Being busy is part of our modern world. At work, employees often juggle multiple responsibilities, as they face growing demands on their time and attention. In this never-ending treadmill of busyness, it’s easy for individuals to neglect their mental health.
Here’s where HR can step in to help promote employee mental wellness within organisations. In this article, we explore the various roles and responsibilities of HR professionals in employee mental health, along with action steps and strategic changes they can make to foster a positive work environment.
Before diving into the role that HR plays in promoting employee mental wellness, let’s first understand more about employee mental health.
Employee mental health refers to the psychological, social and emotional wellbeing of individuals in a shared work environment. It is helpful to think about mental health on a spectrum—and where employees lie on the spectrum at a given point in time can be affected by numerous factors, including workplace stressors.
These stressors are reduced when employees work at mentally healthy organisations. Such companies offer a positive work environment, and often demonstrate the following:
HR plays a multifaceted role in promoting employee mental health at the workplace. You’re responsible for:
Fostering mental wellbeing in the workplace goes beyond a single, isolated initiative or programme. Instead, organisations need to implement comprehensive strategies that address multiple aspects of employee wellness.
This requires careful planning, and HR plays an integral role during the strategic planning and development stage. You need to work with key stakeholders—including the leadership team, managers, mental health professionals and wellness experts—to conceptualise strategies that are tailored to the specific needs of your workforce.
During this stage, HR collaborates closely with the leadership team and other relevant stakeholders to define clear, measurable goals and objectives.
You need to ensure that all mental health initiatives or programmes implemented at your workplace are aligned with the long-term organisational goals—such as boosting productivity, reducing employee turnover or minimising healthcare costs.
Measuring employee wellbeing can be difficult, particularly at large organisations where employers or HR professionals aren’t able to communicate with individual employees directly.
To keep your fingers on the pulse of employee wellness, you need to look into gathering and monitoring data—such as employee demographics, their health concerns and lifestyle preferences—on a regular basis.
There are various ways to accomplish this. Running focus groups or 1-on-1 interviews can provide qualitative insights, and help you better understand the general state of mental wellbeing among employees.
Anonymous surveys are also a useful tool, as these can encourage employees to openly share their concerns. With proper structuring, surveys can help you gain insights into important factors—such as daily stressors employees face, how they cope with mental health issues, and how they feel about existing wellness initiatives at your organisation.
HR takes on several roles during the implementation stage. These include:
There are two objectives that HR needs to fulfil during this stage: you’re aiming to promote the importance of mental health at the workplace, as well as generate awareness of employee mental health initiatives implemented at your organisation.
Crafting clear and concise messages that underline the mental health benefits of participating in these initiatives is key. You’ll also need to ensure that you’re utilising the right communication channels, and catering your messages to reach different employee demographic groups.
To keep employees engaged, consider leveraging testimonials from past participants who have benefitted from participating in mental health initiatives. Sharing regular updates or reminders can also help employees remain motivated.
A comprehensive wellness programme addresses multiple dimensions of employee health and wellness. These include:
In an article for People Management, writer and wellness expert Oliver Henry offers a suggestion for HR professionals: consider running a wellbeing strategy day at your workplace.
This event provides an opportunity for HR to engage directly with employees, learn about the stressors that are impacting their mental health, and identify areas where they require more support.
During the event, you may also take the time to communicate about your organisation’s wellness objectives, along with employee mental health policies or initiatives that you plan to implement across the year.
By equipping individuals with the necessary knowledge and skills, HR can help nurture a welcoming workplace environment that supports mental health concerns.
Opting for mental health platforms that offer personalised support to employees at all levels is key, as different employee groups have unique learning needs.
While workshops that equip individuals with skills on managing stress or coping with mental health issues will benefit employees across the organisations, training sessions for managers should focus on other aspects. These may include knowledge on how to identify signs of poor mental health or distress, have supportive conversations at the workplace, or guide employees towards relevant resources.
HR plays a central role in ensuring that employees have access to resources that support their mental wellbeing.
And here’s where ThoughtFull comes into the picture. We work with HR professionals to deliver a holistic end-to-end mental health solution for organisations. Our offerings range from unlimited 1-on-1 coaching with a certified professional, to curated wellness resources and wellbeing trackers and assessment. Employees can access support whenever they need it, thanks to the easy accessibility of our platform.
HR also plays a critical part in increasing employee access to mental health resources. To do that, you need to serve as a point of contact for individuals seeking information on mental health support.
This can be achieved through consolidating mental health resources onto a website, providing personalised guidance to help employees make informed decisions, raising awareness of workplace mental health issues and creating more opportunities for wellbeing conversations at work.
Fostering an inclusive work environment is key to promoting mental wellbeing at work. When there is a lack of inclusivity, a toxic culture—where individuals display non-inclusive behaviours like microaggressions—can emerge. These behaviours may leave employees feeling undervalued, and adversely impact their mental health.
To promote inclusivity at work, HR professionals can start with developing and implementing inclusive policies. These may range from flexible work arrangements and fair hiring and compensation practices, to policies on anti-discrimination and harassment.
Educating the workforce about diversity and inclusion is important too. These trainings can help raise awareness about mental health challenges faced by individuals from diverse backgrounds, and enable employees to become more aware of their own biases.
The way in which work is designed or organised can have a significant impact on employee wellness.
Studies have shown that having low control in the work environment is associated with higher rates of heart disease. By implementing strategic changes to workplace conditions, HR can bring about improved outcomes such as reduced burnout and higher levels of employee wellbeing.
It can be daunting to think about redesigning the way employees work, but keep in mind that even making small changes can leave an impact.
Consider the following approaches:
This can extend into various aspects of an employee’s role. Consider giving employees more control over their career advancement, by letting them have a say in their learning and development opportunities within the company.
Or rethink how annual reviews are conducted at your organisation. Instead of traditional performance evaluations, think about how you can incorporate employee feedback to turn the process into a two-way conversation.
Creating an environment where employees can nurture positive relationships is an important factor for supporting their mental health. Various studies point towards this, showing that workplace social support can help reduce psychological distress, prevent burnout syndrome and improve employee mental health.
Seeking input from employees across the organisation can help build a sense of belonging.
Conducting regular off-site activities, such as volunteering or team retreats are important too, as these events enable employees across diverse backgrounds and roles to come together.
We’ve elaborated on the multifaceted role that HR plays in promoting employee mental health, and highlighted action steps and strategies you can implement.
To recap, here’s a quick sum up of what we’ve discussed:
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