Successfully incorporating mental health and wellbeing into your strategy

by Simon Brown-Greaves and Radhika Chelliah

An unknown Chinese philosopher once said – ‘we live in interesting times’.
One of the more recent ‘interesting’ issues has been the extraordinary rise of mental health as a significant workplace issue. This issue has progressed to the point where the mental health and wellbeing of your workforce should now be part of the strategic plan.

The state of mental health in Australia

Why are we surprised? In the broader community, we have seen a steady increase in the prevalence of diagnoses of anxiety and depression, and recent credible research conducted in Australia suggests that a significant number of young Australians identify as suffering from a mental health condition:

• Black Dog Institute (2024) noted that 32% of adolescents report having experienced extreme stress.
• Australian Bureau of Statistics (2023) noted that 42.9% of Australians aged 16-85 had experienced a mental disorder in their life, while 38.8% of those aged 16-24 had reported a 12-month disorder.

We are also now living in a world where some of the most recognised and trusted brands in Australia are mental health organisations such as Beyond Blue. More recently regulators are now introducing strict requirements in the domain of psychosocial risk – a concept that was largely unrecognised 15 years ago. Many Australian businesses are also wrestling with the concept of legislating a ‘right to disconnect’, an idea that took root in Europe over a decade ago but is now part of the Australian legislative framework. Whichever way we look at this issue it has well and truly impacted organisations and in turn created a need to address the mental health and wellbeing of our people.

The role of workplaces in addressing mental health and wellbeing

Our work with our client organisations is clearly indicating that these issues are now playing out in a number of ways. Workers’ compensation data from Safe Work Australia now highlights that mental health claims are significantly escalating, increases in industrial issues linking mental health to safety concerns; and widespread adoption of terms such as ‘psychological safety’ has the potential to contribute to quasi-industrial campaigns and can be correlated with a reduction in leaders’ confidence to deal with these complex issues. In our experience, this is often connected with a genuine desire to make the workplace welcoming and inclusive in a way that enables people to bring their ‘whole self’ to work. Research data links absenteeism, productivity, turnover, and morale to the wellbeing of the workforce, creating a compelling business case to focus on employee mental health. Further, there is a growing recognition of the need to identify and mitigate particular occupational risks and hazards that have traditionally been seen as just ‘part of the job’. Recent high-profile cases send a clear message that this historical approach is no longer acceptable (e.g. WorkSafe v CSV ; Kozarov v State of Victoria)

So – what does a contemporary workplace need to consider in order to address these evolving trends?

Integrating mental health and wellbeing into the strategic planning process

At Right Lane Consulting, we think that the starting point is to integrate mental health and wellbeing into an organisational strategic planning process. There are three things we suggest:

1. Set optimal mental health and wellbeing as a goal

During your next strategic planning discussion, set optimal mental health and wellbeing as a goal, and incorporate relevant measures and initiatives. This approach is not only efficient, but ensures that the mental health and wellbeing of the workforce is seen as an important factor in achieving the business strategy.

2. Focus on positive concepts

It is critical to avoid taking a solely compliance-based approach. Our take on contemporary and evidence based research as well as our direct experience in working with organisations to address this issue suggests that we are best served by a strategy that focuses on positive concepts such as wellbeing and mental health rather than deficit models that focus on ill health and disorder.

3. Take a holistic approach that supports prevention and intervention

It is important to take a holistic view based on the notion that an effective mental health strategy is largely focused on understanding and mitigating the specific workplace risks to worker health and wellbeing. It is equally important to provide support and post hoc interventions when team members are struggling with their wellbeing.

Most organisations now have some form of responsive counselling service – an EAP (employee assistance program) which has evolved rapidly over the last 10 years. Good EAP programs provide trend data and valuable insights into the workforce and its specific mental health and wellbeing issues. They have also diversified to provide a range of ancillary and at times proactive programs – from financial counselling to specialist support for workers with diverse cultures and backgrounds.

However, the integration of a clear preventive strategy into the overarching plan is less common.

Prevention has a number of key elements – do we have a clear understanding of our obligations and requirements in terms of the new compliance landscape? Have we examined our psychosocial risk data to accurately determine the most important roles and activities that may place our people in psychological harm’s way?

The good news is that these risks are generally well known and most likely have incident or survey data that points to those that are most relevant. Regulators are now collecting and reporting on the most likely psychosocial risks that underpin mental health claims data – these include (unsurprisingly) bullying and harassment; occupational violence; exposure to emotionally charged or disturbing content, and of course, breakdowns in workplace relationships.

Right Lane Consulting’s framework for considering mental health and wellbeing

Our framework identifies the enablers and elements to consider when incorporating mental health and wellbeing into your strategy. The core enabler which underpins the strategy is awareness of mental health and wellbeing within the organisation and accessibility to support. This forms a strong foundation for the four elements and four enablers of a good mental health strategy, as outlined below.

component of an effective mental health and wellbeing strategy is the importance of supporting supervisors and middle managers to understand their role when it comes to staff wellbeing and mental health. Building confidence and capability for this cohort is critical and underpins many of the other elements of the plan. Communicating the plan to all team members in a way that is engaging and accessible is also important.

Commitment to a preventative approach can be complex and inevitably requires focus on job/role design and collaborative approaches to pre-empting psychosocial risks rather than simply ‘picking up the pieces’ later. The benefits of this approach, however, are measurable and impactful with a growing library of case studies in the Australian context where a collaborative and consultative approach has led to the reduction of hazards and better management of psychosocial risk. Positive flow-on effects include lower claim numbers and costs and improvements in employee engagement and morale.

Get in touch if you would like to learn more.