Now is the Time For Employers to Make Mental Health an Organizational Priority
By Bryon Bass, CLMS, Incoming CEO, DMEC
Employers have laid the groundwork to support employee health and well-being, and must now act in different ways to ensure the mental and physical health of their teams. It is an important safety issue as well as a production issue. In fact, it’s a survival issue. And it can be influenced by absence and disability managers.
As absence and disability experts, we know employee mental health is a foundational aspect of every organization’s success. We see how mental health influences accommodation requests, leave durations, and return-to-work time frames. It affects everything from productivity to performance. What we haven’t acknowledged as readily is that we can have a positive influence on employee mental health. It requires a seat at the table for benefit discussions and selections, and while that may not have been a role we had in the past, it’s one we must have in the future.
A panel of mental health professionals emphasized the need for change and asked for action during the 2023 DMEC Annual Conference. “Too often employers have [turned] a blind eye or have overlooked the ways in which their environment is influencing employee mental health,” Joe Grasso, PhD, senior director, Workforce Transformation, Lyra Health, told hundreds of attendees. Grasso and three other panelists encouraged attendees to assess work environments and corporate cultures — to evaluate risks and engage employees in identifying solutions, which may not cost a dime.
And we agree. It’s time for a new approach that puts mental health as well as physical safety at the forefront of everything employers do. It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s imperative to ensure future organizational success.
Mental health is a priority for the Surgeon General, who published a Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being,1 which comprises five essential practices for employers of every size. I will not review the data, which proves that we are in a mental health crisis. You have seen the data, and it’s startling, to say the least. We have traveled that road and must take a different turn. Making mental health an organizational priority makes sense. Changing the way we approach it will have a meaningful difference.
Shifting the Dynamic
The good news is that having a positive effect on employee mental health is not as difficult as you might think. Encouraging managers to pay more attention to what they see and hear could make all the difference in the world, explained Paula Allen, global leader and senior vice president, Research and Client Insights, TELUS Health, in a recent DMEC podcast2 episode. Allen doesn’t recommend that managers be counselors; instead she emphasizes that they “be human” — to offer to help the employee get support and not to ignore the signs.
Employers are already making a difference, and we have documented some of those efforts in articles and podcast episodes.3 These examples prove that it’s possible to help prevent and mitigate mental health issues, and they show a financial (as well as personal) return on investment. This is especially true when you consider that the bulk of [mental health] disease burden comes from everyday working and living situations, not serious mental illness, as noted by Adrita Bhattacharya-Craven, program director, Health and Aging, The Geneva Association, during the DMEC Annual Conference. “We need to do things differently, and we need to get in there much, much sooner,” she said.
She suggested making changes to benefit designs and coverage expansion. Those changes can make an important difference in workplaces, especially those that address self-, public, and systemwide stigma; encourage talking openly and honestly about mental health; and support and fund mental health employee resource groups.4
To help employers shift their focus and invest in mental health prevention like they invest in employees’ physical safety, DMEC is hosting the 2024 DMEC Virtual Mental Health Conference Jan. 23-25. We have opened registration for this event, which features proven strategies, guidance on developing budgets, tips for benchmarking program success, and examples of practical approaches that work. I hope to see you there.
We have passed the point of socializing the need to address mental health differently in employment settings. We must get in front of this issue to have a positive effect. And we’re ready.
Resources
- Health and Human Services. The Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being. Retrieved from https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/workplace-well-being/index.html#framework
- Absence Management Perspectives: A DMEC Podcast. Retrieved from www.dmec.org/podcast
- Using Technology to Promote Engagement with Mental Health Offerings. Jan. 22, 2023. Retrieved from https://dmec.org/2023/01/22/employer-showcase-technology-mental-health-offerings/
- ERGs Help Break Down Mental Health Stigma by Engaging and Supporting Employees. Aug. 24, 2022. Retrieved from https://dmec.org/2022/08/24/ergs-help-break-down-mental-health-stigma-by-engaging-and-supporting-employees/