Mental health is one of the wellness industry’s hot-button topics of research and discussion. Its pervasiveness preceded Covid: a 2019 survey from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that fully 1 in 4 Americans had a mental or substance use disorder. The pandemic, and quarantine efforts, simply made mental health a front-page issue. If your organization wants to retain its employees, prioritize their mental wellness. You can do so by assessing their needs, enhancing your extant support services, designing mental wellness challenges, and leveraging Givhero’s employee wellness app.
A review of effective personal wellness challenges and other mental health initiatives can help foster your organization’s approach to employee well-being:
Assess Employees’ Needs
During a recent McKinsey & Company survey, nearly half of surveyed workers felt their organization lacked proper mental health support, while 65% of employers said the opposite. In light of this disconnect, you can start addressing your office’s mental health concerns by gauging them with appropriate resources.
This step calls for organizational leadership, probably in the form of a human resources manager or representatives from several departments. Consider assigning this person or team to all of your organization’s mental wellness programming moving forward. Doing so makes it a professional responsibility and illustrates your commitment to employees’ wellness.
To get feedback on employee mental health concerns, consider using a Health Risk Assessment (HRA). HRAs are questionnaires distributed to all employees that give them a chance to discuss their anxieties. Your human resources or managerial team can then use these responses to craft effective wellness programming.
Enhance Mental Health Resources
You can further support employees’ mental health by enhancing the resources your organization currently offers. For instance, many large organizations provide Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and/or telehealth counseling services. Yet research indicates that a majority of employees struggle to access or identify available options.
Employees’ most commonly reported barriers include a lack of insurance coverage (and/or confusion over which services are covered), difficulty locating covered providers, and long appointment waiting lists. However, your organization can guide or mitigate many of these obstacles.
For instance, the human resources manager or mental wellness team can communicate the services of your organization’s EAP: short-term counseling, professional medical referrals, etc. They can also help struggling employees connect with telehealth services, which deliver flexibility and accessibility that traditional, in-person counseling can lack. Furthermore, they can explore and implement mental wellness challenges through a digital wellness app.
Implement Mental Wellness Challenges
Perhaps the most direct health measure your organization can take, adopting and implementing mental wellness challenges delivers on your commitment to employee health. This step alone can improve company culture and create an inclusive space free from stigma. Both employees and managers can feel free to discuss their concerns and ideas.
Nevertheless, challenges also require careful planning and organization. You and your wellness coordinator or wellness committee must iron out the programming itself: what activities will it revolve around? Popular ideas include 30-day wellness challenges, such as Mental Health America’s #4Mind4Body initiative. This challenge calls for participants to make small changes to their habits each day.
If you prefer to set up programming for your organization alone, you and your team could try a daily meditation or journaling challenge. Moreover, you can encourage employee engagement by tying participation to charitable giving. Givhero’s social wellness app helps you do just that.
Set Goals and Create Accountability
Capitalize on all your hard work by setting goals for employees’ mental wellness and creating accountability to reach those goals. Boosting employees’ health has several benefits, and you may miss out on such benefits if you haven’t created proper goals.
What those goals look like differs from office to office. Some may want to see an increase in reported employee satisfaction or workplace productivity. Others may gauge their progress by healthcare costs and employee retention. We suggest examining your employees’ HRAs and setting goals based on particular pain points that they identify.
If you make employee engagement a goal for your organization, Givhero’s wellness platform will help you measure it. Employees can use the app to report and track the progress of their wellness goals. Additionally, the app delivers reports to managers on program progress in real-time. With the intrinsic motivator of charitable giving tied in, employees can improve their health and wellness while also making your organization a better place to work.
Support Mental Health and Well-being Through Workplace Wellness Challenges!
Despite the challenges our workforce has faced over the past few years, employers have learned the impact of mental health on the workplace. Now, they can make it a priority by assessing their staff’s needs, enhancing their services, and implementing mental wellness challenges. Moreover, they can use Givhero’s social wellness app to engage employees in their efforts and organize company-wide initiatives. Givhero provides an infrastructure for employees and management teams to run wellness programs. Learn more about our services today by calling (240) 801-5927 or setting up an appointment with a representative now!
