Want to make your company THE place to work at? All you gotta do is CARE.
Easier said than done.
The importance of building a mental wellbeing culture
The importance of building a strong mental well-being culture in your organisation should be obvious but it is always good to go over the benefits.
Employees with mental health support in their company tend to experience less stress which positively impacts productivity, reduces absenteeism and turnover, boosts morale, creates a positive work environment, and promotes open communication which in turn fosters creativity and innovation. Benefiting both the individual and the company’s growth in time.
What are the biggest pain points in building a mental well-being culture?
The role of Human Resources in creating a strong mental well-being culture in the organization is essential and multi-faceted. It requires a lot of energy, time, and training. Additionally, it is a huge responsibility on top of all the others that fall onto the lap of the HR team.
Implementing policies is not always a walk in the park for the HR department, who have to deal with different types of challenges. We have listed the most common ones here.
1. Stigma and Awareness
While mental health is being addressed more and more, some people still see mental health issues as taboo and associate them with a sign of weakness that needs to be kept private, making seeking help more difficult.
One of the main roles of HR teams is “simply” to destigmatize mental health issues through open dialogue, education, and training. One of our clients of ours started to destigmatize mental health in the organization by conducting webinars and engaging mid and top-level managers to participate.
2. Lack of resources and training
A strong Mental health and well-being culture is not just built on conversations. There is a real need for resources and expert training to create a safe and fruitful environment for a team.
It is crucial for the HR team that the organization invest sufficient resources in mental health awareness and resources to see a real impact.
3. Measuring impact and effectiveness
Once a campaign or action is launched, some people might move on to the next point to tackle on the agenda, forgetting about a crucial part: measuring the impact and effectiveness of the campaign. For each action, the HR team should establish clear metrics and KPIs through surveys, engagement rates, and feedback to identify trends and take appropriate actions in the future.
Some service providers already have also such measuring tools built-in, the easiest is to choose these. If the tools are not built in, one can also use pulse surveys and just an external consultant to run such evidence employee surveys once in a while.
4. Balancing confidentiality and support
Creating a safe space for staff to feel secure enough to open up all the while being able to ensure confidentiality and support is a difficult equilibrium to reach for HR staff that is not always trained to handle mental health challenges. That is why while training is essential, having clear policies to protect confidentiality and compliance with legal requirements is equally important.
There are activities that are meant to engage all publicly – such as webinars, training events, case studies – and then support which has to stay anonymous, such as therapy sessions. The best solution would be if an HR organization or even accounting would not have any access to who is using such services. That will warrant good usage of such support tools and services also by employees.
5. Integration with overall HR strategy
The mental health strategy of a company should be an integrated part of the overall strategy of every company and not just a side project as it impacts every area of productivity and growth of the business.
That is why the mental health program/policies should be presented to the whole team, easily accessible to all at all times, and responsibilities should be clearly assigned amongst the different leaders and managers. Best if such mental wellbeing aspects are also part of KPIs to monitor, and pursue by the teams. Then it will become a wider initiative supported from the top down.
6. Overcoming budget constraints
Budget constraints are a challenge for every company and department. In companies where mental health is not a priority, it is easy to cut corners and put pressure on HR staff to deliver without the right resources and tools.
It is also part of the HR role to advocate for mental health as a priority investment through demonstrating long-term benefits by using clear data, KPIs, and research. Our own research shows that investing in mental wellbeing programs renders many benefits for the company, but for a CFO likely return on investment is one of the key metrics. In mental wellbeing, ROI is high, ranging between 6-8x in our own experience.
7. Engaging leadership and building buy-in
The HR team can work as hard as they can, if the leadership fails to embrace the campaigns, projects, or policies it will be very difficult to create momentum. Senior leadership needs to be on board with the mental health culture and understand the ROI of investing in well-being from day one as they will then be the ones leading by example.
Fortunately, many senior leaders are aware of and support mental well-being initiates, as they themselves are exposed to a number of stressors and some of them have experienced burnout in their career. But even if the leadership is not vocal about investing in mental wellbeing, external guests and motivational speakers can be an option.
8. Creating a supportive environment
Building a mental health culture is not something that is done in a day. It takes time, patience, and consistency. It also does not just mean having resources to offer when someone is doing poorly. It actually has a lot more to do with preemptive measures such as promoting work-life balance and flexible working hours, better leave policies, safe and ergonomic workspace, and tools, and creating a culture of inclusivity and an overall positive and supportive environment to work in.
It may sound vague and complex task. To address this challenge, Siffi has created a Mental Wellbeing Strategy Cheat Cheet for HR that you can download HERE
This will help to plan your steps into a build-out of a proper mental well-being culture.
So if the HR department supports your employees, have you thought about who supports your HR?
One of our roles is to support HR teams in caring for their employees by helping them prioritize relevant tasks and projects, implement them step by step, and monitor and measure the results.
From drafting a strategy to assigning responsibilities and timelines, putting together management training, encouraging “lead by example” behaviors, finding the right resources, and fighting mental health stigma.
Anastassia Murašina
