Your how-to: Analysing policy impact on mental health and wellness
Analysing policy impact on mental health and wellness refers to the process of reviewing and assessing the influence and consequences that the organisation's prevailing rules, guidelines, and protocols have on the mental wellbeing of its employees.
This process involves scrutinising the company's existing policies related to work hours, work environment, leave provisions and more, through the lens of mental health. For example, a policy of requiring excessive overtime may have a negative impact on employees' mental health. By conducting this analysis, HR can identify these implications and work towards creating a healthier and more productive work environment.
In an Australian context, this includes being in compliance with legal obligations under the Fair Work Act 2009 and the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, ensuring your company promotes 'a psychologically healthy and safe workplace.'
Step by step instructions
Understand Your Current Policies: Review your company's existing policies comprehensively. First make a list of these policies including but not limited to work hours, remuneration, leave, benefits and allowances, work environment, conflict resolution, work from home and workplace safety standards. If any of these have the potential to affect the mental health of your employees, they should be included in this list.
Conduct Surveys or Interview Employees: Engage with your employees through surveys, interviews or focus groups. This step should aim to gain insights on how these policies directly affect their mental health. Remember to include open-ended questions to allow employees to voice specific concerns.
Review Policy Impact: Assess the influence of each policy based on your evaluation criteria and the feedback received. This will help you understand their impact on mental health and help in choosing which policies need reform.
Consult with Mental Health Professionals: Consider consulting with mental health professionals to better understand the depth of the issues and to ensure your revised or new policies promote a healthier work environment.
Establish Evaluation Criteria: Establish criteria for evaluating the impact of the policies on mental health and wellness. Some factors could include employee burnout rates, stress levels, reported mental health issues or satisfaction levels during employee surveys.
Analyse Employee Feedback: Carefully analyse the collected data and feedback. Look for common themes or specific policies that may be contributing more towards stress or other mental health issues.
Develop Action Plan: Develop a plan to address the problematic areas identified in the policy review. This can involve revising existing policies, removing detrimental ones or introducing new policies that promote mental health and wellness.
Implement Changes: Once the revisions are approved, update your company policies and effectively communicate the changes to all employees.
Use this template to implement
To ensure you can execute seamlessly, download the implementation template.
Pitfalls to avoid
Assuming what an individual with mental health issues looks and behaves like can lead to inaccurate analysis. Mental health illness symptoms may vary, and some individuals might not exhibit any visible signs at all. Understand the nuances and avoid stereotypes.
Mental health and wellbeing are complex topics encompassing various elements from work stress to interpersonal relationships. Focusing solely on one aspect will not provide a comprehensive picture of how your policies are faring.
This can often occur when individuals who are personally involved with policy creation conduct the analysis. Decisions might be steered by personal biases, rather than factual data, leading to skewed results. Aim for an impartial evaluation to drive meaningful insights.
Policies cannot exist in a vacuum - it's crucial to understand the perspectives of the people affected by them. A pitfall to avoid is neglecting the opinions and feedback from employees about the efficacy of mental health policies in place.
Professionals in the field of mental health can provide valuable insights internal teams may miss due to lack of specific knowledge or expertise. Not involving a mental health professional can limit the depth of your analysis.