Mental health continues to be a growing challenge for businesses, but what do you do to support your employees when a genuine crisis arises and you are seriously concerned about an employee’s immediate welfare? Today, we are going to unpack this issue and take you behind the scenes to share how On Demand HR members are supported through these tricky situations.

There is no doubt that today for many employees there is a significant blurring between the personal and work lives which has been amplified with the great work from home experiment forced throughout the pandemic.

When it comes to mental health, the overwhelming majority of businesses we interact with on a daily basis are genuinely concerned for their employees and want to support them whenever possible when they are faced with mental health challenges.

Of course, there is also a financial aspect to this discussion as well with the average mental health related workers compensation claim lasting 26 weeks or 6 months. To put this into perspective, this is more time off work for mental health related claims than spinal cord injuries.

Typically, one of the tools On Demand HR members employ to tackle this problem is providing access to an Employee Assistance Program or EAP. This typically offers up to two confidential sessions of counselling for the employee to help them with any issues that they are currently facing. Our members also benefit from not being required to pay an annual subscription fee normally associated with these services.

But what if there is an immediate concern about the employees safety and wellbeing such as concerns over self-harm? A new service has been introduced from our EAP provider to tackle this issue where they will reach out to the employee and assist to develop a safety or self-care plan as well as inviting them to access EAP and other support services.

Their recommendation is that the employee is advised in advance that the call will be coming so it does not happen out of the blue and high level feedback will be provided to the business without compromising the employees confidentially

In our view this is a vital tool in an employer’s toolchest to deal with these challenging situations where involving themselves directly is problematic particularly if they have not been professionally trained in this space. So defiantly something worth considering for your business and of course we remind you that if there is an immediate risk of death to contact emergency services or take an employee to an emergency department.