A quick one today – there is too much still to process from conversations at the weekend and all the events of last week both real and online. Also I’m off out shortly to meet a colleague who is off work with stress.

There are so many issues underpinning this strike, many far too deep for quick resolution by individuals, as a superb article by Lee Jones set out in exquisite, painful detail. But I want to offer a quick, unpolished thought on actions we can take, at a local level, when we return to work after the strike.

On Friday I was helping steward the marchers on the School Strike for Climate in Sheffield. As we were leading them past one of the many building sites in the city centre, I was put in mind of the signs you see on the entrance to many construction sites now. ‘Number of days since last incident’. ‘Considerate contractors’. ‘Slow down! My dad works here.’ The construction industry used to be one of the most dangerous sectors to work in. While it is still relatively dangerous – compared with ‘all industry’ – there have been continuous improvements over the last 40 years driven by legislation and significant investment in site safety and training by large companies which recognise the potential impact on reputation and on profits.

It got me thinking about our own workplaces in academia. It would not be fair to say that we don’t have support in place for the most significant occupational risk we face – stress and other mental health injuries – but from my own experience support is focused on the individual – something has gone wrong with you; we’ll address the acute issue of your absence, and support you to address the thing that you’ve got wrong with you in the longer term, until you’re functioning normally again when you can go back to doing what you were doing before. Then repeat.

What would our workplaces look and feel like if staff mental health – and risk factors which influence it – were collectivised and owned at a group or department level? In the same way as a construction site, what if stats for ‘number of days lost to stress’; ‘number of hours worked over contract’ were reported on a monthly running basis and posted on the main entrance?

What if departmental targets included minimisation of these values, and performance was celebrated by annual awards?

Open for discussion, and I know it sounds a bit silly perhaps. But I think, in the absence of immediate change in the marketised neoliberal cage in which we find ourselves right now, that these sort of simple actions allow us to own and to visualise the trauma at the heart of the academic mental health crisis, and to force departments to internalise the costs associated with it.