Why HR might not be the right people to own mental health

So this month, we're going to explore where you should run your health and mental health strategy from HR would seem the obvious place. And what I find many organisations do is that they think about writing a health and wellbeing strategy.

Because it's people related stuff, it then gets put down to HR. What we're going to explore this month is whether that's the right thing, should HR be leading your mental health strategy?

My answer to that is no, they should, of course, be involved and a major part of it. But for health and mental health to be more than just a siloed strategy that doesn't really create culture change, you need to make sure that it's a stand alone unit, and that it has many different stakeholders in IT, HR being one of those, but not necessarily running it. And these are my reasons why.

So the first reason why I'm not necessarily sure that HR should be reading a health and mental health strategy is because HR are brilliant at HR. They're great at writing policies, they're great at writing strategies, they're highly trained HR professionals. But that doesn't actually mean that they have any skill in health, mental health or well being. That's not saying they don't have skills in these areas. But actually, that's not what they've been doing at university. And that's not what the day job is.

The second reason I believe HR should be involved but not necessarily lead mental health is that I've seen in many organisations where HR have taken that mantle, they've unintentionally created a situation where the health and mental health policy is siloed. Across the rest of the organisation.

The organisation ends up with a fantastic mental health policy, and it's on their website along with their maternity policy and absence policy and grievance policy. But that doesn't change into culture change. The third reason I think HR should be involved in but not necessarily lead.

Mental health is the HR when it comes down to it. Our personnel, they hire and fire and they're there really to protect the organisation. So can the same people write and maintain strategies and policies that look after people? Of course, they can in some cases, but what you often find is that with mental health, people end up the wrong side of HR policies.

And actually, if you've got the same person writing the HR policy and being in charge of grievance processes, as also looking after the people, it's a different skill set. And that can sometimes cause a conflict of interest, where the same person is the poacher and gamekeeper.

So to finish I'm not saying HR should not be involved in mental health, of course they should, and they're a huge stakeholder in it. But for mental health to be run successfully across an organisation, I believe it needs to be standalone and actually have feed in for many people, including HR.

We're gonna be exploring this further in my article next week, and I'll be giving some key messages as to where I think mental health should sit, who should lead it, how HR should be involved, how we make sure that we're using the right expertise of HR, but in a way that doesn't actually conflict them with their role of protecting the organisation.

If you are HR, I'd love to hear your thoughts below and anybody else's as well as discussed this. And in the meantime, I look forward to seeing you next

You can sign up for Amy’s 6-week practical, skills led course on all aspects of creating and implementing an organisational health, mental health, or wellbeing strategy and programme - check out more info HERE