Why staff mental health needs to be a C‑suite priority

Where should employ­ee well­be­ing sit in a C‑suite executive’s list of pri­or­i­ties? For Bill Michael, chair­man of accoun­tan­cy giant KPMG, this year was the moment to tack­le the sub­ject head on.

Address­ing 1,500 staff on a Zoom call in Jan­u­ary, Michael was wide­ly report­ed as telling them to “stop play­ing the vic­tim card” and “moan­ing” about their cur­rent work­ing con­di­tions. He added that the con­cept of uncon­scious bias had been, for him, “com­plete and utter crap for years”.

Even before the end of the call to KPMG’s finan­cial ser­vices team, Michael acknowl­edged he had gone too far with his com­ments. Those in the vir­tu­al town hall said he had also told strug­gling employ­ees how to reach out for help. But the dam­age was done and Michael resigned a few days lat­er.

With busi­ness­es still reel­ing from the fall­out of Brex­it and the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, there remains a temp­ta­tion among the C‑suite to pass respon­si­bil­i­ty for well­be­ing either to human resources or down the chain of com­mand. But the strong inter­nal reac­tion to Michael’s com­ments under­lines a new employ­ee expec­ta­tion in a post-COVID world that those in the C‑suite must lead, lis­ten and show empa­thy around men­tal health.

The cost of over­bur­den­ing a team can weigh heav­i­ly on a com­pa­ny as well as the indi­vid­ual. Accord­ing to research by Gallup, an ana­lyt­ics and advi­so­ry firm, staff were 63 per cent more like­ly to take a sick day if they report­ed feel­ing burnt out, near­ly three times as like­ly to seek anoth­er job and 13 per cent less con­fi­dent in their own per­for­mance if they felt over­whelmed. 

The most vision­ary organ­i­sa­tions are now look­ing to their own data and ask­ing staff for insights around pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, sick days and retain­ing tal­ent. This might feel a tricky sub­ject to address when employ­ee health right­ly remains para­mount, but an under­stand­ing of the cost and ben­e­fits of men­tal health helps push this wider sub­ject into the board­room.

Vit­rue Health is devel­op­ing tech­nol­o­gy to help clin­i­cians assess patient motor func­tion. Using a motion cap­ture tool and mus­cu­loskele­tal arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), a pro­gramme assess­es a desk set-up and sug­gests improve­ments to make home work­spaces more ergonom­ic. “It’s incred­i­bly impor­tant that we prac­tise what we preach,” says the company’s chief exec­u­tive Shane Lowe.

“I want my team to be able to work remote­ly and flex­i­bly, but I don’t want this to come at the expense of their phys­i­cal or men­tal health. That’s why I’m invest­ing time and resources into pro­tect­ing the well­be­ing of my work­force.”

In addi­tion to offer­ing the AI tool to the Vit­rue team, an in-house phys­io­ther­a­pist hosts vir­tu­al ses­sions every day at 3pm. To build inter­nal morale, the Lon­don-based team has devel­oped a fit­ness and con­di­tion­ing game based on a person’s body move­ments tracked by web­cam.

Lowe, who co-found­ed the com­pa­ny in 2017, is track­ing the impact of these mea­sures among his nine-strong staff. Accord­ing to its own inter­nal cal­cu­la­tions, men­tal health and well­be­ing mea­sures intro­duced since April 2020 have reduced aches and pains by 43 per cent, improved morn­ing ener­gy lev­els by 16 per cent and reduced burnout risk by 36 per cent.

“Since staff well­be­ing is intri­cate­ly linked to busi­ness suc­cess, it’s very impor­tant busi­ness­es tack­le the issue col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly,” he says. “If human resources teams are respon­si­ble for the day-to-day imple­men­ta­tion of poli­cies, the C‑suite must be involved in the insti­ga­tion and plan­ning of robust, proven well­be­ing ini­tia­tives.”

The start­up has pub­lished its own data on how well­be­ing and men­tal health mea­sures could reduce pain-relat­ed and asso­ci­at­ed pro­duc­tiv­i­ty loss­es. Its research says an aver­age com­pa­ny with 1,000 staff could save £1.4 mil­lion a year if it took rea­son­able efforts to tack­le these issues among its staff.

BDO, which employs 6,000 peo­ple offer­ing tax, audit and oth­er advi­so­ry ser­vices, asks its employ­ees to com­plete the Work­space Well­be­ing Index (WWI), an annu­al sur­vey devel­oped by the char­i­ty Mind. Togeth­er with its own inter­nal sur­veys, this helps the company’s lead­ers to keep track of its well­be­ing offer­ing and get ideas on where it might be able to improve.

Chris Grove is nation­al head of trans­ac­tion ser­vices and sits on BDO’s lead­er­ship team. Along­side these roles he is also chair of the firm’s cul­ture board. “Hav­ing well­be­ing at the top of the agen­da is noth­ing new for BDO,” he explains. “But the chal­lenges brought on by the pan­dem­ic, which have had an impact on both phys­i­cal and men­tal health, have cer­tain­ly meant it is more impor­tant than ever before.”

Many of the firms’ staff are par­ents or have oth­er car­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties. In response to feed­back, BDO has increased its “agile work­ing offer­ing”, which enables peo­ple to adjust hours to bet­ter suit their cir­cum­stances. 

The com­pa­ny won a sil­ver award from Mind’s WWI ini­tia­tive for its work in 2020. As part of the firm’s three-month Win­ter Well­be­ing Pack­age, it is now work­ing close­ly with a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist to pro­vide short videos on key top­ics around home school­ing, sleep and resilience.

“We are also in the process of plan­ning a live vir­tu­al event with the psy­chol­o­gist and a pan­el, includ­ing our man­ag­ing part­ner, which we’re expect­ing to see over 350 of our peo­ple attend,” says Grove.

Health­care provider Bupa says its 23,000-plus employ­ees around the world “expect us to play an active role in their phys­i­cal and men­tal health”. Their Bupa Be.Me app is open to staff and reg­u­lar Peo­ple Pulse inter­nal sur­veys allow staff to give anony­mous, can­did feed­back. 

“We use this as our barom­e­ter of cul­ture and we take action based on our employ­ees’ insight,” says Tom Web­ber, peo­ple direc­tor at Bupa UK.

A company’s staff are its most pre­cious com­mod­i­ty and the mea­sur­able ben­e­fits of a health­i­er and hap­py work­force are just as impor­tant as doing right by them.

Web­ber says invest­ment in men­tal health is “not only the right thing to do, but it makes good busi­ness sense for tal­ent reten­tion and attrac­tion, in addi­tion to the bot­tom line”.

He con­cludes: “It’s no longer just an HR issue, but some­thing that should be on the board­room agen­da. While they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to lead on the day-to-day well­be­ing strat­e­gy, CEOs can play a key role in shap­ing it, mod­el­ling it and ensur­ing there is account­abil­i­ty for it.”