Mental health safety program
Does anyone have something like this, or would this be more HR realm? If you do have and manage this program how did you get the training for it, and what does the program look like?
Comments (6)
We don't have a mental health program, per say, but through our benefits package, we can talk to a counselor for free. I'm not sure about all of the details, but it is nice to know that we have that support.
A mental health safety program would be a great way for a workplace to incorporate Total Worker Health into its health and safety approach. I think senior/executive management and HR would be your critical partners when determining the workforce needs and organizational resources. Without such support, the effort may quickly fall flat.
I know of a company that offers mental health support as part of their benefits/employee assistance. Free, anonymous counseling on family and work issues, stress, depression, etc. I think it is mostly owned by their benefits organization and the service is through a third party.
In my work, it's a joint approach between HSE and HR. We have trained Mental Health First Aiders (this is a popular course in the UK, not sure if it's available globally) and we run regular training and awareness sessions on mental health with our training partner. These are both on-line and in-person (when circumstances allow) and are open to employees' family members as well. On top of this, we have an employee assistance program that gives everyone free access to online resources and a free, confidential 24/7 support helpline where they can access anything from information to counseling, debt management advice and so much more.
The employee assistance scheme continues to run online courses covering a huge variety of topics and we publicise these on our internal comms channels and a closed facebook group for employees.