Preventing suicide in the workplace

Suicide is a tricky topic to navigate for any HR or business leader – but a conversation that employers should care about, according to Michael Hempseed, founder of the Employee Solution Service, a specialist HR service that works to prevent suicide in the workplace. Hempseed is also author of the book, Being a True Hero, and a professional speaker who spoke at TEDx Darwin last year.

“There are two reasons that employers should care,” Hempseed told HRD. “The less noble reason is it’s extremely expensive to have a suicide; often there’s large numbers of staff that leave after a suicide in the workplace. But the more noble reason is it is absolutely devastating to the whole team and the ongoing impact is massive.”

New Zealand’s suicide rate isn’t great. According to The Mental Health Organisation’s website, it is higher than Ireland or the UK but lower than Australia or the United States. Suicide kills twice as many people as car crashes and it’s amongst the top 10 leading causes of death in New Zealand, according to a review entitled “A Rapid Review of the Suicide Prevention Literature” on the Ministry of Health’s website.

Read more: Suicides at work. What can HR do?

“I think that one of the biggest things to know about suicide is that it is preventable,” Hempseed said. “A lot of people think that if you stop someone doing it one way, they’re just going to do it another way.”

However, this isn’t the case, Hempseed said, citing research conducted between 1937 and 1971 of people that were prevented from jumping off San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

“These were not people that had vague thoughts of suicide – they had a plan, and they were carrying out that plan,” Hempseed said.

When researchers from the University of California at Berkeley called them up years later, they found 94% of the people were either still alive or had died of natural causes.

Read more: Ex-Telecom CEO stands trial over staff suicides

“So, in other words, if you can help someone in that time of crisis, there’s a really high chance they’ll live and I don’t think people know how effective suicide prevention can be,” Hempseed said.

How can employers help prevent suicide in the workplace?

The key is identifying risk factors. Below are Hempseed’s five common risk factors:

• Hopelessness – if someone is fired from their job and they start saying, “I’m never going to find a job again,” that’s a hopeless statement.
• An employee who suddenly gives away their prized possessions or suddenly posts everything they own for sale on Facebook for no obvious reason.
• Ruminating thoughts – An employee who is still upset by an event that happened a long time ago: they’re always talking about it, it’s always on their mind, they can’t get it out of their head.
• An employee that has been depressed suddenly getting better – the reason could be that they’ve made the decision to kill themselves and it feels like the pain is now over.
• An employee who talks about death a lot with no obvious reason or writes goodbye or suicide notes. 

What to do if you suspect someone in your workforce is suicidal

 “If you’re concerned – even if you’re only 50/50 – you should go to the person privately and say what you’ve seen,” Hempseed said. “So, if someone said, ‘I'm never going to be able to find another job again,’ you'd go up to them and say, ‘You just said to me, you don't think you're ever going to be able to find another job? It sounds like quite a hopeless statement. I know this might be a difficult question. But does that mean you're thinking about suicide?’”

Talking directly about suicide to someone who wasn’t thinking about it won’t prompt them to take their own life. There’s research to back up the idea that if someone is not suicidal, then saying “suicide” will not give them ideas.

If an employee does say that they’re suicidal, Hempseed said the first thing to say is, “I’m really glad you told me that, it’s a big thing for someone to admit.”

Then get the person help in proportion to the risk that they are in, Hempseed said.

“If you ask them, ‘When are you going to do this,’ and they say next year sometime, that person needs less help. But if they say they're going to do it this afternoon, drop what you're doing,” he said. “Whatever you're doing is not as important as saving someone's life.”