Employee mental health and wellbeing is a growing concern. The WorkforceMHQ helps you get strategic about selecting the best path for your organization, to improve mental health in the workplace.

Whether or not you feel that your industry is high-pressured or carries a high risk of mental health concerns, the prevalence of mental health challenges in the general population means that no organization is immune to its consequences.  Among the general working population, it is estimated that 18% of all employees suffer from mental health challenges in any one year This number grows to almost 30% in terms of lifetime prevalence, meaning that nearly one-third of all people will experience a significant mental health episode at some point in their lives. And with evidence highlighting the direct costs of mental health as well as the impact of mental health on productivity, engagement and staff retention, making employee wellbeing a priority makes good business sense.  

But where should you start? With all the employee wellness programs available these days, how do you know which ones would be the best fit for your organization?  Are they even appropriate at all? 

You can’t manage what you don’t measure 

It’s hard to manage something you don’t measure.  You need to first know where you stand as an organization to know what you need to do and then be able to track whether your efforts were effective.  The best place to start, therefore, is with measurement. Only by understanding the unique challenges that your workforce is facing can you start to address them efficiently and maximizing your return in investment.  

This is why we developed the WorkforceMHQ. It’s an assessment tool designed to make it easier for organizations like yours to understand the mental wellbeing of your workforce and to identify which workplace factors are impacting employee wellbeing so you can design strategies tailored to the needs and demands of your own organization.  

How it works 

The Workforce MHQ is an assessment and reporting tool that measures the mental health and wellbeing of your workforce, giving you aggregated insights across different departments, locations, and jobs roles, and benchmarking these against the general population. This helps you identify areas of strength as well as any risk areas across your workforce.    These strengths and risk areas are then tied to various workplace factors, which are also assessed, so that you can see where there are associations, giving you a blueprint to work with when designing a workforce wellbeing strategy.  

Metrics and risk profiles 

The organization report that you will receive provides you with an overall mental wellbeing or MHQ score, as well as subscores across various dimensions of mental wellbeing such as mood & outlook and drive & motivation benchmarked to the general population.  In addition to organization level metrics, the report also provides scores segmented across different locations, job roles and departments, depending on your customized setup. These come along with risk profiles across the ten most common mental health disorders. 

Knowing the specific challenges and risk profiles of different segments of your workforce will help you get more targeted and specific about what you offer.  The risk profiles of factory workers may be substantially different from those of managers. Similarly, the challenges of one age group may be substantially different from another.  

Moving towards targeted strategies 

Alongside these outcome metrics, you will also be provided with strategies and recommendations based on your specific workforce profile. These can be at various levels.  Primary strategies address root causes that drive mental health risks and could include things like suggestions to changes in the structure of certain benefits or workplace environment or addressing psychosocial and cultural aspects of the workplace.  Secondary strategies focus on possible support interventions for specific groups such as workplace fitness or therapy programs.  Tertiary strategies involve mechanisms to treat and handle those with clinical diagnoses. 

Once you have implemented these strategies, you can measure again to determine how much your efforts moved the needle and improve mental wellbeing in your workplace.  

What it involves 

After working with you to customize the WorkforceMHQ for your specific organization, employees are asked to complete the WorkforceMHQ assessment online, answering a range of questions covering 47 different aspects of mental wellbeing, and are also asked about their job and workplace. The assessment takes only 15 minutes to fill in and is anonymous, encouraging honest responses. The employee is also provided with an individual score profile and recommendations based on their score, so that they can take personal steps to improve their mental health and wellbeing as necessary. 

 Take the next step to manage mental wellbeing in the workplace

Ultimately, no two organizations are the same. And only by understanding the unique profile of your own workforce, can you become more strategic on mental wellbeing,  laying the groundwork for a strong, healthy, productive, and engaged workforce, now and well into the future.  

 

If you would like to learn more about Workforce MHQ, reach out today to schedule a conversation.