Building a workplace mental health strategy

2. Identify opportunities

Using data is critical:

it measures your baseline,
identifies your organization’s unique risks and opportunities, and
is key to building your strategy and ensuring you’re focusing your efforts in the right place.

No two organizations are alike – and approaches to mental health should reflect these organizational differences.

Data driven – strategic approach

Using quantitative and qualitative data to measure outcomes is key to a sound workplace mental health strategy. Decide early on how you will benchmark success. Make the champion or a member of your mental health task force/committee accountable.

The next step is a critical analysis of the data. This can help answer the following questions:

What are you doing well?
What are your opportunities?
Are you moving in the right direction?
What do your employee comments tell you?
Is their alignment between senior leaders and your employees on their view of your workplace culture?
How are employees using their benefits? Does the usage align with your top diagnostic categories?
Do you have the right benefits plan design? Does your plan design reflect the most common health issues in your organization?

Sun Life has a number of tools and supports to help you get started.

Success stories

In our Case studies page, we show how Sun Life and two other employers developed strategies that helped them:

lower the incidence of disability claims and related costs
reduce short-term absences
increase engagement with support systems –such as employee family assistance program

Results like these don’t come overnight. These examples show that with the right strategy and commitment great things are possible.

Download Stage 2 files