I co-founded One Twelve with Hannah Campbell in 2022. It’s an agency committed to ensuring marketing is more inclusive and representative of all people’s lifestyles and cultures. Having each worked at various marketing agencies over the last decade, we have first-hand experience of how workplace cultures can negatively impact mental health. This is why, from the very start, we were both honest with each other about our own  struggles and about establishing a mental health-friendly work culture.

After One Twelve Agency’s first roller coaster year, we won all the business we pitched for bar one. This was great and we could have raised our next year’s targets significantly. But instead, we held back. We know when to say no.

We want to be successful, achieve our goals and change the industry – maybe the world. We could have gone at this at break-neck speed, chasing growth alone, but we knew that this would not be sustainable and so we developed our culture, our mission and our brand by adjusting our year two plan. For me, all of this came with experience and this approach provides an essential foundation for building an organisation that supports rather than harms mental health.

It’s not just about you

Being open and vulnerable is not just about the benefits it brings to you as a business leader. It’s also for other people to know that if they are struggling they can find help, too. It’s a vital part of building a team. 

At a previous job, I had a work colleague open up with me about their mental health journey, and just to hear them be open and honest helped me immeasurably. This colleague inspired me to do something I’d never done before – get help from a therapist. I have written about my mental health experience on LinkedIn, which is something I found to be initially scary but now I am deeply proud of.

Hannah experienced her first panic attack at work. This involved a feeling of doom, not being able to breathe, shaking, needing to escape, thoughts of something bad happening to everyone she cared for – then calling them all up to check.

While this was going on, she looked around that workplace and thought ‘there is no-one here I can talk to, confide in or who can help me right now’. As a result, she decided that in our agency we would have an environment where there would always be someone to lean on.

Since she confided in me, I always check in on her as she does for me. We make sure we are both getting a break and prioritising rest and self care. As Hannah’s business partner, I feel it is my duty and in return, Hannah always gives me time and space to mentally rest without judgement.   

Sometimes, you just need someone else to remind you to take time out and care for yourself. Coming into a work environment where you know you are supported, even if you are having a bad day, is a really big thing. I have learned that a healthy work environment has three core ingredients:

Open space

Sharing how you feel builds an open space for others to share, too. A commitment to building and maintaining a healthy work environment must come from actions (not just words) from the bottom up and the top down.

Safe community

Safety comes from having the space to share and someone willing and able to listen. You don’t have to involve a whole team,  it’s about everyone having at least one person they can go to and feel honest, vulnerable and authentic.

Empathy

Treat everyone with kindness, respect and empathy and you are half-way there. As a manager, you may not be able to see if someone is struggling, but at the very least it is important not to make their day worse.

With open space and a safe community, even if you are not the individual a particular person chooses to confide in, an empathetic leader can be confident they have built an organisation in which there is somewhere the people they work with can go for support.