“People are stressed, both at home and at work, and there needs to be a different level of dialogue around the importance of wellbeing. We need to create a space where people are talking about mental health — whether that means more education around the topic in group discussions or making sure everyone feels comfortable having one-on-one conversations with their leaders or peers. We’re getting closer to where we need to be, but as a society, there’s more work we need to do to fully normalize this topic.” — Stephen Shea, EY Managing Partner, Talent

It’s never been easy being in HR. 

Before COVID-19, HR wore a lot of hats and was at the forefront of policies set by leadership. The uncertainty of COVID-19 has not only threatened health and economy, but also your organization and employees. After COVID-19, HR continues to be challenged and in need to adapt to the new workplace landscape while retaining its top employees.

Employees have never been more stressed – the “Echo pandemic” to workforce mental health is upon us for the past year.

According to Starling’s data, collected from over 4000+ members within our COVID-19 program: 

• COVID-19 has deeply impacted 79% of people’s lives
• In some professions like educators and healthcare workers, 60% say their anxiety has increased significantly
• 45% say this is due to: Major life-altering changes and disruptions (i.e. reduced hours, partner job loss, health concerns) and struggling with a lot of uncertainty

Despite the steady rise in employee mental health conditions:

• 50% will not get the mental health support they need to be resilient and healthy at work
• 65% doesn’t feel their workplace offers benefits or programs will support them

HR professionals are trying to keep up with all the changes while keeping their business plans and strategies aligned, but it’s not easy.  Leaders continue to be in crisis response mode, dealing with employee engagement as they work to monitor the impacts of work-from-home policies.

The top challenges faced by top HR experts as they deal with as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic include:

1. Pace of Workforce Changes
2. Managing Information and Misinformation
3. Being Responsive to Employee Needs
4. Balancing Employee Wellbeing and Customer Experience
5. Job Workload and New Stresses

Pace of Workforce Changes

For working HR leaders today, COVID-19 was an unprecedented global event that continues to persist. In the midst of contingency, resource, and scenario planning, HR policies were constantly getting revised to keep up with the latest practices to combat the long-term impacts of COVID-19, both physically and mentally.  

“There was a lot of work being done, but everything could change the next day and you may need to throw away all your work out the window. There was really no blueprint, and we are making up new policies as we go, trying to figure out what’s best for our organization and employees. In the midst of contingency and resource planning, we are also dealing with the vast array of employee emotions and personal reactions.” — Shiah Bazeley, VP of People and Culture, Daiya Foods

“The biggest challenge is transitioning and maintaining employee wellness and team culture despite remote working conditions. The technology may have been in place, but organizations rely on a culture of teaming, which was based on collaboration, inner interaction, physical interaction, etc.” — Stephen Shea, EY Managing Partner, Talent

Managing Information and Misinformation

With the sheer volume of information at your fingertips, managing information, fake news, grapevine gossip, and myths became a critical part of helping employees navigate the uncertainty they were all feeling then, now, and beyond COVID-19. Many HR leaders received floods of emails from concerned employees in the middle of the night, asking questions that you don’t have the answers to. It’s a difficult position to be in as employees often look to their HR and leadership for clarity and guidance. 

“I would wake up to emails with employees saying they were scared to come into work, but had to in order to make money. It was hard to manage. An employee would read a Facebook post about a local mall outbreak and would be scared to work because one of their colleague’s husbands works there. So we also have to manage a lot of gossip on top of everything else.” – Shiah Bazeley, VP of People and Culture, Daiya Foods

FACT: Starling Minds found that usage in our mental health platform increased by almost three-fold during COVID-19, with engagement spiking in the morning and early afternoon.

Being Responsive to Employee Needs

For many organizations delivering essential services, it was critical to develop responsive, practical, and smart policies to ensure employees were physically and psychologically safe in the workplace, during and after the pandemic. But it was challenging as employee and customer reactions were mostly unpredictable, and information about new variants continued to evolve and change.

