A majority of workplaces do not have a mental health strategy
The Covid-19 pandemic's disruptions of traditional office dynamics forced more companies to consider workers' well-being. The progress made since then still isn't enough, per a recent study.
Boards of directors are not engaged in mental health strategies, and C-suite members don't model healthy behaviors, according to the annual report One Mind published this spring. The Napa, California-based nonprofit pulled data from 91 organizations' self-assessments, representing feedback from about 2.5 million workers at employers of all sizes and industries.
Three out of four companies do not have a mental health strategy, per the index One Mind developed. That's the core struggle for most firms trying to improve mental health among workers, explained CEO Kathy Pike at a recent briefing for journalists hosted by the National Press Foundation. Only 60% of executives say they've established mental health as a priority.
'When you don't have a mental health strategy and you don't know what problem you're solving for,' Pike told journalists, 'it's very hard to know whether what you're doing matters.'
Eighty-six percent of firms have at least one executive tasked with overseeing this strategy. But that's often a 'default' plan that Pike said can backfire on a company.
'That's the most expensive strategy because when you don't pay attention to mental health and well-being,' said Pike, who's also a psychology professor at Columbia University, 'the cost to your people and the cost to your organization are unknown risks to you and not calculated.'
Pike outlined at the briefing more downsides to ad hoc policies, the need to give employees holistic resources and the necessity of data to substantiate it all.
Collecting quality data is necessary for change
When you don't have a mental health strategy and you don't know what problem you're solving for, it's very hard to know whether what you're doing matters.
Kathy Pike
One Mind focuses on collecting and analyzing data about employers' wellness practices, as well as helping organizations implement the best methods. Pike believes that other firms need to set similar priorities to get this data about themselves, lest they lose what mental health programs they do offer.
'If you don't have data to demonstrate that what you're doing matters … you're going to be at the front of the line for the chopping block,' Pike explained.
She acknowledged the overall lack of data on workplace mental health, which puts many business leaders at a loss for where to start building their strategy.
Data is important for tracking impact and guiding decisions, per Pike, especially because many workplace leaders get thrown into leading mental health programs with little to no clinical training.
'We want leadership to have data to guide their decisions,' she said, 'so that they spend their time … in ways that are going to have the greatest impact.'
Moving beyond simply 'providing'
Pike sees fostering wellness as divided into three aspects: provide, protect and promote.
Historically, 'provide' is the sole component focused on in workplace mental health. That means providing guidance for treatment or information, per Pike.
But there's a lot more to wellness strategy, she asserted. Employers need to protect their workers from potential harm or negative impacts stemming from their work. Promoting healthy habits is also key, through actions like offering flexible work times.
Leaders struggle with modeling healthy habits, per the index. Just 41% of them say they set positive examples.
But leaders are essential to fostering healthy working environments, Pike explained, through their role in such essential functions as structuring the workday and how communications about promotions or raises take place, for example.
'If you don't have leadership support, it's just not going to survive and have the real impact that you want,' she said.
The top of the corporate hierarchy similarly struggles to embed workplace mental health into its governance. Boards are not involved in mental health strategy, per the index — just one in 10 boards surveyed have formally defined roles related to it.
Leaders are overwhelmed by individual solutions
Pike found that HR professionals specifically get inundated by products claiming to be the solution for their employees' mental health.
But workplaces need systemic, not pinpointed, solutions, she said. Those solutions include normalizing difficult conversations about stress and resilience.
Products or tech focused on single conditions or issues are not going to change the overall landscape, per Pike.
'If your workers were your garden, and the majority of your plants were wilting, you wouldn't pick one up and say, 'What's wrong with this plant?'' Pike said, adding: 'You would understand that there's something wrong with the conditions.'
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