Where to Now? Developing Psychological Wellbeing at Work

By Tasha Broomhall

To develop a positive mental health culture, organisations need to acknowledge the issues, make commitments to improve their knowledge, and facilitate skill development to ensure that employees can take responsibility for their own mental health and wellbeing. Organisations need to strive to meet their legal and moral obligations to support employees battling with mental health issues, and not cause them harm through ignorance or ineptitude.

Developing a Positive Mental Health Culture Do you want to improve your organisation’s mental health culture? Consider the following actions:

1. Start by giving your organisation a mental health check up:

• How big is your risk of psychological injury? (see suggestions over the following pages to assist with this)

• What measures can you identify which indicate risk? Absenteeism, disputes and complaints, morale issues, worker’s compensation claims (stress), EAP usage, etc.

2. Assess your organisation’s mental health culture:

• Do your supervisors and managers know how to recognise and respond to mental health issues?

• Do your employees know how to prevent their own risk of psychological injury?

3. Develop an organisational plan for minimising psychological injury and managing mental health issues in the workplace.

• Include a clear organisational policy, procedure and accountabilities. This should include:

• Steps for non-discrimination in recruitment and employment;

• Suggestions for reasonable adjustments for any functional impacts;

• Protocols for confidentiality; and

• Suggestions as to how to engage the employee in the planning and implementation of their individual supports.

• Ensure that all employees with supervisory or management roles are confident in the implementation of the policies and procedures and that they can be advocates for improving the workplace mental health and wellbeing culture.

4. Implement this plan with appropriate education and training for all employees and monitor your organisation’s mental health culture annually, or sooner if warranted by circumstance. The goals of these programs are to reduce stigma and increase employees’ capacity to support others experiencing mental health issues, as well as to enhance their own mental health and wellbeing. Education and awareness raising can be achieved through many techniques such as:

• Workplace posters

• Information on the organisation’s intranet

• Lunch and learn sessions with guest speakers

• Participation in events such as Mental Health Week

• Articles in newsletters

• Formalised in-house stigma busting and skill building training programs

Such techniques are most effective when implemented with a multi-modal approach.

This is an edited extract from the book Bloom! At Work written by Tasha Broomhall. The book is available for purchase at www.bloomingminds.com.au/shop.