“At the beginning of the lockdown, we had a customer who recently came back from Mexico and he needed to do some banking. We had signage everywhere saying, “Don’t come in if you’ve been outside of Canada.” This member proceeded to tell our service advisor that they would be quick and it was no big deal. Our employee was terrified and felt threatened for their own safety, but wanted to help the customer. So, being responsive with your policies throughout all phases of the pandemic is critical in resolving that situation, making employees feel safe and certain; having senior leadership on the ground to help make a huge difference. — Brieann Spencer, Senior Leadership and Learning Advisor, First West Credit Union

Balancing Employee Wellbeing and Customer Experience

Before COVID-19, smart business practices revolved around how to create exceptional customer experiences. But with COVID-19, priorities constantly shifted to try and balance the needs of employees and customers which can be hard for leaders to do. Without exceptional customer services and practices, customers may leave but it may cost you your best employees in the long run. Smart businesses try and revise their workforce policies to support employee wellbeing, but it would take leadership to help drive up adoption, again difficult when many people are working from home. 

“During the beginning of the lockdown, many of our customers needed us to digitize a lot of their processes, but it opened up a whole new can of worms. It wasn’t about, “Do we have work?”. It was like, “How do we manage every day so we’re not putting in 24 hours a day because we are sacrificing ourselves for our customers.” – Manu Varma, VP of People and Culture, Traction on Demand

Job Workload and New Stresses

As an HR professional, you’ve dealt with people who have had these life-changing events before, but you’ve never dealt with the entire group for a long period of time. You take it on yourself to help as many employees as you can, but with a vast array of employee emotions, responses, and circumstances it’s hard to keep up on top of drafting new workplace policies while maintaining existing processes – especially after two years. Given the role of HR within an organization, you have the added pressure of taking the latest information available and packaging it up for employee communication.

FACT: Starling Minds found that 75% of HR people were significantly impacted by COVID-19 due to the workload they had to take on, the responsibility to lead employees through uncertainty, and dealing with uncertainty yourself. 

With the help of leading HR experts, here is a list of insights and strategies to help you gain the knowledge you’ll need to accelerate your business recovery plans, through the lens of better employee mental health, productivity, and engagement. 

Connect with Employees

• Ask Meaningful Open-Ended Questions: Use open-ended versus closed-ended questions or perhaps a rating scale type of question to have deeper conversations with employees. Ask meaningful questions such as “How are you coping right now?”, “What are the biggest stressors right now?”, “How can we make it easier for you to work safely in this current environment?”
• Know Your Resources: Connection is about knowing the resources that are available for support. The key is to ensure that access to these resources and supports is easy for employees to find without having to ask for it. 
• Listen to Understand, Not Respond: Give people the time and space to feel and speak. Approach conversations with compassion, empathy and vulnerability – none of us have navigated a pandemic like this before, so no one expects you to know everything – the role of a leader is to show up, seek to understand each individual’s unique circumstance (i.e. suspend judgement and reserve statements like “I think”). Let employees tell you what they need, and respond with empathy and compassion. 
• Talk about it: Create a safe space and foster an environment where employees feel comfortable talking about their mental health with leaders. Make sure employees know that their wellbeing is a priority. It’s more than just pushing resources — humanize the conversations around wellbeing. The main thing is to get the dialogue out at all levels of the organization, and everybody from the top to the bottom.
• Create time and space: Many employees will prioritize their job and responsibilities over self-care, therefore it will be important for leaders to create the time and space for employees to get the mental health support they need to stay or improve their resilience. It starts with leaders feeling empowered and enabled to create that time and space first.
• Understand diverse perspectives: The best leaders can put themselves into the shoes of their team members and recognize the hardships they face. Be empathetic, understand and appreciate diverse perspectives when making decisions for employees. Sensitivity training can be a good investment for people leaders.
• Model self-care: When leaders model self-care, this will encourage employees to do the same and give them the “permission” to make and take the time to manage their physical and/or mental health support. This is critical for employees to succeed in their roles and drive outcomes for their respective departments.

