Employee well-being matters; every HR person has an inbox full of offers for mediation apps and other services to improve the mental health of their workforce. But apps alone won’t move the needle on mental health.
The data doesn’t lie. Research continually shows
Our work relationships provide support for the challenges we have in our lives and accountability partners for staying healthy. But the visibility into each other’s lives has shifted to short digital encounters where it’s easy to put on a brave face.
Read More:
However, these digital relationships provide a richness of information that allows us to implement data-driven employee mental wellness policies and tactics. We can now better link them to meaningful outcomes such as lower productivity, increased absenteeism and higher turnover rates.
Mental wellness programs should be data-driven, not formulaic
If they don’t deliver meaningful results, mental health apps are just another overhead cost. A valuable wellness program, on the other hand, needs to change the employee experience.
While apps and online tools can certainly help, employers need to build robust policies and programs that improve their employees’ mental health and productivity. Increasing vacation time, job sharing, and flexible work hours are all policies that could benefit employees. But do you have the time and budget for guesswork? A mental wellness program that works for one organization won’t necessarily produce the same results for another.
Read More:
Fortunately, our digital footprint and ability to collect data are more plentiful than ever. Every pulse survey unearths insight into employees’ attitudes, struggles and needs. Every Zoom call, Slack message and email leaves a digital trail that helps us see the connection patterns between people. Data shapes perceptions, informs next steps and creates accountability.
By leveraging data and people analytics, you can build a measurable mental health program that provides tangible results for your employees and benefits for your business. Here’s how to start:
- Be transparent about workplace monitoring. Communicate with transparency and define clear objectives to build trust with your employees. If workers understand data collection will result in a better employee experience, they will be more honest in their responses and more willing to have their information collected and analyzed.
- Use data to see who is struggling and why. Social interaction patterns have changed since work became remote. It’s essential to collect data to understand population mental health and individual challenges. Ask about living and work circumstances to gauge sources of stress. Use experience surveys to measure the effectiveness of the manager/employee connection. Leverage Organizational Network Analysis to measure connection points like email, instant message, and calendar data. Find the shifts in social interaction patterns and identify isolated employees.
- Bring data together across systems to get the whole picture. Data about employees is in silos of HR and non-HR systems. Start combining data from many systems to get a holistic view of what is happening in your workforce. Bring engagement data, experience data, health claims data, productivity data and absence data to understand who is at risk and which programs are effective. Workforce planning and people analytics technology deliver rich insights that help pinpoint problem areas and take the guesswork out of problem-solving.
- Use insights to take action and measure the results. Determine which policies, programs and technology to implement based on your findings and analysis. When evaluating offerings, ask yourself, “Would this intervention make a meaningful, marginal, or indeterminate difference in our employees’ lives?” For example, if you see high turnover rates among working mothers, would a job-sharing program make a difference? Or, if the majority of employees cite anxiety as a top challenge, would a meditation course subscription help?
Set goals and measure progress to ensure your mental wellness efforts are working. Ask questions about the value and awareness of programs, and monitor turnover, absence, and engagement. You can also measure network traffic to informational resources to gauge their use. Employee’s use of these virtual programs can inform the evolution of your mental wellness program post-pandemic.
Boosting employee wellness for long-term organizational health
No organization has a perfect formula for creating a mental wellness program. We can and should do many things and the pandemic has reinforced that the right thing to do can change quickly. But by leveraging data, you can pinpoint problems and measure wellness efforts over time. With the right approach and digital tools, your organization can understand its workers on a deeper level, strengthen trust and better position itself for recovery.
