Report reveals what works in regard to workplace mental health

Australia’s productivity is suffering because too many businesses are not taking action on mental health, the chair of the National Mental Health Commission, Prof. Allan Fels, said this month.

Prof. Fels was speaking to businesses leaders at the Trans-Tasman Business Circle event in Sydney in December, where he shared the findings of a new report on what has been proven across both mental health and management research to improve mental health at work.

The report, Developing a Mentally Healthy Workplace: A review of the literature, was produced by the University of New South Wales and the Black Dog Institute for the Mentally Healthy Workplace Alliance. It identifies six success factors for a mentally healthy workplace and a five-step process for embedding them.

Six success factors for a mentally healthy workplace:

1. Smarter work design - eg, enhancing flexibility around working hours and encouraging employee involvement.
2. Building better work cultures (organisational resilience) - eg, encouraging a culture of flexibility, building a safe and positive work climate, implementing anti-bullying policies, enhancing organisational justice, promoting team-based interventions such as employee participation and providing group support, providing manager training and managing change effectively.
3. Building individual resilience - eg, providing resilience training, coaching and mentoring, and physical activity programs.
4. Promoting and facilitating early help-seeking - eg, conducting wellbeing checks once appropriate support and resources are in place, providing stress management for workers with reported stress, using Employee Assistance Programs which utilise experienced staff and evidence-based methods and peer support schemes.
5. Supporting recovery - eg, providing a supportive environment, providing supervisor support and training, facilitating flexible sick leave arrangements, providing return-to-work programs, encouraging individual placement support for those with severe mental illness.
6. Increasing awareness - eg, providing mental health education and training.

Five-step process for embedding a mentally healthy workplace, which requires an ongoing, staged approach:

1. Establishing commitment, leadership and support.
2. Conducting a situational analysis - looking at what is working and what isn’t.
3. Identifying and implementing the workplace mental health strategy.
4. Reviewing outcomes.
5. Adjusting intervention strategies.

Prof. Fels said: “Poor mental health is a significant burden on our economy. The direct financial impact of mental ill-health on Australian businesses is in the vicinity of $11 billion every year, largely due to absenteeism and reduced productivity.

“The opportunity cost of not promoting good mental health at work, and not supporting people who have mental illness or care for others who do, is therefore very, very high. Nonetheless, almost all of us have witnessed people and practices in the workplace that ignore the needs of individuals or sometimes the whole team, and the resulting impacts such as staff turnover, absenteeism, low productivity and poor morale.

“A lot of what the research confirms is common sense. For example, things like smarter work design and positive work cultures are key to preventing mental health problems, while promoting resilience and early intervention can both help minimise negative impacts and support recovery.

“In an economy struggling to increase productivity, reducing the huge impact of mental ill-health must be a priority. It’s important for businesses of all sizes to step up and take action, because you will only make things better, both for your people and for your bottom line,” Prof. Fels says.

Dr Sam Harvey, Black Dog Institute researcher and consultant psychiatrist, says improving workplace mental health will also have significant benefits for the wider community: “In Australia, about 60% of the population spends about 60 of their waking hours at work. This means workplaces are a prime location to base mental health programs.

"By implementing good quality mental health management across all levels of business, we will not only improve productivity but reduce the unacceptably high rates of mental ill-health among Australians.”

A summary and full report, ‘Developing a Mentally Healthy Workplace: A review of the literature’, is available for download at http://www.mentalhealthcommission.gov.au/media-centre/news/workplacementalhealthreport.aspx. It can also be accessed from www.blackdoginstitute.org.au and the Heads Up website (www.headsup.org.au) - a national initiative run by beyondblue in partnership with The Mentally Healthy Workplace Alliance.

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