Organization-Wide Policies and Processes

• Corporate Guiding Principles: To help guide employees through times of uncertainty, it would be important for you to put guiding principles together that are based on your organization’s values. This will help guide an organization and employees throughout all circumstances, irrespective of changes in its goals, strategies or type of work. Due to the high level of uncertainty employees experience, any opportunity for organizations to bring more certainty into their lives the better. 
• Constant and Transparent Communications: The best HR leaders know the power of informal communication among employees (i.e. water cooler, grapevine talk) and the importance of maintaining two-way communication that is consistent and transparent. No matter what, gossip will start and it’s up to HR and internal communications to stay on top of employee concerns and manage rumours. Social media sites like Glassdoor should be monitored to further address employee rumours and myths. 
• Employee Check-Ins and Surveys: Empower leaders and managers to check-in on their teams to ensure they have the support they need. On an organization level, be sure to gauge employee feedback via surveys, town halls, and face-to-face comments to understand their latest concerns and address them accordingly. It will be critical to not assume all employees will have the same concerns. 
• Build Decisions around Data: Track employee sentiments in real-time. Not all mental health support programs will report on insights happening within their employee population, but if you do be sure to leverage its data to make better-informed decisions around your employee mental health programs and policies. No two organizations operate the same and each have unique job stressors, therefore it would be critical to really hone in on what employees are concerned about and how they wish to be supported. For example, Starling Minds had shared that between the hours of 10 pm and 5 am – program usage spiked meaning employees are struggling with sleep disorders. Organizations can take that insight and educate employees on resources available to help them sleep better.
• Accessible Employee Wellness Programs:  It’s critical to understand what’s most relevant to your employees’ overall wellbeing. Offer meaningful mental health resources that allow them to take care of themselves and their families. It’s challenging to get employees to prioritize their mental health, likely due to stigma, costs, and wait times. As such, it would be important for your employees to know about the resources and support available to them, and that they are easily accessible. The rise in digital mental health platforms like Starling Minds will be the answer to break down the greatest barriers to providing the mental healthcare your employees need, easily, readily, and immediately.
• Don’t Be Afraid of Setting Precedence: It’s perfectly appropriate to use the “this is a global pandemic” card when setting your new HR policies and processes. Oftentimes, organizations will implement new policies to manage the small percentage of employees who may abuse the system; however, that notion should not stop you from doing what is right for your employees. Likely, when employees see their employer doing the right thing by them, they will respect and appreciate it. 

Last Thoughts

We know that what may work for certain organizations may not work for you. So, HR leaders will need to assess what their workforce’s key stressors continue to be, what resources they need to support employees physically and mentally in our post-pandemic world, and to look for resources that are missing to combat some of the mental, physical, and emotional pain employees are struggling with.  

It’s a lot to take on but Starling can help with this. Our mental health programs are designed to help you identify what employees are struggling with and to build up their resilience so they know how to manage their mental health effectively. 

We know many organizations and HR leaders are worried for their employees. But if there was one thing People leaders have learned is how important it is to have resources in place to ease the stress, anxiety, and depression employees may feel given what they’ve experienced due to COVID-19. 

We’ve often heard that employees are your greatest assets, but it’s actually your best employees who are your greatest assets. They are only the best because they have the resilience to withstand the stress and anxiety thrown at them; however many won’t be able to outpace burnout without the support and it’s up to their employers to deliver that to them. 

“We’ve been talking about psychological health and safety for years. This includes building resilient teams, developing psychologically safe leaders and providing a positive organizational culture. Many recognized that if we support the mental health of our employees, we can maximize organizational effectiveness. This pandemic has made this clear to many more” – Mary Ann Baynton, Director of Strategy and Collaboration, Workplace Strategies for Mental Health

Are you interested in our programs?

Learn more about our online CBT platform that delivers up to 40% in user engagement and 77% in lowered stress, anxiety, and depression scores in employees.

The post Insights from Top HR Leaders: How to Keep Your Employees Mentally Healthy and Resilient appeared first on Starling Minds.

• Understand what we’ve learned about workforce mental health coming out of COVID-19
• Steps their organization should take to safeguard their employees’ wellbeing 

While it may be years before researchers and sociologists uncover the full societal cost of COVID-19, we can give insights into the pandemic’s impact on employees’ mental health, and what kind of support they are looking for as they return to work.  

