Organisations of any size, industry and complexity must invest in the wellbeing of their employees to prevent wellbeing challenges, such as burnout and stress, from becoming entrenched cultural and performance issues. Mental health challenges can affect employees in a number of different ways, regardless of the organisation they work for.
Investing in employee wellbeing for your organisation, through solutions such as an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), can prevent declines in performance, productivity and engagement, helping your people to thrive inside and outside of work.
In this guide, we’ll explore why organisations should invest in employee wellbeing, how they can support their people, the importance of prevention and early intervention, and how EAP can form part of an effective employee wellbeing strategy.
EAP Support for Organisations of All Types and Sizes
Reviewed by Marylise Talbot, Executive Director of Digital and EAPAA President
This guide explores how organisations of any size can build a proactive approach to employee wellbeing. You’ll learn:
Why organisations should prioritise employee wellbeing and mental health
How to create a mentally healthy workplace and support mental wellbeing at work
Eight steps for building an effective employee wellbeing strategy
How leaders and workplace culture can support employee wellbeing
How employee wellbeing needs differ between small and large organisations
How Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) can support employee wellbeing
Why Should Organisations Support Employee Wellbeing?
Organisations should support employee wellbeing because it can improve employee health, productivity, engagement, retention and workplace culture while helping reduce the impact of stress and burnout. Ultimately, employees who are mentally fit and resilient may be better equipped to manage challenges and respond to wellbeing-related issues, and better manage personal challenges, such as relationship issues or financial concerns, that may affect their performance at work.
But for organisations, the benefits of investing in employee wellbeing include:
Higher productivity and performance, as a healthy and engaged workforce may be better able to concentrate, focus and perform effectively.
Reduced absenteeism through proactive wellbeing management and wellness support, which can decrease stress levels and mental health-related sick leave, burnout, or chronic fatigue.
Greater talent retention by showing employees they are valued, which can result in less turnover and attract new talent due to the organisation’s reputation of supporting staff wellbeing.
A stronger culture can be built when a supportive environment is adopted which can result in higher levels of trust, morale, and collaboration.
It’s no secret that organisations have a moral obligation to support employee wellbeing through psychosocial risk management, counselling and coaching. But the landscape is constantly shifting, and now, under psychosocial risk laws, organisations are being legally mandated to support wellbeing and prevent mental health crises arising from their working environments. Therefore, when a workplace is built on support, organisations can absorb the benefits of supporting their staff, as well as fulfil their moral obligation and remain compliant.
The effectiveness of EAP
“Employee wellbeing isn’t defined by the size of an organisation. What matters is creating a culture where people feel supported, safe to speak up and able to access help early.”
Cate Page
Chief Clinical Officer, Converge
Creating a Mentally Healthy Workplace: How Can Organisations Support Employee Wellbeing?
To support employee wellbeing, organisations should combine a proactive and preventative approach with crisis-level support, ensuring employees can access the right support wherever they are on their wellbeing journey. For organisations, this means taking a holistic approach to employee wellbeing through digital tools, resources, counselling, coaching and other initiatives designed to support the mental and physical wellbeing of their people. Together, these measures can help build an open and supportive workplace culture where psychosocial hazards are managed and wellbeing support is accessible, flexible and convenient.
Here is how organisations can build an effective employee wellbeing strategy:
- Leadership buy-in: Now this isn’t just from C-suite, this includes adoption from managers of all kinds. When a wellbeing strategy is in place, it can quickly fail if management are not actively promoting awareness and destigmatising help-seeking. To overcome this, training managers on the benefits of employee wellbeing, and setting awareness benchmarks can help to foster greater adoption from your leaders.
- Focus on protecting mental health and wellbeing: While this might be seen as a given, many initiatives can seem good in practice but may fail to receive the reach you desire. As such, each part of the strategy should focus on reducing psychosocial risk. You should identify, assess, and control workplace stressors, such as workload and ergonomic spaces, to ensure your strategy is making an impact early.
- Provide accessible and convenient support: You should provide accessible wellbeing support for any and all mental health challenges through a confidential, third-party EAP provider. EAP offers care to your staff through counselling and coaching, is independent of your organisation, and covers a whole spectrum of mental health conditions and challenges.
- Prevention is key: While crisis-level care is essential, you can heavily promote preventative measures, such as evidence-based wellbeing coaching and counselling through your EAP, that aim to prevent a wellbeing crisis. In addition, offering resources such as podcasts, videos, interactive modules, and articles crafted by your EAP, that are also evidence-based, can help increase stressor awareness and wellbeing learning so employees can cope better when faced with a wellbeing challenge.
