According to Mind, 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem of some kind each year in England. This isn’t a new task for managers to face, but the way in which you can support your employees has become more challenging over recent years, especially with the rise of remote and isolated working environments. This is clear in another survey, where 67% of employees say that they feel isolated from their peers if working individually, or remotely.
At Stribe we believe that your employee’s mental health should be treated as well as their physical health. Everyone experiences mental health concerns to some degree, in family life, workplaces and communities. It impacts everyone.
So how can you check in on these hard-to-reach employees, understand any struggles they have, and then provide the support that they need?
One of the best ways to get started on this journey is to run effective employee engagement surveys. As a provider, one of our objectives is to empower organisations to better support the mental health and wellbeing of their employees, all through gathering regular real-time insights and utilising the data.
After all, when you know how your employees are feeling, you know the areas of priority to focus on to make your employees’ world a better place. This journey could not be more fitting for the focus of this year’s World Mental Health Day – to ‘Make mental health and wellbeing for all a global priority’.
In this blog, we’ll cover how employee engagement surveys (or in this case, mental health surveys) allow you to reach as many employees as possible, create psychological safety and direct them to the support they need.
Getting to know your whole team, wherever they are
As organisations grow geographically apart, and your interactions become more virtual, your employees must still be able to tell you how they’re feeling. They should be able to voice their mental health & wellbeing concerns no matter where they are, and with ease.
This is why we’ve committed to making Stribe’s employee engagement surveys easy to access, regardless of location, disability, or access to a computer. With an easy way for your employees to respond, and on multiple platforms, your response rate will be much higher. The data you gather will also be much more representative of your entire organisation, better informing you of the change that needs to be made to improve the mental health of your team!
So what should you look out for to reach as many of your employees as possible?
A number of engagement survey providers send out questions via a web link, which can cause some compatibility issues and make it tougher for employees to answer. To improve upon this, employees using Stribe can respond to surveys via their inbox, on a desktop, or the dedicated iOS/Android app.
Not everyone has a company email address or laptop, making it difficult for managers to check in on these harder-to-reach employees. If you are unable to include this group in your employee engagement surveys, you may have employees who are dealing with wellbeing issues that you don’t know about…
To solve this challenge Stribe has a built-in QR code surveying tool for non-desk-based staff. When you create a survey, a QR code is automatically generated, so if you need to, you can print it out and have it scanned by employees around the office. All responses will remain anonymous too!
This makes it easier to get a clear picture of your employees’ mental health over time, both individually and as a team.
Creating psychological safety with each survey
Stribe goes to great lengths to maintain employee confidentiality (see our commitment to anonymity here). However, many employees may still be wary of sharing feedback relating to their mental health and wellbeing.
This is why it’s important to frequently re-communicate that your surveys are completely anonymous, and they have the freedom to truly speak about how they feel.
You’ll also need to close the loop by sharing back your survey results and letting your employees know how what you plan to do as a result. This will demonstrate to your teams that their mental health concerns are being taken seriously by the organization. For more information on the importance of sharing back survey results check out our blog here.
Show employees where support is when they need it
If you are going to ask about mental health, then you need to make sure you have some support available to point them to, if needed. You can use your surveys to make sure they know it’s available (for example, Stribe has a Resources Hub for all your HR documents), by asking questions such as “How well do you know the process to access mental health resources?” or similar.
The best questions to ask
If you’re at a loss for what to ask your employees, you’re in luck. Check out the following resources for some of the best questions to use in your employee engagement surveys:
Using Stribe
Without an employee engagement survey tool that allows you to check in on all of your employees, you may end up with a platform that is unsuitable and doesn’t allow you to collect the feedback you’re looking for.
At Stribe we get to know you first, before you even sign up!
Working one-to-one with our people experts, we’ll create a tailored (and manageable!) solution just for you.
This will fit your needs, goals, and future plans whilst also being mindful that it is a new initiative and you still have your ever-growing to-do list too!
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