The term “strategy” gets thrown around a lot in business. It can be a helpful tool, but often becomes a lofty term, used to glamourize, and over-complicate the ways our teams and organizations work, or how we describe our goals and ambitions as leaders.

Adding to the inherent cynicism of “strategy” as a concept is the fact that businesses have a strategy for almost everything these days, and consulting firms charge big money to develop them. From DEI to talent, marketing to ESG, strategy abounds in the business world. And while there is a need for critical thinking and planning in all these areas, it wouldn’t be a stretch to wonder if an organization can have too many different strategies. After all, if everything is a strategic priority, is anything?

And so, I wouldn’t blame you if you were a bit cynical about the work we do here at Mindset Strategy.

The question some employers have, and rightly so, is “Do we really need a strategy just for mental health?”

And here’s where my answer might surprise you. No! You don’t need a mental health strategy (or at least not in the way you might think).

Sounds like blasphemy from a consultant, right? Let me explain.

What is strategy anyway?

In simple terms, a strategy describes an organization’s view of how it can most effectively accomplish an important objective, by weighing its own strengths, limitations, and understanding what’s going on outside of its four walls (or home offices).

Creating a typical strategy involves a cascade of sorts, from vision (desired end state) to mission (current challenge you’re tackling), values (how you’re going to work along the way), and priorities (the tools you need along the journey).

This way of developing a strategy or strategic plan assumes things don’t change – that the conditions that exist today will continue to persist over the next few years as we put this strategy into action.

Thinking about the mental health of a workforce, this creates a few problems. Namely: 

1. Things can change quickly! We saw this in 2020 with the onset of the global pandemic (a time in our lives that  most of us would rather forget)…

2. A huge number of variables can affect the mental health of employees – many of them outside the view or control of any organization.

3. The needs of employees and our understanding of best practices are constantly evolving. 

But this limitation of typical business strategy doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. After all, we know that when organizations choose to adopt a comprehensive approach to supporting employee mental health, they realize huge benefits for their people, productivity, and even profits.

A better way to think about mental health strategy in your workplace.

Jim Collins is a well-known business strategist and author. His framework for building outstanding companies – having worked with and studied hundreds of them – is used by many organizations in their strategy development processes.

But even Jim Collins recognizes that something more than good strategy is required to help an organization change.

Way back in 1997, he penned an article for Inc. with a provocative title: “Forget strategy, build mechanisms instead”. While talking about the evolving role of a leader or CEO in a company, Collins describes a critical shift in focus away from single person-led initiatives that may end when that person leaves toward building systems embedded in the company that can support change and sustain efforts over the long term.

This is the same kind of shift we help organizations across Canada make in their approach to mental health – a focus on building a sustainable system for well-being at work. It’s a deeper shift than just a plan on a page. In our view, a good mental health “strategy” is really a way of describing the mechanisms an organization intends to build that will support human sustainability into the future.

To help unpack this concept, here are some examples of common mechanisms organizations should have to support mental health, and some examples of how these mechanisms are put in place on the ground.

Mechanisms for mentally healthy workplaces.

1. A mechanism for risk identification and mitigation

Like a health and safety management system, organizations should have a mechanism to identify and take action to address risks to the psychological health of their workers. Common risks include excessive workload, bullying, incivility, low job control, or poor workplace relationships, to name a few.

 Mitigation strategies are as varied as the risks themselves, but the mechanism to this happen could include:

• A standardized reporting process for psychosocial risks, built into regular safety risk reporting procedures.

• A regular risk assessment process, conducted by a trained professional, specific to different areas of the organization.

2. A mechanism for employee input and involvement

Every standard, guideline, or best-practice document on mental health at work reinforces the requirement for employees at all levels to have meaningful input into how the organization supports mental health, as well as decisions that affect their day-to-day work.

Ways this could come to life in an organization include:

• An employee resource group (ERG) that regularly connects with employees about their learning and support needs.

• A psychological health and safety committee that provides input and advice to senior leadership about the direction for risk management in the organization.

3. A mechanism for developing quality leadership 

High quality leadership is essential for the well-being of workers. Many different theories about the “best” style of leadership float around on the internet, but all of them amount to trends or preferences. To truly succeed, organizations need a mechanism to ensure that the leadership they are cultivating meets the needs and expectations of their employees.

This could look like:

• Updating a leadership development program to include “soft” skills related to empathy, emotional intelligence, and inclusion.

• Conducting 360-degree assessments of leadership skills or benchmarking team levels of psychological safety.

4. A mechanism for accessing support

Support for mental health and mental health issues is more than an EAP – it’s actually a wide spectrum from early intervention to absence management and reintegration. Rather than only providing a single (reactive) support option for when one is already struggling, organizations benefit from a mechanism to help employees at all levels connect with the right support at the right time.

This means organizations should:

• Train managers and leaders to recognize the signs of poor mental health and connect employees to appropriate support services.

• Develop robust accommodation and return to work programs that can effectively support employees with chronic, episodic, or invisible health-related disabilities.

The real value of mental health strategy work.

So, do you need a mental health strategy in your workplace? No - not in the traditional sense. While in some cases a typical vision and mission with 3 or 4 high-level priorities can fit the immediate need, it’s not a requirement or even a gold-standard best practice.

What an organization really needs to make change is an understanding of the key systems or mechanisms it needs to create to help its people stay psychologically healthy.

And that’s where some strategic thinking from people who understand best practices in this area can pay off in the long run. Because many organizations build ineffective or inefficient mechanisms to accomplish these very meaningful goals. For example:

• That great accommodation policy nobody knows exists

• An awesome benefits package or EAP that nobody uses

• An employee survey that gets looked at and put on the shelf

• A well-meaning executive team that independently makes decisions about the work of front-line staff

These are all common, broken mechanisms we see in organizations from all industries... and the ways to fix them are what make up a mental health strategy for your organization.

And fixing what’s broken in the workplace is the real value of the work we do.