Latest research suggests that psychological wellbeing isn't improving
As time moves on, the physical risks of the pandemic have all but disappeared. As we busy ourselves navigating through the new normal, you’d expect that employee mental health scores would begin to stabilise. However, the latest Mental Health Index from the LifeWorks suggests that workforce mental health has been extremely slow to recover.
The Mental Health Index (MHI) surveys 1,000 employees and applies a response scoring system to turn individual responses into point values. The sum of the scores is divided by the total number of possible points to generate a score out of 100. A score between 0-49 means the workforce is highly stressed, 50-79 is stressed, and 80-100 is optimal.
As expected, the MHI score decreased dramatically at the outset of the pandemic, the average score declined to a lowly 57. To put that in perspective, the average of the population moved to the equivalent of the worst one percent of the population pre-pandemic. While that sharp decline could be expected, expectations for post pandemic recovery were not met, the MHI score only increased seven points to 64.
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“A lot of people assume that once the physical risk of an endemic or pandemic disappears, everything else is okay, but mental health doesn’t work like that,” says Jamie MacLennan, senior vice president and managing director at Lifeworks.
MacLennan lived in Singapore through SARS, when the country was thrust into a lockdown for a matter of weeks. He says research from prior pandemics shows that mental health issues linger for a lot longer than the physical risk occurred.
“None of us has gone through the that level of social experiment where we were in lockdown for such an extended period of time. The mental health risks are going to continue for years to come,” says MacLennan.
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He explained that while the workforce deals with the cumulative effect of the pandemic there is more bad news turning up. New economic and geo-political worries are on the rise.
“Before the pandemic people had the resiliency to take on that pressure, but it’s now weighing on a population that isn’t in the best shape to take them on, said MacLennan.”
Mental health a top priority for CEOs
There’s a plethora of data backing up the importance of employee mental health in today’s workforce. A recent McKinsey survey of CEOs indicated that half of respondents had indicated that mental health was a top organisational priority for them so why is recovery so slow? The Lifeworks Survey revealed that 70% of managers have had to deal with a mental health issue since COVID but less than 25% said they knew what to do in the situation.
Richard Kennedy, NZ country director at Randstad, is a leader passionate about supporting mental health in the workplace. The company celebrated Mental Health Awareness Week with a diverse range of events for their employees.
Kennedy highlighted the importance of training leaders and managers to deal with mental health issues.
“It’s critical that leaders and managers are given the right training to ensure they have the skills needed to be confident in wellbeing conversations with their people. This will ensure they can demonstrate authentic and empathic leadership.”
A sentiment echoed by MacLennan who said that it’s often the frontline managers who have to deal with these situations and they’re not trained or equipped to do so. “I don’t diminish for one second the genuine commitment from an organisation to drive this activity, but if you’ve got managers who’ve been promoted for their technical and operational skills then it’s likely they’ve never been trained in EQ or mental wellbeing,” said MacLennan.
“It’s particularly good to have the mental health index reports that we have because it does give you technical insight into what’s going on,” says MacLennan, explaining that 2020 survey hinted at the Great Resignation before it was even given a name in the media.
“That’s why I love publishing it and getting it out there to everybody because I think there’s a lot of meaty information in an area that traditionally hasn’t always had the most empirical science behind it.”