How benefits can be used to effectively manage mental health

In recent years, mental health has come under the spotlight. Driven by initiatives such as the government’s recent review of mental health provision, it’s finally getting the focus it requires.

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As the debate has evolved, so have the wealth of benefits available to help employers manage mental health in the workplace. These include:

tools to help employees lead a healthy lifestyle and stay healthy
benefits that help them to get back on their feet after a period of ill health
financial support required by their loved ones, to survive such worrying times.

Workplace wellbeing

It goes without saying that prevention is better than cure. Leading health and protection providers are now offering workplace wellbeing programmes that help educate and empower employees to take more control of their mental and physical health – and reward them for doing so.

The wellbeing support can be complemented with services such as an Employee Assistance Programme, offering specialist guidance to help employees to better understand mental health and implement strategies to help them manage work and home-life pressures. Moreover, specialist providers can work with HR on a more strategic level, delivering workshops to ensure that the HR community is able to identify issues as quickly as possible and signpost the individual to the appropriate care.

Early intervention

There are three fundamental elements that aid mental health rehabilitation:

intervening quickly
access to the right treatment
receiving the right support.

Simply offering the individual the right support, in the right place, at the right time can help prevent a period of absence and where they’re already absent, help speed their recovery and return to work. You’ll be well placed to deliver this support through benefits such as private medical insurance and group income protection, either as stand-alone policies or by combining the unique benefits of each product to form the bedrock of your absence management strategy.

Ongoing dialogue and review between all parties – HR, occupational health and your service providers, is key. While not essential, this can be facilitated by selecting a provider who can manage all – or multiple elements of your benefits package. This also ensures that learnings are shared, and fed back into your overarching absence strategy.

The clinical philosophy that underpins health and group protection products has changed dramatically in recent years. The most forward thinking healthcare providers are moving away from set benefit limits for mental health out-patient cover to offering tailored support based on individual and clinical need. The purpose of group income protection has also evolved. While the financial safety net is still there, the focus is now firmly on maximising employee wellbeing while at work, and effective absence management and return-to-work support – through early notification and intervention.

Rehabilitation support unique to the individual

Put simply, rehabilitation can be neatly defined as the restoration of physical and psychological function after illness or injury. As well as covering both bases in terms of the prevailing conditions, it also boasts an ideal balance in terms of benefits to all parties involved.

Central to the rehabilitative approach is the delivery of the latest medical evidence about what interventions are the safest and most effective. This focus on the individual reflects the fact that rehabilitation embraces a much broader church than the traditional medical model that focuses on diagnosis and treatment of physical problems alone. Not only does this enable your employee to access appropriate treatment, it helps ensure employee benefit budgets are being spent effectively.

A personalised, clinically-led approach to mental health can help deliver numerous benefits to the employer and employee alike. These include speeding access to treatment, engaging employees in their choice of treatment, helping to prevent employees going absent and aiding a prompt return to work, where an employee is off work.

A cohesive solution

Managing mental health in the workplace isn’t just about keeping employees happy at work. It’s also about providing the culture that supports employees when things go wrong. To stand out from the crowd, your absence management strategy should encompass the health and rehabilitation services required to enable employees to get back on their feet after a period of ill health, and the financial support required by their loved ones, to survive such worrying times.

Health and group protection products can provide immediate medical care, together with the financial security offered by critical illness cover or group income protection. Moreover, they offer other services such as vocational rehabilitation and case management to help you as an employer facilitate the return-to-work of valuable employees. Life insurance gives employees the reassurance that their loved ones will be provided for, should the worst happen.

Whatever benefits you select, the solution needs to be cohesive. Like mental health itself, open communication and collaboration is essential. A company’s health and wellbeing strategy should deliver a mental health support network, and not just standalone facets.

Steve Bridger, managing director, group protection at Aviva.

This article was provided by Aviva.