According to Mental Health Research Canada, our mental health has deteriorated significantly:

• Before COVID-19, 5% reported high-to-extreme levels of anxiety
• Five weeks later, that number has multiplied to 20%
• Cases of depression have more than doubled, from 4% to 10%

These stats are consistent with Starling’s data, collected from over 4000+ members within our COVID-19 program. Our data also suggest that:

• COVID-19 has deeply impacted 79% of people’s lives
• 45% say this is due to the major disruptions affecting their life, and they are struggling with a lot of uncertainty around personal and family health, job status and workload, social isolation, and financial problems
• In some professions like educators and healthcare workers, 60% say their anxiety has increased significantly

We know that stress and anxiety, when left untreated, is the pathway to depression, and a grave cost to an individual, their families, and their employer. 

How grave is that cost? 

According to the World Health Organization, depression is the leading cause of disability and the greatest workplace challenge facing us. 

The effects of depression will have massive implications on our global health system, as poor mental health is a high-risk factor for chronic physical illness.

So what are some of the major concerns employees have right now? They are worried about the day-to-day stuff: 

• How will our office space look like and work? 
• Will desks be kept 6 feet apart?
• Will we need to bring our own personal protective equipment if there’s not enough supply?
• Can I choose to work from home if I’m afraid of getting exposed? 
• What do I say to my colleagues if I was exposed to COVID-19? Do I need to disclose it to them? 

If there’s anything we’ve learned from this pandemic, is that we needed actionable insights to combat the effects of COVID-19. 

In most workplaces now, employees’ stress, anxiety, and worry levels have skyrocketed. COVID-19 has been a traumatic, societal event for many of us due to the uncertainty and disruptions to normal routines, and life-altering changes that came too quickly.

Many employees have experienced some type of trauma, such as: 

• Losing a loved one
• Being laid off
• Fear of losing their job
• Financial difficulties
• Social isolation
• Relationship problems 

They are likely in survival mode, which means they are doing everything they can to get through these times, but aren’t thinking about the long-term mental health effects of COVID-19. 

At Starling, we knew that when it came to our own employees’ mental health, there is no one size fits all approach; it’s the same when it comes to our workplace mental health policies.

In preparation for our team’s return to work, we sent out a survey to understand how our employees wanted to transition back to work, with minimal stress and anxiety. Our survey results revealed that employees wanted to choose their work schedules and to transition out of working remotely slowly. 

We know it’s hard being a leader sometimes. You’re often the person employees turn to in the face of uncertainty, but it will be important for leaders to be compassionate and flexible; avoid the temptation to “stick to a decision” in an attempt to appear decisive. Instead, review new data, information, and feedback regularly and change your policies accordingly. 

For digital platforms like ours, we built our insights tool around the concept that data isn’t about listening to respond but listening to understand first and then working together to plan and then respond. That will be your key to your business surviving post-COVID-19.

From a logistical perspective, here’s what leaders should consider for their return-to-work policies:

1. Stagger Employees’ Return to Work – it will lower your employees’ anxiety and worry about being exposed and contracting the virus
2. Maintain Remote Working Policies – this will be important in allowing your employees the flexibility to decide how they want to approach work. Some employees don’t have the luxury to risk their family’s health to work in the office. Be respectful of that as it will help lower their anxiety and guilt for needing a more flexible work schedule
3. Rethink Your Physical Setup – employees will be worried about maintaining a safe distance from their colleagues so be sure to space out the desks by 6 feet to lower their anxiety about contracting the virus
4. Rebuild Workplace Morale and Culture – look for ways to rebuild workplace morale, especially for businesses who were hit heavily by COVID-19. COVID-19 has significantly impacted many employees’ mental health due to layoffs, restructuring, and disruptive business changes. Practice compassion and make sure department leads check up on their teams regularly
5. Review Your Organization’s Needs – how we view work has changed now, and likely your organization will have infrastructure gaps to support your employees physically and mentally. So be sure that every department reviews their current operations and processes, and act swiftly to identify and resolve any gaps crippling team productivity and wellbeing
6. Maintain Transparency and Two-Way Communications – reassure employees who naturally have questions and be open about your future business plans and their role; this will lower their anxiety over job security
7. Implement Learnings – smart businesses will seek to implement lessons learned during COVID-19 and reinforce them as work practices 

We know that what may work for us may not work for you. So, each organization will need to assess what their workforce’s key stressors are, what resources they need to support employees physically and mentally, and to look for resources that are missing to rebuild its workplace health infrastructure.  

