Mental wellbeing

Spotting risks to Mental wellbeing

Spotting risks associated with alignment to criteria, requires reference to workplace data, direct observation, and by talking to workers. This includes watching the fatigue, physical job demands, social and organizational issues, bullying, and occupational violence.

Look at the Checklist (below) to explore the key questions to review with your intermediary.

See Control & Preventative measures

Supporting mental wellbeing

By intermediaries supporting SGBs deal with mental health and promote wellbeing of staff, these actions can improve organizational adaptability, general health and safety, and workforce sustainability with reduced staff turnover. There may also be an indirect social return on investment with business development programmes programs. Workplace mental health programs can deliver broad social benefits through the positive impact on family and community.

1. Raise awareness on mental health

In many workplaces mental health is the elephant in the room. Too often, employees are scared to talk to their manager and problems can spiral. Intermediaries can support by raising awareness of mental health by embedding mental health in SGB onboarding, training and advisory and training as well as appointing mental health champions to spearhead positive mental health in existing programmes

2. Creating a culture of openness and dialogue

Intermediaries should check-in regularly with SGBs during their program implementation to see how they’re doing. They can do this by adding a regular item to team meetings where people talk about stress and wellbeing as a group. Developing a management style that is open, approachable and self-aware goes a long way. This also including recognition and celebrating key SGB milestones.

3. Create opportunities for coaching, & learning for line team leaders

The way team leaders and line managers manage and support people experiencing a mental health problem can be key in shaping how they cope and recover. Intermediaries can implement training programs for supervisors and managers that support early recognition and early intervention for mental ill-health, build capacity to effectively support people in the workplace who are, experiencing mental ill-health, and promote constructive and supportive workplace interactions, including prevention of bullying and harassment in the workplace

4. Review health and safety policies/systems

Review health and safety policies/systems to ensure support for people experiencing mental ill-health stay at or return to work. You can find more insight into mental health policies here)

5. Building people’s mental health literacy so they can support each other

Building mental health literacy means boosting employees’ knowledge and skills so they better manage their own mental health and improve their ability to support that of others. Intermediaries can provide literacy sessions on mental health to ensure staff and managers have a good understanding of mental health, and the factors that affect workplace wellbeing, is essential for building a healthy, happy and productive workforce.

6. Promote work/life balance and policies that promote mental wellbeing among SGBs

Long hours might seem manageable in the short term. But over time, constant pressure and a poor work/life balance can quickly lead to stress and burnout, reducing people’s productivity, performance, creativity and morale. Intermediaries can encourage SGBs within the portfolio to develop policies and work life balance practices.

Improving mental wellbeing

Intermediaries can include an agenda item at SGB review meetings to discuss everyone’s wellbeing together, and what factors are affecting this. A planning session can look at the issues in detail and develop a team action plan to address these. If the SGB runs a staff survey, this could form the basis of the discussion.

1. Evaluation

An evaluation helps you see if the interventions that were implemented were successful and if your goals and objectives were achieved. This can include;

Observing companies with a mental health strategy
Examining and evaluating the type and nature of activities undertaken as part of mental health strategies
Identifying and responding to key gaps in knowledge for addressing mental health, mental ill-health and associated risk and protective factors.

2. Synthesis of evaluation data

Evaluation can be based on data collected from a variety of sources. Data can be collected at any stage of the process. The final phase will be about collating data and analyzing the results for future improvements and investments.