Most managers understand how important mental health is. Research shows that employees flourish in mentally healthy, psychologically safe workspaces; but knowing that and delivering it are two separate things. In this article, I’ll highlight the biggest challenges around mental health in the workplace, and outline an approach you can implement in your organisation to help overcome them.

The Challenge

So what are the current challenges for managing employee mental wellbeing. Well there are four issues that standout:

• Lack of leadership training and development

Mental health is a massive topic, and many leaders don’t have experience in psychological safety or taking care of other people’s mental health; but it should be a priority to develop that capability.

• Limited resources and accessibility

Understanding the need to support is fine, but times are tight. How can expenditure be approved without visibility of benefits or improve performance. This issue is demonstrated in a recent 2024 survey conducted by Split which showed that only 47% of the UK workforce actually has access to an EAP; that of the companies offering an EAP 31% do not assess its performance; and that 16% of companies in 2023 were looking to terminate their EAP offering.

• Mental Health Stigma

Mental health stigma is still an issue in modern workplaces. A survey by HR Review in 2023 showed that more than 50% of the UK’s workforce remained uncomfortable discussing their mental wellbeing at work. And absent of open expression and credible information, any support strategy will be imperfect.

• Hard to build a supportive culture

A strong and healthy company culture is one of the best ways to support employees’ well-being. But that is easier said than done, it requires a long-term, strategic and holistic strategy to create an inclusive and supportive culture. Improving mental wellbeing is an evolution not a revolution.

So with these market characteristics, the challenge is how do we deliver a low cost  and safe solution, accessible to all employees, that can educate our community, measure our performance and enable sustainable positive change. It is a challenge REP Group set out to overcome and have developed overlapping solutions to support.

A Solution

Expressive writing has been long professed to be a valuable tool for improving mental health and wellbeing; and has over 200 research studies in support of that statement. The primary reason for its benefit, it assists the author to become more conscious of their own thoughts and emotions. The act of written expression, forcing them to organise their thoughts in a structured manner. It is a benefit I can confirm from first-hand experience and is the foundations of Perspectives, our App which enables users to undertake our proprietary expressive writing programme. This programme is the starting point of a dialogue with employees, allowing the psychologically safe capture of credible information. The next step is to confidentially analyse that data.

SAFE;R is our bespoke AI reporting tool that profiles communities as a whole around 16 mental health disorders and 4 mental health domains. Through data blinding to preserve employee confidentiality, we aggregate the data from Perspectives to profile the community and provide recommendations to the organisation on how to improve their mental wellbeing strategy. Summary reports are provided quarterly and detailed report annually. The reports provide a range of qualitative and quantitative actionable information, and performance is managed through a single metric – the Community Impact Score or CIS. The CIS has been designed to be a simple scaled metric that can be used at every level of the organisation to effectively communicate around the issue of mental wellbeing; enabling full integration of mental wellbeing into the organisation’s vision and values. But how do we use this information to improve employee support?

This is the point where communication goes full circle, through the provision of tailored training and education, which most importantly demonstrates that the organisation is listening. MI;ND is our patented App that enables distribution of tailored training programmes for both leaders and employees. The manner in which MI;ND provides educational material is unique, using a multi-POV interactive viewing solution which has been specifically developed to accelerate shared understanding and increase inclusive practices that consider the diverse mental health needs of all employees.

REP Group’s mental health support tools are designed to remove the stigma, train your leaders and support your employees, all with the objective of boosting your company culture for every employee, while also boosting business performance.

In 2024 Deloitte reported that mental health costs the UK £55Bn per annum in lost revenues (2.5% of GDP). A figure that is not surprising when only 2.4% of employees with access to an EAP use the resources available.  With 1 in 4 people excepted to struggle each year, this is less than 10% of the numbers that would be reasonably expected.

Through our integrated offering of Perspectives, SAFE;R and MI;ND, we can help you transform how you engage with your team and start to write a new chapter for your organisation. If you would like to find out more? Book a discussion here!