Understanding the Role of HR in Employee Mental Health

HR plays a multifaceted role in promoting employee mental health at the workplace. You’re responsible for:

1. Strategic Planning and Development

Fostering mental wellbeing in the workplace goes beyond a single, isolated initiative or programme. Instead, organisations need to implement comprehensive strategies that address multiple aspects of employee wellness. 

This requires careful planning, and HR plays an integral role during the strategic planning and development stage. You need to work with key stakeholders—including the leadership team, managers, mental health professionals and wellness experts—to conceptualise strategies that are tailored to the specific needs of your workforce. 

2. Identifying Organisational Goals and Objectives for Employee Mental Health Initiatives

During this stage, HR collaborates closely with the leadership team and other relevant stakeholders to define clear, measurable goals and objectives. 

You need to ensure that all mental health initiatives or programmes implemented at your workplace are aligned with the long-term organisational goals—such as boosting productivity, reducing employee turnover or minimising healthcare costs. 

3. Gathering Data and Insights to Assess the Mental Health Needs of Employees

Measuring employee wellbeing can be difficult, particularly at large organisations where employers or HR professionals aren’t able to communicate with individual employees directly. 

To keep your fingers on the pulse of employee wellness, you need to look into gathering and monitoring data—such as employee demographics, their health concerns and lifestyle preferences—on a regular basis.

There are various ways to accomplish this. Running focus groups or 1-on-1 interviews can provide qualitative insights, and help you better understand the general state of mental wellbeing among employees. 

Anonymous surveys are also a useful tool, as these can encourage employees to openly share their concerns. With proper structuring, surveys can help you gain insights into important factors—such as daily stressors employees face, how they cope with mental health issues, and how they feel about existing wellness initiatives at your organisation.

4. Implementing Employee Mental Health Initiatives 

HR takes on several roles during the implementation stage. These include:

• Administration: Most of the day-to-day tasks of implementing employee mental health initiatives fall under this category. Examples include preparing documents, organising and maintaining records, monitoring the progress of the wellness initiatives, and more. 
• Scheduling: Scheduling tasks that you’ll undertake include developing timelines, setting milestones, and ensuring that all tasks and activities are integrated into the work schedules of employees. 
• Budgeting: Examples of budgeting tasks include working with the management to develop an effective budget, as well as overseeing the budget allocation for employee mental health initiatives implemented at your organisation. 
• Collaborating with external mental health experts: HR plays a key role in identifying and selecting external partners, and ensuring that their offerings are aligned with the broader goals of your organisation. You’ll work closely with your partners to tailor their offerings to meet the specific needs of your employees, monitor their performance, and resolve any issues that arise during your collaboration. 

5. Communication and Awareness

There are two objectives that HR needs to fulfil during this stage: you’re aiming to promote the importance of mental health at the workplace, as well as generate awareness of employee mental health initiatives implemented at your organisation. 

Crafting clear and concise messages that underline the mental health benefits of participating in these initiatives is key. You’ll also need to ensure that you’re utilising the right communication channels, and catering your messages to reach different employee demographic groups. 

To keep employees engaged, consider leveraging testimonials from past participants who have benefitted from participating in mental health initiatives. Sharing regular updates or reminders can also help employees remain motivated.