These professionals are variously named, their roles defined in grand terms. Sample these — ‘mental health diplomats’; ‘mental health task force’; ‘mental health champions at workplace’ and ‘mental health allies’.
The pandemic has provided just the right amount of push for corporates to accord mental health the attention and importance it always deserved, but was stubbornly denied.
Organisations are now celebrating employees who serve as “first responders”, ensuring that a colleague battling a mental health issue receives prompt help.
Johnson & Johnson calls these employees ‘Mental Health Diplomats’ by the name of an initiative it launched.
These employees had volunteered to be advocates for mental wellbeing and over 90 are on board, with 15 of them from the core team, notes a communication from the company.
The mental health diplomats are drawn from various verticals and they have managed at least one meet-up every month.
They are equipped to volunteer in this manner: They are trained to offer support to colleagues faced with mental-health challenges.
A certification
Procter & Gamble has “a task force of certified mental health first-aiders”. These employees are trained and certified by Mental Health First Aid India to guide anyone up against mental health issues and towards professional help.
By virtue of their training, members of a task force are capable of fostering an open environment for people that would allow them to discuss their mental-health challenges without any inhibitions.
The company has assigned one mental-health first-aider for every work group and is planning to train more employees within the organisation to for this role.
The experience of many organisations, particularly in recent times, is that trained mental health champions within teams are welcomed and accepted when they seek to raise awareness about mental health
Manoj Chandran, CEO, White Swan Foundation, is a staunch believer in the notion that employee mental-health initiatives should come from within, being driven by the employees themselves.
Manoj notes that one department can be the custodian of any mental-health programme, but the group should be multi-departmental, consisting of “mental health champions” from as many departments as can be involved in it.
In 2020, White Swan Foundation started what it called ‘Mental Health Champions at Workplace’ inviting organisations to nominate an employee who will be trained to have a basic understanding of mental health and given a toolkit to facilitate informal conversations on mental health in their own organisations.
Manoj emphasises that these “workplace champions” must go beyond a “curative approach and help build an ecosystem in the organisation, one that should involve even small teams”.
He illustrates the idea: “In a company I know, mental health champions attend team meetings to be really effective in their volunteering work.”
Vandita Gupta — who is director, Ethicon Wound Closure, Bio Surgery at Johnson & Johnson India — volunteers as lead for the company’s Mental Health Diplomats programme, and she observes that ever since this support group was formed, innumerable interventions have been effected.
A new challenge
With whole workforces now functioning across different work formats, including the hybrid work model, is the lack of physical presence proving to be a handicap while reaching out to employees in distress.
Vandita, who leads a team of 400 employees, agrees that in a hybrid work model — more so, in a fully remote work model — effecting mental-health interventions would be challenge.
“Sometimes, you need to go beyond those formal calls and meetings to consciously understand a person. Sometimes, some basic questions can even help the person open up about their problems,” says Vandita.
At Johnson and Johnson, Vandita says, they run an annual mental health survey for associates that provides data-based inputs about the different interventions associates are looking for.
Keep it simple
Manoj notes that organisations should start small. “Pick up small campaigns for a focussed group or a department.
You do not always have to wait to start afresh; it could even be a part of a larger event, but push the mental health agenda and let it be a topic of conversation,” says Manoj, and cites a programme run by Bosch Global Software — ‘Mental Health Allies’.
The leadership has to play a crucial role in sustaining such initiatives.
Vandita notes that when efforts are being made to normalise conversations around mental health, it is essential that leaders also step forward and facilitate those conversations.