Supporting Mental Wellbeing in the Workplace
According to Job Access Australia, mental health conditions impact one in five Australians; therefore, many of your workers could be struggling with their wellbeing, resulting in reduced productivity. If an employee experiences a mental health challenge because of their working environment, or appropriate support is not easily and confidentially accessible, this can contribute to lower job satisfaction and engagement. As such, supporting mental wellbeing in the workplace is paramount. Here is how your organisation can support employee wellbeing:
- Identify the warning signs: Work with leaders to spot changes in behaviour, higher irritability, withdrawal, and drops in performance.
- Hold open discussions: Having early conversations can prevent a mental health crisis. Train leaders on how to approach a mental health conversation: non-judgemental language, talking with empathy and open body language, and how to signpost the employee to EAP support.
- Frequently check in: hold catch-ups to make sure each employee is supported regardless of whether they’re ready to open up – this will come when they’re ready, but checking in can help kickstart the conversation.
- Offer confidential, ongoing support: Employees who are struggling with their mental health should always be guided towards a trained and qualified professional. This could be your workplace EAP, where the support is confidential and delivered by an experienced, certified, and qualified clinician.
- Offer flexible arrangements: Try to address workplace stressors early. This could be the need for hybrid working, isolated working environments for at-home workers, or high workloads. Offer support for those situations, such as social connection initiatives for at-home workers.
- Raise awareness and share resources: One of the best ways you can take a preventative approach is by raising awareness and promoting help-seeking behaviours. Train your leaders to model healthy behaviours. Also, sharing engaging resources can help employees learn about their stressors and how to handle them when they arise.
- Mitigate loneliness: For many employees working in isolation, such as from home or in isolated areas of an office, this can cause feelings of loneliness. According to Gallup, one in five employees feel lonely. To mitigate this, frequently check in with isolated employees and hold team activities so everyone feels socially engaged.
8 Steps for Building an Effective Employee Wellbeing Strategy
When building an effective employee wellbeing strategy, you must identify, assess and mitigate any risks that could impact their mental health and wellbeing. What this looks like can be unique to your organisation. However, by following these eight steps, we guide you through building an employee wellbeing strategy, and if you need further support, we’re here to support you with a psychosocial risk assessment. Here are your eight steps for building an effective wellbeing strategy:
- Identify business needs and objectives
- Assess your employees’ needs
- The three pillars of wellbeing
- Leadership support
- Designing your program structure
- Training your managers
- Communicating your plan
- Review, measure, and optimise
Step 1: Identify business needs and objectives
When defining your objectives for your employee wellbeing strategy, you need to ensure they align with your broader business goals. Review internal data to understand the issues in your company – such as retention and burnout. Let these challenges inform your goals as they will more than likely hit business objectives, too.
Step 2: Assess your employees’ needs
Don’t guess what your employees need. Go to them directly. Perform pulse surveys, focus groups, and listening sessions to gain invaluable feedback directly from the people you’re trying to support. You can receive better feedback if you perform anonymous surveys, as many can fear repercussions if their feedback is negative.
Step 3: The three pillars of wellbeing – physical, mental, social
When you know what is impacting your employees and you’re building your initiatives, ensure they cover the three pillars of wellbeing:
- Ensure their physical environment is ergonomic
- Ensure their mental health is supported through stress management and counselling
- Build an environment of social belonging through team building
Step 4: Leadership support
You need to gain leadership buy-in from your C-suite and directors. To succeed, make sure your senior leadership teams are championing workplace wellbeing and modelling help-seeking behaviours to destigmatise wellbeing support.
Step 5: Designing your program structure
Keep it simple. Design a framework that is scalable, easy to process, and tailored to the insights you’ve procured from your staff members. Identify relevant tools and interventions, such as EAP support, to underpin your framework.
Step 6: Training your managers
Work with your managers to equip them with the skills and knowledge to act as advocates for your wellbeing strategy. Complete training on how to identify stress signals, how to raise a conversation and communicate clearly, and how to signpost to support (such as EAP). Managers set the day-to-day tone and communicate frequently with team members so make sure they’re adequately prepared.
