ALEXANDRIA, Va.—The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the SHRM Foundation are publishing their new mental health guidebook, Mental Health in Your Workplace. This guide, building on the SHRM Foundation's Mental Health in America: A 2022
Workplace Report, released in April 2022, provides HR practitioner recommendations from workplace environmental assessment to implementing resource metric benchmarks for implementation measurement. The handbook provides questions to ask, regardless of organization size, to create more transparent, mentally healthier workplaces.
"This mental health guide is just the next step in a critical campaign that the SHRM Foundation is taking part in," said Wendi Safstrom, president of the SHRM Foundation. "Our research showed that nearly 1 in 3 respondents didn't know which benefits to provide, and roughly 1 in 5 stated that their organization was unsure how to find or choose a plan. This guide helps bridge that gap."
The report's takeaways showed clear disparities regarding which resources to provide and how to monitor organizations' resources. The top two ways respondents stated that their organizations track mental health is with employee engagement surveys (48 percent) and resource utilization (47 percent). It's critical that employers implement mental health resources and then regularly assess their effectiveness; this is where Mental Health in Your Workplace is helpful. The guide serves as a framework for HR professionals to tailor a mental health strategy to fit their needs. The product helps assess critical needs, target key groups and offer incentives to shift culture. Each of these actions in the guide is provided through a series of questions in six parts, where HR professionals can assess their baseline before they begin, implement each resource and learn best practices for evaluation.
"Workplace mental health can be looked at from three levels: companywide, peer to peer and individually," said Jacqueline Brassey, Co-Leader of Employee Health, McKinsey Health Institute. "If there is a misalignment in any of these three areas, organizations will likely see the impacts in their employee mental health outcomes, despite existing benefits or individual advocacy efforts."
For businesses plagued with uncertainty about how to support their employees' mental health, this guide provides a helpful first step to defining goals and discovering initial needs. The Mental Health in Your Workplace guide joins the Workplace Mental Health Ally certificate program, launched in September 2021, and the 2022 SHRM and Thrive Global #MentalHealthPledge as a series of initiatives that HR professionals can utilize to implement effective mental wellness strategies. For those who want to learn more about the SHRM Foundation's mental health initiatives, please visit:
https://www.workplacementalhealth.shrm.org/field-guide/
About the SHRM Foundation
Founded in 1966, the SHRM Foundation is the 501(c)(3) philanthropic arm of the world's largest HR professional society, SHRM. SHRM represents more than 300,000 HR professionals across the globe, impacting 115 million workers and their families. The SHRM Foundation mobilizes the power of HR for positive social change in the workplace. Its robust resources, meaningful partnerships and evidence-based programming educate and empower HR professionals to hire diverse talent, build inclusive workplaces, prioritize workplace mental health and wellness, develop and support the next generation of HR professionals, and help employees find purpose at work and beyond. Learn more at shrmfoundation.org.