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Get employees on board with the initiative

Once leadership has committed to the development of a strategy to increase workplace mental health and well-being it will be important to build support with employees.

Your Thrive at Work team may not need broad employee support to take stock of current well-being activities on offer, but it will be crucial if you decide to make changes to well-being activities or want to collect employee perception data. Failing to build employee support risks poor engagement with the process overall, as well as low engagement with future activities.

At the early stage of the project it will be important to communicate the overall goal or vision of your organisation moving forward. Regular and ongoing communication throughout the process will help break down barriers to addressing mental health and well-being and contribute to reducing mental health stigma. Communicating with staff about their mental health and well-being needs will also enable you to target your activities, ensuring that resources are being used to address genuine needs. This regular communication with staff will also help build and maintain momentum and achieve broader organisational buy-in.

Heads Up suggest 5 questions that leaders should be prepared to answer when introducing change:1

  1. Why change… why now?
  2. What happens if we don’t change?
  3. What will the change look like?
  4. What’s in it for me?
  5. What can we expect?

Your communication with employees should answer these questions and educate employees about the importance of mental health and well-being at work. Ensure that everyone is aware of the role they will play, the supports that are available, and the benefits of participating.

Next step

Evaluate

Learn how to assess your organisation’s current mental health practices against the Thrive at Work Framework, and identify areas for development.