Step 7: Communicating your plan
Be transparent and ensure all employees are informed that you’ve built a wellbeing strategy. As such, clearly communicate your plan, explain the benefits and changes that will be implemented, and make wellbeing an everyday conversation in team meetings, one-on-one meetings and during town halls.
Step 8: Review, measure, and optimise
Continuously review your plan and internal data to identify if your wellbeing strategy is making an impact. Review your retention rates, complaints of burnout, workplace adjustments, and mental health compensation claims. Keep adjusting your plan over time and running fresh feedback sessions to inform the optimisation of your strategy.
Where Should Your Organisation Start?
Do you understand your employees’ current wellbeing needs?
Yes → continue
No →
Start with employee consultation, pulse surveys and psychosocial risk assessment
Are workplace psychosocial hazards being identified and managed?
Yes → continue
No →
Prioritise psychosocial risk management
Do employees have access to confidential professional support?
Yes → continue
No →
Consider implementing an EAP
Are managers equipped to recognise concerns and guide employees to support?
Yes → continue
No →
Prioritise manager and leadership training
Are employees aware of and engaging with available wellbeing support?
Yes → continue
No →
Focus on communication, awareness and help-seeking
Are you measuring whether your wellbeing strategy is working?
Yes → Continue optimising your employee wellbeing strategy
No →
Establish wellbeing measures, employee feedback and regular reviews
Employee Wellbeing Recapped
70%
of employees say their manager has a bigger impact on their wellbeing than their therapist or doctor.
81%
of employees were more engaged when they were recognised and valued.
20%
drop in wellbeing directly correlates with a 10% reduction in performance.
56%
When organisations prioritise wellbeing, they reduce health risk factors by 56%.
How Leaders Can Support Employee Wellbeing
Leaders have a significant role to play in supporting mental health and wellbeing, with a UKG report, featured in Forbes, highlighting that 70% of employees say that their manager has a bigger impact on their wellbeing than their therapist or doctor. Encouragingly, our data is showing that leaders are building the adequate skills to support their team. Our anonymised employee feedback data demonstrates that when training and development programs are provided, employees get involved with participation rates exceeding 90%. However, organisations need to continuously upskill and attract manager buy-in to make wellbeing a staple conversation in everyday life.
Here are key strategies to help your managers become advocates for workplace wellbeing:
- Push leaders to model healthy behaviours through demonstrated self-care, boundary setting, and sharing their wellness practices.
- Ask your leaders to actively check in with team members during meetings and one-on-ones and train them to hold empathetic conversations.
- Provide your managers with resource toolkits they can refer to when they’re faced with an employee wellbeing issue. For example, include speaking notes, prompts, and EAP guides.
Creating a Workplace Culture That Supports Wellbeing
Creating a workplace culture that promotes and fosters a positive approach to wellbeing takes a collective effort from senior leadership to entry-level employees. Everything we have already explored provides the building blocks for a healthy workplace culture, so embedding these steps and implementing an employee wellbeing framework will enable your organisation to address cultural challenges and support mental and physical health. But to recap, here is a guide on building a wellbeing culture:
Train leaders to be empathetic and have emotional intelligence
Consult your managers and staff frequently to see what they need via anonymous feedback and surveys
Foster connection and social wellbeing through team building exercises
Most importantly, focus on building psychological safety by observing the 14 psychosocial risks outlined by Safe Work Australia. Once identified, mitigate these hazards to make your workplace an environment where everyone feels safe to share challenges, take meaningful risks, and reach out for support without fear of judgement or repercussions.
Small vs Large Organisations: How Do Employee Wellbeing Needs Compare?
Small and large organisations share the same goal of supporting employee mental health and wellbeing, but their challenges, resources and support needs can differ. Small businesses may have fewer internal resources and managers performing multiple roles, while larger organisations may need to support bigger, more complex or dispersed workforces. An effective employee wellbeing strategy should reflect the size, structure and needs of the organisation and its employees.
How Small Businesses Can Support Employee Wellbeing
In a small to medium-sized business, challenges facing employees include long working hours, limited HR resources, little support, and managers wearing multiple hats. While it can be difficult to navigate these issues, there are steps SMBs can take to support their people more efficiently and effectively:
- Offer flexible working arrangements, if possible, such as hybrid working environments or in-office schemes – such as free coffee day – to drive social wellbeing.
- Encourage breaks and work-life balance through promotion of micro five-minute breaks away from the worksite to prevent burnout, and allow flexibility in working hours, if possible, as many workers may have differences including performing better at night over the morning.
