safety
- listening to their employer about how to support health and safety.
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Workers need to tell their employer if something at work is not:
- safe
- healthy.
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Workers can make a complaint if their workplace isn’t protecting people’s health and safety.
When you make a complaint, you tell someone that something:
- has gone wrong
- isn’t working well.
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Find out more about making a complaint on the SafeWork NSW website.
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Find out more about what workers need to do on the SafeWork NSW website.
Your rights as a worker
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Workers have the right to work in a safe and healthy workplace.
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Workers have the right to keep their job when they need support for their mental health.
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Workers have the right to ask for reasonable adjustments in the workplace.
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Reasonable adjustments are things an employer can change to support you at work.
For example, changing:
- your work hours
- parts of your workplace.
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Workers have the right to be safe from discrimination because of their mental health.
Discrimination is when someone treats you unfairly because of a part of who you are.
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Workers have the right to choose who knows about their mental health.
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This means workers don’t have to tell employers about their mental health.
But they should tell employers if they need support.
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The READY? tool can help workers decide if they want to tell their employer about their mental health.
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Find out more about mental health support for workers on the headspace website.