$1 spent on wellness programmes in business, returns on that investment are calculated to be anywhere from $2–$14. We have also written about mental fitness, and how having employees who don't merely exist but thrive in the workplace will help your organisation transform, will help its creativity and its innovation.
Mental fitness isn't just about reducing the costs associated with mental illness; it's about enabling people to access all of their inner resources – equipping people to make the most of their talents and skills.
Mental fitness really matters for the future. More now, post COVID, than ever. We need our employees to be agile, resilient, and able to cope with what the new normal throws at them. The organisations that are more likely to succeed in this new environment are those with good, authentic wellness programmes – and those programmes will have to include elements of mental fitness. We've shown in this chapter that a company with a good wellness programme will have employees who are engaged and feel looked after. In return, the employees care about the company they work for, their boss, and they want to keep going because they feel ‘we're in this together’.
We face a turbulent future. We face a future where companies will have to re-evaluate the skills their employees need to survive in what's going to be a very tough market over the next few years. A mentally and emotionally fit workforce will be essential to succeed.
If you would like to have the in-depth version of this business case, it can be downloaded from www.symbiapartners.com/mentalfitnessresources.
This belief that we have inner resources that can give us an edge, that's a great and exciting thing … Accessing the inner resources of a human being. This is a source of competitive advantage.
– Tim Munden, Chief Learning Officer, Unilever
Mental fitness really matters for the future. We need agile and resilient leaders to secure our future. So, we have to make people understand that you've got to train your muscles, your mental muscles, to become more resilient and more agile for the future because the pace of change is rapidly increasing and we are constantly expecting more from each other in less time, therefore this is a vital skill to master. This isn't something you do because you're feeling a bit of stress, actually it's much more than that. It's about making yourself ready to become the type of leader we need for the future. It's really important that this is positioned as it should be – it's about developing our leaders to be mentally and emotionally fit for the future they must lead us into – one where we need to be adaptable and agile in the face of constant change.
– Nathalie Slechte, Chief HR Officer, JDE
Notes
1 1 World Health Organization (2019) ‘Mental health’, World Health Organization <https://www.who.int/news-room/facts-in-pictures/detail/mental-health>
2 2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention USA (2018) Mental Health Data and Publications, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention USA <https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/data_publications/index.htm>
3 3 IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) (2017) Global Burden of Disease.
4 3a WHO & The Lancet Psychiatry 2016: Scaling-up treatment of depression and anxiety: a global return on investment analysis
5 4 Oxford Economics Analysis, ‘The economic importance of safeguarding mental health in the workplace,’ Mental Health Foundation <https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/added-value-mental-health-workplace-asset>
6 5 Business in the Community (2019) ‘Mental health at work 2019: time to take ownership’, BitC <https://www.bitc.org.uk/report/mental-health-at-work-2019-time-to-take-ownership/>
7 6 Deloitte UK (2020, January) Mental Health and Employers: Refreshing the Case for Investment, <https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/consulting/articles/mental-health-and-employers-refreshing-the-case-for-investment.html>
8 7 Unum (2014) The Future Workplace, Unum <http:/resources.unum.co.uk/downloads/future-workplace.pdf?cdbc2a5e-58fb-5feb-9dda-6058155b6f58>
9 8 Mental Health Foundation (2016) Added Value: Mental Health as a Workplace Asset, https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/added-value-mental-health-workplace-asset
10 9 CIPD (2020) Health and Well-Being at Work, CIPD
11 10 The Myers-Briggs Company (2019) Type and the Always-On Culture, The Myers-Briggs Company <https://ap.themyersbriggs.com/content/Type_and_the_always_on_culture__TheMyersBriggsCo_2019.pdf>
12 11 MIND (UK) (2018–2019) Workplace Wellbeing Index, <https://www.mind.org.uk/media-a/5990/mind-index-insight-report-2019.pdf>
13 12 GALLUP-Healthways (2015) Well-Being Index.
14 13 Mental Health Foundation (2016) Added Value: Mental Health as a Workplace Asset <https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/added-value-mental-health-workplace-asset>
15 14 Oxford Economics analysis, The Economic Importance of Safeguarding Mental Health in the Workplace, Mental Health Foundation, <https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/added-value-mental-health-workplace-asset>
16 15
