An increasing number of organizations are building a team of volunteers who can guide colleagues in distress to seek professional help.
An increasing number of organizations are building a team of volunteers who can guide colleagues in distress to seek professional help.
These professionals are variously named, their roles defined in grandiose terms. Example of these: ‘mental health diplomats’; ‘mental health task force’; ‘workplace mental health champions’ and ‘mental health allies’.
The pandemic has provided just the right impetus for companies to give mental health the attention and importance it always deserved, but it was stubbornly denied.
Organizations are now celebrating employees who serve as “first responders,” ensuring that a colleague struggling with a mental health issue receives immediate help.
Johnson & Johnson calls these employees “mental health diplomats” after the name of an initiative it launched.
These employees have volunteered to be mental wellness advocates and more than 90 are on board, with 15 of them from the core team, a company statement said.
Mental health diplomats come from various verticals and have managed at least one meeting each month.
They are equipped to volunteer in this way: they are trained to offer support to colleagues facing mental health challenges.
a certification
Procter & Gamble has “a certified mental health first aid task force.” These employees are trained and certified by Mental Health First Aid India to guide anyone facing mental health issues and towards professional help.
By virtue of their training, members of a task force are able to foster an open environment for people to talk about their mental health issues without inhibition.
The company has assigned a mental health first responder to each work group and plans to train more employees within the organization for this role.
The experience of many organizations, particularly in recent times, is that trained mental health champions within teams are welcomed and accepted when seeking to raise awareness of mental health.
Manoj Chandran, Executive Director of the White Swan Foundation, is a strong believer in the notion that employee mental health initiatives must come from within, being driven by employees themselves.
Manoj points out that one department can be the custodian of any mental health program, but the group must be multi-departmental, made up of “mental health champions” from as many departments as can participate in it.
In 2020, the White Swan Foundation kicked off what it called ‘Workplace Mental Health Champions’ by inviting organizations to nominate one employee who will be trained to have a basic understanding of mental health and provided a set of of tools to facilitate informal conversations about mental health in their own organizations. .
Manoj emphasizes that these “workplace champions” must go beyond a “healing approach and help build an ecosystem in the organization, one that should involve even small teams.”
He illustrates the point: “At one company I know of, mental health champions attend team meetings to be really effective in their volunteer work.”
Vandita Gupta, director of Ethicon Wound Closure, Bio Surgery at Johnson & Johnson India, volunteers as the leader of the company’s Mental Health Diplomats program and notes that countless interventions have been carried out since this support group was formed.
a new challenge
With entire workforces now operating in different work formats, including the hybrid work model, the lack of physical presence proves to be a disadvantage in reaching hard-pressed employees.
Vandita, who leads a team of 400 employees, agrees that in a hybrid work model, let alone a fully remote work model, conducting mental health interventions would be challenging.
“Sometimes you need to go beyond those formal calls and meetings to consciously understand a person. Sometimes a few basic questions can even help the person open up about her issues,” says Vandita.
At Johnson and Johnson, Vandita says, they conduct an annual mental health survey for associates that provides data-driven insights into the different interventions associates are seeking.
keep it simple
Manoj points out that organizations should start small. “Choose small campaigns for a specific group or department.
You don’t always have to wait to start over; it could even be part of a larger event, but push the mental health agenda and let it be a talking point,” says Manoj, citing a program run by Bosch Global Software: ‘Mental Health Allies’.
Leadership has a crucial role to play in sustaining such initiatives.
Vandita points out that when efforts are being made to normalize conversations about mental health, it is essential that leaders also step up and facilitate those conversations.
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