Employers must recognise their responsibilities to meet staff mental health needs, according to UNE Master of Business Administration alumna Carli Phillips.
A corporate wellbeing specialist, Carli is seeing demand for her programs, seminars and workshops grow as organisations grapple with new workplace challenges.
“In this current labour market, the power sits with employees,” she says. “It is forcing workplaces to support mental health and wellbeing like never before, otherwise staff will simply walk.”
But how equipped are you to deal with the psychosocial needs of your team?
In a recent webinar, Carli and fellow wellbeing coach and author Bill Carson laid bare some hard truths.
- A Deloitte study of Mental Health and the Future of Work in 2021 found that 75% of the 5000 employees surveyed worldwide felt their managers did not have the skills and training to manage mental health effectively. “We have people managing teams who don’t know how to have difficult conversations surrounding mental health and wellbeing,” Bill says. “But they can no longer afford to avoid it.”
- CEDA (the Committee for Economic Development of Australia) has projected that psychological workers’ compensation claims could double by 2030, growing at 15 times the rate of physical claims and costing six times as much to settle.
- Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report of 2023 cites rates of quiet quitting (disengaged, stressed, angry, burnt out or negative staff) of 66%. Only 23% of staff reported they were thriving (happy, positive, fully engaged, helpful and energetic).
It’s commonly understood that staff who feel more open and authentic at work are more engaged and healthy, perform better, and stick around.
Bill says managers at all levels need to get better at talking about their own mental health and better at engaging staff comfortably and safely in such conversations, especially in this era of remote work, when staff might be experiencing high job demands and subject to poor management of workplace change.
It all begins with self-awareness on the part of managers. Read more in part two of this series soon.
