May is Mental Health Awareness Month—it’s an excellent occasion to start working towards building a culture of mental health at work.

By Jennifer Gendron, Chief Commercial Officer, Koa Health - Employee Mental Health and Wellbeing Solutions

May marks Mental Health Awareness Month and Week (May 15-21). It’s an excellent occasion to raise awareness around mental health and mental health challenges and foster a culture of mental health in the workplace.

In a given year, 1 in 4 UK Adults^[1] struggle with mental health problems. Globally, poor mental health, specifically depression, and anxiety, are behind an estimated 12 billion workdays lost annually at a cost of $1 trillion.^[2] And those are just the numbers on the record—they don’t include the many workers who fear stigma or negative consequences and call in physically sick to hide their struggles with mental ill health.^[3]

Awareness is key. After all, acknowledgment is an essential first step in addressing any problem. But further action is required. Now, more than ever, people need practical support, and they expect their employers to help.

Moving beyond mental health awareness to action

To truly protect and prioritize mental wellbeing for an entire workforce, you’ll need a larger strategy to foster a lasting culture of mental health in your workplace. Here are a few key actions to consider to get started.

1. Reduce barriers and stigma

Practical barriers and stigma continue to keep your employees from getting the support they need. Over half of people don’t get help for clinical-level mental health challenges. A large majority (86%) cite their reasons for not seeking help as stigma, insufficient confidence in care, and a preference for self-help.^[4]

Help your workforce overcome stigma by incorporating mental health talk into your ways of working. Encourage open dialogue across channels (meetings, calls, and messaging systems) so everyone’s voice is heard. Check up on your workforce’s wellbeing regularly. Make putting people’s wellbeing first a working standard across departments and roles.

Round out this approach by facilitating access to discreet and self-guided options that empower your employees to take action and care for their mental health. When employees are equipped with the tools they need to get support in ways they are comfortable with, follow-through (and results) improve. Digitally-enabled options make it easy for people to access resources and care at the times and places that suit them.

2. Train leaders and managers to spot and signpost

Managers significantly affect the mental wellbeing of their direct reports. Given their influence and the time spent together, some impact is to be expected. However, for nearly 70% of employees,^[5] managers have more impact than an individual’s doctor or therapist and an effect equal to that of a romantic partner. And the same percentage would like their manager to take more action to support mental health.^[6]

Unfortunately, many managers haven’t been prepared. 33% of managers say they feel unprepared to support employees’ mental health.^[7] This makes sense, as many managers receive little to no mental health training but have been approached by employees they supervise about mental health issues.

3. Offer your employees practical, evidence-based tools they know they can trust

If your employees don’t feel confident in the effectiveness of the tools offered, they’re unlikely to use them. More than half of people don’t seek help for clinical-level challenges. Some of the top reasons they don’t take steps to access care are feeling unsure, needing more confidence in the care available, or needing more certainty about how/where to get help.^[8]

As an employer, it’s up to you to ensure that the tools you’re providing are evidence-based, engaging, and effective. Do this by checking into the team behind a solution, independent reviews, and studies of product or program effectiveness included in scientific publications.^[9]

You’ll also want to ask about a solution’s average uptake and utilization rates, including the frequency of usage. And finally, to ensure that a solution is worthy of your workforce’s trust, you’ll want to find a provider who’s publicly committed to using data ethically.^[10]

To learn more about best practices for raising awareness and building a culture of mental health at your workplace, download our Mental Health Awareness Toolkit.

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