If you need help with that, definitely reach out to us. Our Mental Fitness program is designed to help you identify what employees are struggling with and build up their resilience and confidence to return to work. 

We know it’s been a challenging time for many organizations and their leaders. But if there was one thing we gained from this experience is how important our physical and mental health is for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our businesses. 

We wish we didn’t have to go through this crisis to learn it, but we did, and we have to do something about it now.  

Without effective mental health resources in place, it will cost your organization your best employees. But, the silver lining is that we have the technology, data, and resources to prevent that from happening.

Are you interested in our Mental Fitness program?

Reach out to us to learn more.

The post COVID-19: Return to Work Roadmap for Employers appeared first on Starling Minds.

We have now been taught in the hardest way that employee wellbeing is critical to a business’s success. Without healthy and productive employees, maybe organizations without the resources to ride the fallout of COVID-19 will likely not survive or recover their business costs.

Never has there been more urgency for organizations to champion mental health initiatives in their workplace.

• As a reminder, one in five people were struggling with mental illness
• Two-thirds don’t get the treatment they need due to neglect, stigma, cost, wait times, and lack of access to treatment
• According to the Canadian Mental Health Commission, Canada spends 7.2% of its total health-care budget on mental health, which is among the lowest of all G7 countries; This is surprising for many people who take pride in our universal healthcare system and readily available resources.
• According to the World Health Organization, mental health problems are our biggest challenge of the century with depression as the leading cause of disability and premature death
• So what was happening within organizations prior to COVID-19?

According to a Mental Health Association study:

• 70% of employees were concerned about the psychological health and safety of their workplace and reported that the primary cause of their mental health problem or illness, was workplace stress, with depression and anxiety being reported as the top two issues
• 66% of respondents reported that their workplace did not have any policies or programs to reduce stigma
• 75% reported that their workplace does not have an overall workplace mental health strategy to help them with their depression, stress, and anxiety at work.

But, should employers be responsible for their workforce mental health?

Even though mental health remains somewhat of a sensitive topic in the workplace, it appears that employees want their employer to champion mental health and well-being.

According to a survey of office workers in July 2018 from Peldon Rose:

• 72% of employees want employers to champion mental health and well-being.
• Nearly three-quarters of workers say they want their employers to champion mental health and well-being in the workplace. This is rated as more important than equality (48%), sustainability (38%) and diversity (31%).
• This is the case for all generations, who prioritize mental health and well-being above all other causes – Gen Z (76%), Millennials (73%), Gen X (75%), Baby Boomer (56%).

The Cost of Doing Nothing

It will be years before we know the real impact of COVID-19. Before the pandemic, the financial fallout from lost productivity relating to mental illness cost businesses an estimated $6.6 billion annually, according to the Mental Health Commission; As well, mental health struggles being the leading cause of disability claims.

Even so, most organizations are behind in implementing key initiatives to improve mental health in the workplace before and especially after COVID-19. As a result, organizations without innovative programs in place will see a rise in absenteeism and presenteeism at work.

What a Struggling Employee Experiences

Real-world data is an important part of what we do with our product. In that pursuit, we developed our platform to enable polling questions so we can really see what’s really happening to employees. 

Before COVID-19, most people were relatively in the moderate-healthy range of the mental health continuum.

According to our data collected from over 4000+ members within our COVID-19 program:

• COVID-19 has deeply impacted 79% of people’s lives
• 45% say this is due to the major disruptions affecting their life, and they are struggling with a lot of uncertainty around personal and family health, job status and workload, social isolation, and financial problems
• In some professions like educators and healthcare workers, their anxiety has increased by over 60%

Due to the stress, anxiety, and uncertainty brought on by COVID-19, 50% of employees had already been sliding down the mental health continuum, meaning they are experiencing symptoms of psychological distress, which, if left untreated, will lead them on the pathway to burnout and depression. 

