Mental health has been a topic of conversation among companies over the past five years. In response, companies have created programs to address this. But is this enough?
“There is a disconnect on mental health and safety being part of the same conversation,” says Claire Bryant, senior program manager at National Safety Council. (NSC). “While organizations might have a well-being program that focuses on mental health, it's not systemically connected with the safety programs that we're creating.”
Forging that connection is essential due to the effect mental health has on safety outcomes. “We've done a lot of work on impairment, investigating different impacts on fitness for duty, for example, and mental distress is one of those factors that we've seen time and time again that can impact someone's ability to focus on the job," Bryant added. "Being unable to focus can interfere with the ability to react to a critical safety situation.”
How to Integrate Mental Health into Safety Programs
The National Safety Council offers a systems-based approach to integrate well-being into a safety program.The following are ways to create a systems-based approach:
Treat well-being like any other risk: Use assessment tools to measure and prioritize well-being-related risks and integrate them into existing safety management systems.
Partner across departments: Build cross-functional teams, such as safety, HR and health, to address root causes, while making sure also to seek feedback from frontline workers.
Create flexible, human-centered work policies that acknowledge limits and support recovery and healing.
Ensuring leadership models and supports a culture where worker wellbeing is prioritized as rigorously as physical safety.
Adjusting Workforce Conditions
Safety professionals have developed systems to check the physical well-being of workers. But this needs to extend to mental well-being. "If you're going out on the shop floor, you're trying to look for hazards that are clearly visible, such as a person not using a hoist like they should be. But it's much more difficult to see fatigue and distress," explains Paige DeBaylor, research manager of the MSD Solutions Lab.
Unseen distress can increase physical injuries. Research from the MSD Solutions Lab shows that non-physical factors increase the likelihood of developing musculoskeletal disorders.
To address the issues of stress and mental health, organizations can:
- Cultivate work environments where job stress and mental workloads are low, and support and job satisfaction are high.
- Implement work-rest cycles.
- Reduce the working hours for those doing physically demanding work.
- Use interventions that combine education about workplace safety, job stress and communication instead of interventions only focused on physical risks.
Cultural Adjustments
In addition to those strategies, adjustments need to be made to the safety culture. The first step in any culture change is to understand how workplace conditions can impact mental health. To get a read on the current state of conditions, employers need to empower frontline workers to voice their concerns and encourage discussion on mental health. The most effective way to begin these conversations is for leaders to talk about the issues, form places of open-dialog and follow through on employees' concerns.
Next, supervisors and managers need to prioritize mental well-being by learning how to identify non-physical risks. Companies can provide training aimed at addressing organizational issues such as safety climate and personal treatment. Once understood, those in management positions should take actions to both support employees and create conditions that will lessen the stress.
From an organizational perspective, human resources and other internal partners need to develop clear, compassionate and effective policies. Once those policies are developed, they need to be well communicated and easily accessible.
While most companies have EAPs, not many track the data to understand the usage of the programs.
Companies can work with benefit providers to ensure parity for mental health offerings compared to other medical companies. And they can partner with local community organizations to increase the visibility of services.
Business Case for Addressing Psychosocial Factors
There is a business cost to this issue. For mental health, NSC and NORC at the University of Chicago, research has shown that employers spend, on average, over $15,000 a year on each employee who experiences mental distress.
To counter this, companies can invest in treatment to improve mental health. NSC and NORC found that every dollar invested in treatment for mental health conditions showed a $4 return and improved health and productivity.
Determining the financial impact of mental health programs is difficult, so NSC offers the Mental Health Cost Calculator
Other resources are available as well. "There are a lot of great psychosocial risk assessments that are out there, and I think that also helps to make this more tangible from a safety perspective on where a company should be diving in deeper and identifying where the opportunities are to fill in the gaps," explains Bryant.
Integrating mental health into safety programs is the next step in the journey to find root causes of injuries and address them, as well as being proactive and preventing them.
