Your how-to: Customising performance metrics to align with strategic mental health goals
Customising performance metrics to align with strategic mental health goals is an approach where evaluation of employee performance is not only based on traditional business outputs, but also incorporates consideration of mental wellness indicators. This approach acknowledges that enhanced mental health contributes to overall productivity, engagement, and company culture.
In other words, it means modifying the way you measure and evaluate your employee's performance to incorporate mental health aspects, in alignment with the mental health goals and strategies you've outlined for your company. This could involve introducing mental health-supportive KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), formulating performance objectives that promote work-life balance, or evaluating leaders based on how well they foster mental wellbeing within their teams.
By adopting this strategy, organisations encourage a work environment that values and prioritises mental wellbeing as an integral part of performance and business success. This process entails implementing strategies, adjusting management practices, revising employee evaluations, and aligning these changes with Australian standards, such as those provided by Safe Work Australia and the Mental Health Commission, to foster a mentally healthy workplace.
Step by step instructions
Identify Your Strategic Mental Health Goals: Begin by determining what your organisation aims to achieve in terms of mental well-being. For example, you might hope to reduce stress-related absences or increase general mental health awareness amongst staff. Keep in mind the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 and the Safe Work Australia-Guide-Implementing a WHS management system which can provide useful guidelines on what to consider.
Incorporate Mental Wellness into Performance Objectives: Performance objectives should be tailored to encourage work-life balance, and potentially even provide opportunities for mindfulness and self-care. This could be reflected in 'burnout prevention' targets like limiting overtime or balancing task-loads properly.
Align Your Strategy with National Standards: Ensure your new strategies and KPIs align with national standards, such as those promoted by Safe Work Australia and the Australian Mental Health Commission. This could involve showing how you meet Australian standard 'AS/NZS ISO 45001:2018' for Occupational health and safety management systems.
Regularly Review and Adjust: Finally, understand that refinement might be needed. Keep an open dialogue with staff, regularly review the success of your changes, and adjust your strategies as necessary, always keeping your overarching mental health goals in mind.
Develop Mental Health-Supportive KPIs: With the strategic goal in mind, develop KPIs that reflect these goals. These might focus on things such as increased mental health awareness training attendance or reduced rates of mental health-related sickness leave.
Evaluate Leaders' Roles in Mental Wellbeing: Make adjustments to the way you view and benchmark leadership success. Leaders should be seen as champions of mental wellness, being assessed on how well they foster supportive, open environments where mental health issues can be safely disclosed and discussed.
Implement and Communicate the Changes: Ensure these changes are communicated across the organisation so everyone is aware of the shift in focus towards mental health. Provide training and resources for staff on how to understand and achieve the new KPIs, and consider introducing a confidential mental health support service if you do not already have one.
Reflect and Breathe: This step can be challenging, so it's important to take a moment to breathe and reflect. Pause to consider the progress made, the obstacles encountered, and the lessons learned. This reflection will not only help in gaining clarity but also in maintaining a balanced perspective, allowing for thoughtful and deliberate decision-making moving forward.
Use this template to implement
To ensure you can execute seamlessly, download the implementation template.
Pitfalls to avoid
Prioritising mental health along with strategic corporate goals can be challenging. You should thoroughly educate yourself and your team about mental health issues and their impact on work performance. Be cautious of promoting harmful stigma or misunderstanding mental health conditions.
Mental health is a sensitive issue that requires professional involvement. Do not design your performance metrics or wellbeing initiatives without consultation from mental health professionals; this oversight could lead to more harm than good.
The employees are the ones these metrics directly impact, and their feedback on mental health initiatives is valuable. Neglecting to incorporate employee suggestions or concerns into performance metrics is a risk; meaningful metrics should involve the workforce's input.
Aligning business goals with mental health objectives can sometimes result in conflicts. Ensure your performance metrics do not encourage unhealthy competition or stress, which could have detrimental effects on mental health.
Mental health is a private matter. A potential pitfall is not maintaining employee confidentiality while tracking, assessing and discussing mental health related performance metrics. This could lead to consequences under the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) in the Privacy Act 1988.
An occasional workshop or seminar about mental health isn't enough. It is imperative to provide ongoing support, resources, and initiatives. Failing to continue support can lead to ineffective metrics and a decline in mental well-being among staff.