Mental health and wellbeing: Matt Coyle

Opening up

At Baillie Gifford, we strive to foster an open and inclusive culture that promotes mental health and wellbeing. As chair of the newly merged Mental Health and Wellbeing staff network, Matthew Coyle speaks about the network’s role in achieving this.

As a Client Relationship Director, my role involves connecting with clients, understanding who they are and what they need, and doing my best to support them to achieve their aims. I see the network’s role and my participation as an extension of that.

Giving voice to mental health

There are seven staff networks at Baillie Gifford. A large part of our remit is to foster connection and belonging among colleagues. We do so because raising awareness about the challenges and aspirations of underrepresented groups can further the firm's inclusive culture.

This includes giving voice to topics that we might not have traditionally spoken openly about in the workplace, such as suicide or infertility. These are big, sensitive topics that might feel uncomfortable or difficult for people to explore, but we’ve found that colleagues really value being able to discuss them.

This started in 2016 with some senior colleagues being open about challenges they’d faced from a mental health point of view. Doing so was very positive from a culture perspective. It set the tone for others to be open about their challenges in their personal lives.

We didn’t have to pretend to be robots in the workplace: we could be ourselves and feel empowered to reach those high levels despite what else might be happening.

Telling our stories

The networks' storytelling aspect continues, and we have heard the experiences of individuals from across all levels of the business on many topics.

First, it helps us see beyond our own experiences and try to see the world through another’s eyes. Second, it means that individuals who may share similar circumstances can feel empowered to talk with others about it.

In doing so, they establish a connection crucial for building resilience. Having an open and supportive culture across the organisation is critical for people to feel safe enough to do that.

While the culture will change depending on where you are based—the culture in Edinburgh will not be the same as that in Shanghai, for example—having a core set of shared beliefs that are consistent across the organisation helps to give us common goals.

Our shared beliefs

Our five shared beliefs are the backbone of our firm's operations. One of the beliefs relates explicitly to the people aspect: Our firm must be an engaging and progressive place to work.

Here are some of the key aspects that relate to mental health and wellbeing within that pillar:

Our strength is our people. Our diverse perspectives, experiences and how we collaborate are all fundamental to the firm.

We want an environment that is inclusive and dynamic, with opportunity and challenge for all.

We want to create a workplace that supports and sustains our mental wellbeing. We must treat all staff with dignity and respect.

While focusing on excellence and high service levels across the firm, we must also ensure that we continue to evolve, both as individuals and in the capabilities we possess.

Supporting mental health and well-being is vital to achieving our individual and firm goals, so we brought the Mental Health and Wellbeing networks together this year. We see them as two sides of the same coin.

As a network, we aim to achieve that through training to increase awareness and understanding, building resilience through initiatives that help staff take care of themselves, providing mental health supporters, and having an employee assistance programme for those times when professional assistance is required.

Strength when tough times hit

If you can build resilience when you’re feeling strong, you will have something in the bank when tough times hit, and you will have people you can reach out to and talk to.

By supporting meaningful dialogue and creating awareness of different experiences, the staff networks help ensure the firm is an engaging, progressive, and inclusive workplace for all.

Fostering diversity and inclusion is vital. It leads to a more engaged and committed workforce, which ultimately benefits our clients, and that’s what we are here to do.

Listen In

Hear more from Matthew about creating an open workplace culture and the value in not bottling things up in the Don’t bottle things up! Creating an open culture episode of the Headtorch Wellbeing Hour podcast.