Specialist
Although mental wellbeing has been high on the news agenda during the pandemic, it continues to be underestimated as a factor in longer-term organisational resilience.
Few organisations are likely to have drafted mental health risk assessments for their post-pandemic return to “normality”.
However, organisations have certainly taken mental health more seriously over the last 18 months of lockdown and social distancing restrictions. The response of many companies has been to utilise employee assistance programmes and provide access to outsourced professional wellbeing services.
Though commendable, the push to improve mental resilience must go further. With experts warning of the lasting impact of the pandemic, the scale of the problem means it’s not going to disappear once the Covid pandemic is under control.
One cultural problem is that although organisations have invested in employee assistance programmes, boardrooms often view wellbeing as a matter for HR – a purely transactional function, ancillary to their main purpose of ensuring the company has a productive and talented workforce. In fact, wellbeing should be at the centre of organisational initiatives to increase resilience – resilience being a major competitive advantage.
HR needs to take the lead and ensure wellbeing is taken up as a priority by the boardroom and senior managers. The benefit is that business leaders will see it as a strategic pillar of greater resilience which they can reinforce across the whole organisation.
A change in the common view of wellbeing will be necessary first, however. Currently, many efforts to boost mental resilience focus purely on time at work. Yet work time accounts for only perhaps a quarter of our lives. Effective intervention requires a more holistic approach, acknowledging that people’s experiences outside work have a huge effect on their wellbeing and performance as employees. It’s naïve to think that someone whose child is very ill, is going through a divorce or who has suffered significant financial losses can entirely compartmentalise the experience and that it will not eventually impact their work performance.
This is why support for individuals has to be layered into an organisation. Coupled with effective HR management systems, two-way conversations will open up about more aspects of an employee’s life – not just work. It’s not a question of interrogating someone but giving them a chance to open up to their line manager and have more open and honest conversations. The advantage of a contemporary system with video and scheduled check-ins (especially with a remote or hybrid workforce) is that it is easier to judge changes in someone’s mood if you can also see their expression or body language.
The purpose is to allow for positive but informal intervention at the early stages – providing an opportunity to listen and support someone who may be suffering from stress, anxiety or who may have suicidal thoughts. After listening, colleagues can direct the person suffering to a source of informed advice or counselling. That could mean encouraging them to access an employee assistance programme or referring them to people trained in suicide prevention. That help can make a real difference. Where necessary, HR can support the organisation’s leaders by signposting the route to professional advice or more formal therapeutic interventions.
Of course, it is not easy to get all employees to open up. Mental health issues still carry a stigma and some employees may be reluctant to admit to any symptoms. The boardroom needs to take a lead, changing an organisation’s culture positively by speaking about “mental health injuries” and the importance of being open about the topic. All employees at every level should feel they can discuss mental health problems in the way they might talk about a sprained ankle or the flu.
C-level executives need to consider mental wellbeing and resilience as much more than something purely for HR. HR professionals on the other hand should empower members of the senior leadership team with the confidence to see wellbeing as a business priority and to speak out about it. In the process HR will elevate its own role, becoming more strategic, contributing to the overall resilience and competitiveness of the organisation. As we emerge from the restrictions brought about by the pandemic, organisations that take mental resilience more seriously are far more likely to have more productive and stable workforces.
By Eamon Rheinisch, General Manager at MHR Ireland