- Provide professional, clinical support through an employee assistance program (EAP), removing the barriers to support, and in many cases, especially at Converge, EAP providers can support with promotion and raising awareness.
- Promote open discussions and an open-door policy so that when employees are experiencing a wellbeing challenge, such as burnout, they’re able to raise this without fear of judgement or repercussions.
- Show recognition of hard work by appreciating the effort your employees are putting in. A Nectar report showed that 81% of employees were more engaged when they were recognised and valued.
How Larger Organisations Can Support Employee Wellbeing
In large enterprise organisations, staff members can experience significant wellbeing challenges including burnout and chronic stress, high workloads, isolation and loneliness, and an inability to disconnect. While these challenges may be present in your organisation, there are some simple strategies you can use, including:
- Promoting accessible, flexible and expert support via your EAP. You can also provide training programs and build peer support initiatives.
- Equip leaders with the tools to support staff effectively with training that explores emotional intelligence, psychosocial hazards to spot, and how to communicate.
- Encourage employees to speak up and seek help by destigmatising mental health support through awareness and promotion.
- Track and measure the impact of your initiatives by involving employee feedback through surveys to understand sentiment and how you can improve.
Overall, WorkSafe Victoria states that a 20% drop in a person’s wellbeing directly correlates with a 10% reduction in their performance. Yet, when organisations prioritise wellbeing, they reduce health risk factors by 56%, WorkSafe Victoria states. Therefore, regardless of the size of your organisation, you can make an impact and drive better wellbeing outcomes – which are directly linked to business performance.
Choosing Employee Wellbeing Solutions for Your Organisation: How EAPs Can Support Employee Wellbeing
The right employee wellbeing solutions should provide accessible, confidential and professional support while helping organisations take a proactive approach to workplace wellbeing. An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) can form a core part of this approach, giving employees access to qualified wellbeing professionals for counselling, coaching and support across a range of work and personal challenges.
By combining EAP support with preventative wellbeing resources, leadership support and ongoing awareness, organisations can support employee wellbeing earlier, build resilience and create a more mentally healthy workplace.
Support Employee Wellbeing with Converge EAP
Converge provides EAP and workplace wellbeing solutions for organisations of all sizes, helping employees access expert support when they need it while giving organisations a stronger foundation for proactive workplace wellbeing.
Talk to Converge about the right EAP solution for your organisation.
EAP Support for Organisations of Any Size: FAQs
Do organisations of all sizes need to prioritise employee wellbeing?
Yes. Organisations of all sizes should prioritise employee wellbeing because mental health and wellbeing challenges can affect employees in any workplace. A proactive employee wellbeing strategy can help prevent and manage stress and burnout while supporting productivity, engagement, retention and a healthier workplace culture.
Do small and large organisations have different employee wellbeing needs?
Yes. Employee wellbeing needs can vary depending on an organisation’s size, workforce and working environment. Small businesses may face limited HR resources, managers performing multiple roles and fewer internal support structures. Larger organisations may need to address high workloads, burnout, isolation and consistent wellbeing support across larger or dispersed workforces. Employee wellbeing solutions should therefore reflect the specific needs of the organisation and its employees.
How can organisations support mental wellbeing in the workplace?
Organisations can support mental wellbeing in the workplace by identifying and managing psychosocial risks, encouraging open conversations, training leaders, promoting healthy work practices and providing access to confidential professional support. An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) can strengthen this approach by giving employees access to counselling, coaching and support for work and personal challenges.
What should an organisation do to create a mentally healthy workplace?
Organisations can create a mentally healthy workplace by taking a proactive and preventative approach to employee wellbeing. This includes identifying and managing psychosocial hazards, consulting employees about their needs, building leadership capability, promoting psychological safety and providing accessible professional support. These measures can help create a workplace where employees feel safe to speak up, seek help and manage wellbeing challenges.
How can EAPs help organisations support employee wellbeing?
Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) support employee wellbeing by giving employees confidential access to qualified professionals for counselling, coaching and support with work and personal challenges. EAPs can also support early intervention and prevention through wellbeing resources, education and awareness, helping employees seek support before challenges escalate.
How can organisations build employee resilience?
Organisations can build employee resilience by giving employees the skills, resources and support to manage stress, adapt to change and respond to workplace and personal challenges. Supportive leadership, wellbeing education, healthy work practices, social connection and access to EAP counselling and coaching can all contribute to a more resilient workforce.
