Why your Mental Health Strategy is likely to fail… sorry! (2/4)

As we discussed last month we have all seen that the health, wellbeing and mental health market has exploded in recent years. Many organisations now are either doing, or want to do something, around mental health. This is great… the only trouble is that most of the strategies being put in place won’t actually work.

Whilst this might sound punchy to you, there is a really simple reason for my negativity; which is that most of the strategies I have seen are not actually strategies. They are collections of well-intentioned activity cobbled together in a Powerpoint (usually) to demonstrate how seriously an organisation is taking health and mental health. They are tactics, not strategy. Often thrown together to get good PR or to tick a box. 

The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘strategy’ as:

‘a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.’

Yet when I ask people what the overall aim of their health or mental health strategy is I usually receive a vague response such as ‘to reduce the stigma of mental health’ or ‘to get people talking about mental health more.’ 

I find it baffling that something deemed so important to an organisation is left so unstructured and so woolly. Every successful organisation will have a clear business strategy, marketing strategy, brand strategy… and so on. I’m amazed that well-being and mental health aren’t treated in this same way. If you don’t have a clear, measurable long-term aim then how do you know that the money and time you are investing into mental health is working or that your well-being strategy is successful?

What I see organisations do is to provide a plethora of things or activities around health and wellbeing - the list is endless! Mindfulness, fresh fruit, resilience training, Mental Health First Aid, webinars, stand up desks, Employee Assistance Programmes, screening… You absolutely need these sorts of things to tackle health and mental health in the workplace, however, these activities alone are not a strategy. I see these as the pieces of the jigsaw. The strategy is the structure around them. It is this that is the part that is usually missed and very much needed. 

To build a structure or a plan you need to know what you are aiming at. What does success look like? Once you know this and only once you know this you can look at what you already have, and what else you will need to get there. So if your long-term aim with a mental health strategy is to reduce absence, then you start with looking at what your current absence rate is, what is causing it and how this can be reduced. Then, you decide what jigsaw pieces you need to put in place to carry this out, how they will link together and how you will measure the impact of what you are doing. 

All organisations have a place to build a strategy from: All have some form of data, metrics, different types of health and wellbeing provision, and all have HR policies, processes and procedures. Thought should be put into what currently exists and how this will build into a coherent, structured, measurable strategy. 

Instead we tend to see frenetic well-intentioned activity around mental health. We see lists of activity being created by someone (usually from HR) without any health or mental health experience. These are usually divorced from anything else going on in the organisation  - they aren’t linked to HR policies, processes or systems, they sit outside the performance management system, they aren’t based on any data and metrics, and they don’t link up with Learning & Development or Reward, or any other health providers. These lists are called the ‘Wellbeing or Mental Health strategy.’ 

This is not a strategy! Which is why I stand by my statement that is likely to fail, or not give you the outcome that you have hoped for.

Next blog I’ll be looking at how you can make sure that your strategy is likely to succeed, that is -  how you write a strategy that is actually a strategy…  Join me then and I can help you make the changes you were hoping for from your work in health, mental health and wellbeing. 

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