Understanding and advocating for mental health in the workplace: Our experience at Atticus Partners

As we mark Mental Health Awareness Week, this year’s theme celebrates the power and importance of community, providing a moment to reflect on what this means for the workplace. For those in full time employment, more time is spent at work with colleagues than at home with family and friends. As a result, our professional lives can significantly impact our mental health. At Atticus we understand this. It is crucial that colleagues feel supported, heard, and part of a genuine community. In our case, this community extends from staff to clients.

Having started our careers as Interns at Atticus during the pandemic, we learned some valuable lessons. Like many, working exclusively from home during COVID-19 exposed the importance and value of the collaboration with colleagues and clients that comes from working in a physical office. It’s essential that colleagues at all levels are supported, but we also understand that this is especially crucial for those starting out in their careers or entering the industry for the first time, who are faced with the at-times the daunting challenge of spinning multiple plates in agency life.

But it’s not just about reflection, effectively supporting mental health requires practical action and support. As we maintain our rapid growth, we are continuing our efforts to formalise our approaches to mental health. To ensure we can effectively support our colleagues at all levels, we have therefore recently been studying towards our qualifications in Mental Health First Aid in the Workplace.

From its inception, Atticus has created an open and collaborative workplace culture, where those that join us instantly feel part of the team and feel supported by colleagues from across the board. There is a strong sense of teamwork, and all views, from all levels, are welcome. There is also lots of support for personal and professional development. For example, a Personal Development Fund is available to all staff to put towards activities such as gym memberships, driving lessons, language lessons and antenatal classes.

Following a recent recruitment process, it has been great to receive feedback from both existing and new staff that reflects the culture we have, and are continually striving to maintain and develop:

“I’d say we have a young, vibrant culture that celebrates our staff members’ diverse religious, cultural and political backgrounds. Atticus is like a large extended family, where we maintain our individualism whilst championing the wider values of the company” – long-standing team member.

“I would say the team at Atticus (including everyone’s individual personalities) is fun, friendly, and there’s always lots of laughs and genuine friendship in the office. Even though I haven’t been on client accounts with everyone, people have still made a real effort to get to know me both personally and professionally and I think that’s a plus side of being a smaller team. This spans across juniors and seniors. I always say colleagues are the most important part of any job, and I think the people here are something Atticus can genuinely be proud of.

Everyone has their own niche and it all fits together well. It’s fast-paced and everyone works hard, but there’s a strong sense of teamwork and people really have each other’s backs, that’s something that has really shone out to me since starting. There’s also loads of support, both for personal development and across the team in general - more so than I've experienced in any other office so that’s something special and great about Atticus. I think the main thing has been that only being with Atticus for just over the month, I already feel a part of the team” – new team member.

Knowing and recognising the importance of community for an individual’s mental health, at Atticus we remain committed to maintaining and enhancing our inclusive culture in which all team members feel valued and empowered.