Currently, employees are in survival mode, meaning they are working on getting through the day but have not processed what has happened to them physically, emotionally, socially, and mentally. Many are experiencing burnout, particularly those working in essential services. 

For temporarily laid-off employees returning to work, there will likely be residual frustration, confusion, and anger due to the decisions leaders had to make to safeguard the business. They are coming back to work confused, less confident, more distrustful of their leaders and supervisors, and it is up to leadership to provide as much transparency and to rebuild morale.

Related Article: COVID-19: Return to Work Roadmap for Employers

How can employers take action?

Organizations should look at implementing initiatives around policy creation, communication, training resources, and early-intervention treatment: This can include creating policies and mandates around mental health at a corporate level; sharing resources through internal marketing channels to promote awareness; giving management and HR the training to identify issues and handle them successfully; and, providing employees with self-help tools and programs.

More than ever before, digital technology is playing a crucial role in the treatment of mental illness, opening up ways for people to access treatment well when face-to-face talk therapy and medication weren’t readily available. Investing in mental health initiatives for leaders and employees of an organization can help in several ways.

Reduce stigma and create a positive workplace

Let’s face it. There is still a stigma surrounding mental health. By revealing issues, people fear to become isolated, viewed as abnormal, and considered unfit for the job. Employers have an essential role to play in supporting employees with education about mental health and creating an open dialogue. Providing resources that promote awareness can help create an accessible and positive workplace, one that fosters engagement and attracts talent.

Focus on Early Intervention/Prevention

Considering that we spend about 60% of our time at work, and that work can be rife with stressors – workload, deadlines, behaviours and personalities of co-workers, management styles, worries relating to job security, and so-on, educating about healthy ways to cope with stress makes sense. It can help address issues before they become debilitating – and costly for the organization.

Treat Issues to Reduce Impact

You may or may not know if an employee is already suffering from mental health symptoms before COVID-19. But, having those resources already in place for an employee to use can get them the help they need quickly. This is where an HR manager’s role is critical to find high-quality, evidence-based options to ensure success. Providing a variety of options for an employee to get treatment – whether through your benefits plan, a wellness counselor on staff, online programs, or a combination of these, will help reduce suffering for that employee and help address their reduced functioning at work.

Improve Productivity and Engagement

When you are physically fit, you tend to be healthier. It’s the same with mental health. Improving the mental health of your employees – making them mentally resilient to stress from the pandemic – can improve thinking, decision-making, workflow, and relationships at work. All of these translate to increased productivity. And your employees will see you playing a role in helping them to be their best selves.

Reduce Costs and Risk

Promoting mental health can also be a wise financial decision for businesses. Investing in a mentally healthy workplace can have a cost savings effect by reducing absenteeism (employees frequently absent due to illness) and presenteeism (at work, but ill and distracted), as well as disability claims and lost productivity. It also contributes to helping you meet workplace health and safety guidelines to reduce legal exposure.

Due to some organizations needing to transition their workforce to remote work for a few months, over 70% of employees are feeling burnt out, likely due to always being “on”. As we know, burnout is dangerous for an organization as it is a major pathway to depression. As a result, organizations must find ways to disrupt this pathway for their employees, as our current mental health system won’t be up to the task anytime soon.

To make matters worse, delivering an effective mental healthcare program is difficult as there’s no one size fits all approach. Each organization and profession have its own unique stressors. People leaders need to assess what are the key stressors happening to their workforce and to look for resources that not only allows them to provide support in confidence, it needs to be affordable, readily available, and unique to their profession. This is what will help you build an effective mental health strategy to combat struggles during and after COVID-19.

Without effective mental health resources in place, it will cost your organization your best employees. The silver lining is that we have the technology, data, and resources to do so.

There are many resources available to help with the task of getting started; here is a couple:

http://www.mhccleadership.ca

http://www.cmha.ca

If you would like to learn more about the Starling Minds platform then please request a demo

The post 5 Reasons Companies Should Promote good mental health in the workplace – Starling Minds appeared first on Starling Minds.