Actionable Strategies for Employers


Pillar

Leadership

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Strategy

Leaders demonstrate visible and proactive actions to build a diverse and inclusive culture that supports a mental health-friendly workplace.

What Success Looks Like
The enthusiastic support and involvement of leaders and managers is evident and employees understand their employers’ commitment to creating a workplace that is mental health-friendly.

Tactics

  1. Develop a broad Mental Health Plan with input from all stakeholders.
  2. Provide adequate resources to support plan implementation.
  3. Consistently model positive mental health behaviors and enforce plan policies.
  4. Train managers to encourage staff participation, provide constructive feedback on performance and mentor their teams.
  5. Develop capable and supportive managers and supervisors by providing resources, education and training.
  6. Reward and recognize employees for their performance and achievements.

Pillar

Organizational Policies and Environmental Supports

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Strategy

Develop a broad Mental Health Plan for the organization that can be fully implemented, understood and available to all employees.

What Success Looks Like
Policies for employee mental health are explicitly linked to the organization’s mission and values. Organizational goals are aligned to promote employee mental health and hold supervisors accountable for a mental health-friendly workplace.

Tactics

  1. Integrate the Mental Health Plan into the organization’s health, safety and well-being strategy.
  2. Align manager goals to promote the Plan and hold managers accountable for reaching stated goals.
  3. Put in place processes to manage changes in the workplace (such as re-structuring and downsizing) to minimize adverse effects of change on employees’ mental health.

Pillar

Communications

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Strategy

Develop a plan to communicate clearly and often to employees about the organization’s mental health policies, medical benefits, programs, education resources and training opportunities.

What Success Looks Like
Employees demonstrate a high level of awareness and healthy utilization of the organization’s Mental Health Plan and the availability of supporting resources.

Tactics

  1. Establish communication processes that address employees’ education, awareness, and understanding of stigma, psychological illness, and safety relating to mental health.
  2. Monitor and assess the mental well-being of employees using tools such as confidential surveys.

Pillar

Programs and Benefits

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Strategy

Offer a comprehensive package of medical benefits and prevention programs that put employees at the center of care and support.

What Success Looks Like
Employees participate in programs that have been designed based on an organizational needs assessment. Employees use high-value medical benefits based on their health and well-being needs.

Tactics

  1. Conduct a comprehensive needs assessment that explicitly includes mental health and informs program and benefits decisions.
  2. Implement a variety of mental health promotion/awareness and prevention programs that take into consideration the diversity of the population.
  3. Provide employees with affordable medical benefits that include no or low out-of-pocket costs for medications, counseling and treatment services.

Pillar

Engagement

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Strategy

Involve employees in all aspects of workplace decision-making.

What Success Looks Like
Employees have a voice in the development and improvement of the organization’s Mental Health Plan. There is evidence of acceptance of employees with mental health.

Tactics

  1. Consider the unique, diverse needs of employees and the best way to engage them.
  2. Incorporate feedback from employees and relevant dependents into programs and policies by using various tools such as surveys and polls.
  3. Identify internal champions who can drive positive changes in the policies, programs, benefits and culture that affect an employee’s mental health.
  4. Establish an integrated health, safety and well-being committee that meets regularly and is accountable to the C-suite.
  5. Promote the acceptance of employees with mental health challenges within the organization through de-stigmatization and anti-discrimination efforts.
  6. Help employees to understand the resources available to them to support their own mental health.

Pillar

Community Partnerships

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Strategy

Use community partnerships to promote the internal and external objectives of the Mental Health Plan.

What Success Looks Like
Employers document their engagement in local communities to support the mental health of their employees and their community.

Tactics

  1. Identify ways to align with community-based organization to improve mental health within the employer’s communities.
  2. Participate in multi-stakeholder coalitions to advocate for improved access, quality, and value of mental health services.
  3. Partner with external organizations to leverage local community resources.
  4. Share ideas with other organizations that have mental health best practices and evaluate if these approaches are a good fit for your organization.

Pillar

Reporting Outcomes

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Strategy

Collect and analyze a variety of data to identify strengths and opportunities to continually improve the mental health and well-being of employees.

What Success Looks Like
The benefits of a Mental Health Plan are sustained through continuous quality improvement based on robust data collection, analysis and reporting.

Tactics

  1. Establish objectives and targets for improving employee mental health based on available data.
  2. Create a comprehensive evaluation plan prior to implementation of the Mental Health Plan.
  3. Evaluate the mental health, functional performance and productivity impact of the plan.
  4. Determine the cost-benefit and/or costeffectiveness of the Plan.
  5. Monitor changes in employee engagement using all available metrics.
  6. Use all available outcomes data to review and evaluate overall Plan performance. Adjust and improve based on data insights.

For more information on this topic please view the PDF of the full report.