Creating Psychologically Safe Workplaces
Although the World Health Organisation (WHO) no longer considers COVID-19 to be a “global health emergency”1, there is still a clear and present danger stemming from its impact on wellbeing in the workplace – in particular, on mental health. Recent reports from around the world continue to indicate that employees are feeling exhausted, overwhelmed or burnt out2,3, making it imperative for mental health to be placed on every CEO’s agenda if they are to build a truly resilient organisation.
“According to our Global Wellbeing Survey results published this year, the top employee wellbeing concern among employers in Asia Pacific is emotional wellbeing. What is startling is that it is considered a significantly bigger issue than the other wellbeing factors. The survey also showed that emotional wellbeing – including burnout and languishing – is also a growing concern,” said Alan Oates, head of advisory and specialty in Asia Pacific for Health Solutions at Aon.
As co-founder of WeCARE365, an organisation dedicated to promoting team psychological safety and preventing workplace mental health issues through simple and scalable e-learning programmes, Graeme Cowan has been helping leaders put the foundations in place to start addressing and improving their employees’ wellbeing. He strongly believes that the best way to improve employee mental health is by having good managers.
“Research has shown that 70% of engagement and wellbeing in a team stems from the manager or leader4, and that’s why it is essential to choose someone on the executive level to be a ‘leader champion’. Ideally, it should not be someone from HR, but the CEO or divisional director. In mentally healthy teams, everyone feels a sense of belonging. People are more engaged and more likely to stay working for your organisation for the long term, so the ‘leader champion’ is central for making impact.”
Although absenteeism may not be the right measure to track impact, Cowan stresses the importance of measuring how well your organisation is performing when it comes to early detection and prevention, such as by looking at absenteeism and presenteeism data. “Studies in the UK, Canada and Australia show that up to 40 percent of absenteeism is due to mental distress5,6,7. However, because absenteeism is a lag factor, leaders should also use the many tools available to measure how things are going in real time. Identify your top three stressors across the organisation, choose one or two to really focus on, then see if you’re making progress.”
To bring this philosophy to life, Aon has been working with WeCARE365 to develop the holistic “I CARE” framework. Based on the latter organisation’s “we care” culture, it explains how to identify someone who is struggling, how to show compassion, how to access expert help and how to engage in revitalisation and recovery work. It also places emphasis on exercise to reduce mental health risk across three categories: self-care, crew care and red zone care. Cowan explains, “Self-care isn’t selfish. These are the things we need to do every day for our physical and emotional health. Crew care or team care is how we support each other. In the very best teams, people have each other’s backs. Red zone care refers to having a plan in place to help people who are in distress.”
Ultimately, leaders must consider values like empathy, compassion and support as “strong skills” – rather than “soft skills” – to foster a psychologically safe workplace teeming with innovation, engagement, productivity and success. Oates concurs: “We need to be bold and experiment with what works and what doesn’t, so that the frameworks we have in place in five years’ time are a lot more developed than the ones we have today.”
Watch the webinar below for more insights on how to create a psychologically safe workplace.
1 Statement on the fifteenth meeting of the IHR (2005) Emergency Committee on the COVID-19 pandemic | World Health Organization
2 Employee mental health and burnout in Asia: A time to act | McKinsey & Company
3 Addressing employee burnout: Are you solving the right problem? | McKinsey & Company
4 Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement | Gallup
5 Survey finds 40% of workers taking time off due to mental-health concerns | Benefits Canada
6 Presenteeism, absenteeism costing organizations $645 million a year | Human Resources Director Canada
7 Mental health inaction costing businesses $11bn annually | Job Access, Australian Government
