EXCLUSIVE: More than two-thirds (67%) of respondents’ organisations have specific benefits and strategies in place to support their employees’ mental health, according to research by Employee Benefits and Health Shield.
While narrower in scope, it is telling that when respondents to Employee Benefits’ Healthcare research between 2001 and 2013 were asked if they had a specific strategy in place to address workplace stress, positive responses fluctuated between 28% and 52%, peaking in 2012.
However, with 33% of respondents in 2017 stating that they do not currently have a mental health strategy, there is still work to be done.
Encouragingly, the Employee Benefits/Health Shield Healthcare research 2017, which surveyed 121 employer respondents in July 2017, also found that among those respondents that do not have a strategy, 41% are planning to introduce one but do not yet know what form it will take, and 35% are in the process of designing a strategy to support the mental health of staff.
Mental health in the workplace also falls within the scope of the government’s proposed package of mental health reforms. In January 2017, the government announced that a review, led by Lord Dennis Stevenson, a mental health campaigner, and Paul Farmer CBE, chief executive officer at Mind and chair of the NHS Mental Health Taskforce, would examine how best to improve support for employees with mental health problems.
The review will involve best-practice sharing, practical support and tools to enable organisations to address mental health in the workplace, as well as recommendations around workplace discrimination on the grounds of mental health.
Read the full Employee Benefits/Health Shield Healthcare research 2017.
