Establishing basic policy awareness among leadership within your work environment
Establishing basic policy awareness among leadership within your work environment revolves around embedding a fundamental understanding and acknowledgement within your management team regarding the policies that influence employees' mental wellbeing. This involves comprehensively explaining to the leaders within your organisation the established guidelines, regulations, responsibilities, and best practices that concern the psychological health and wellness of employees. The core aim is to ensure that managers not only cognitively comprehend these policies but can also practically apply them within their leadership roles.
In the Australian context, this means providing a robust understanding on legislations like the Fair Work Act 2009, which advocates for a flexible, fair and productive working environment, and New South Wales's Mental Health Act, relating to the rights and responsibilities of employers towards their employees' mental health.
These important legislations stress the significance of maintaining a healthy workplace, where employees' execution of duties does not negatively impact their mental wellbeing. The leadership within your organisation should be equipped with the knowledge to recognise indicators of declining mental health, safeguard employees against such risks, and take swift action when necessary, thus preventing any work-related psychological disorders. Ultimately, the goal is to promote an informed and empathetic management team that prioritises and actively cultivates a healthy work environment.
Step by step instructions
Develop an Understanding of Relevant Legislations: Start by ensuring you and your management team fully understand legislation relevant to mental health within the workplace. This involves both the Fair Work Act 2009, which outlines your requirements to support a productive and fair workplace, and the Mental Health Act which details your responsibilities relating to employee mental health. It may be useful to arrange dedicated training sessions or workshops to develop this understanding.
Align Policies with Current Legislations: Ensuring your company policies are as per the legislation requirements is crucial. This may require policy modification or perhaps policy development if some areas are under-addressed. Seek legal or professional guidance if necessary.
Policy Education Sessions: Organise regular in-house sessions to educate about the adjusted or newly developed policies. Make sure to convey effectively what these changes mean on the ground level and what leadership team members need to do to adhere to them.
Constant Monitoring and Evaluation: Ensure continuous adherence to your mental health policy framework by regular monitoring and assessing its effectiveness. Feedback from employees can provide valuable insights for possible improvements.
Create a Report of Current Policies: Review your current company policies regarding employee wellbeing and mental health. Evaluate how these policies align with the aforementioned legislations. This assessment will help you identify what adjustments need to be made to ensure compliance.
Detail Clearly Delegated Responsibilities: To ensure successful implementation and compliance, clearly outline who is responsible for what within your policy framework. Make sure that every member of the leadership team is clear on their respective roles and responsibilities regarding mental health in the workplace.
Implement Mental Health Best Practices: Adopt mental health best practices such as promoting a work-life balance, offering mental health days, and providing resources for mental health support. Leaders should be exemplary in implementing and upholding these practices.
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
Ensuring that leadership is initially informed of the policies is important, but one must also account for the continuous updating and refreshing of this knowledge. Ignoring constant training can lead to outdated understanding of the policies, creating risks for non-compliance.
Leadership buy-in is crucial for policy development and implementation. Failing to involve leadership in the policy creation process may lead to lack of interest and reduced engagement in policy awareness.
Each leader has a unique style and it is essential to take that into consideration while raising policy awareness. A one-size-fits-all approach may not effectively resonate with everyone.
If policies are communicated in complex, hard-to-understand language or exclusively legal terms, it can lead to misunderstanding or lack of comprehensive knowledge about the policy. Ensure communication is clear, concise and in plain English.
Policy awareness should not just be a one-off event but rather embedded in the organisation's culture. Overlooking this might lead to policy negligence over time.
Merely communicating the policy is not enough; one must also track how well the leadership understands and applies these policies. Any neglect in this aspect could lead to ineffective policy enforcement.