We have just lived through a year of pandemic, a year of teleworking. Many companies have had to reinvent themselves in order to operate technologically efficiently. But make it possible to hold an internal meeting or a client meeting by Zoom is not necessarily a guarantee of automatic success. Digital transformation has accelerated, but has change management from a human perspective followed?
Posted on April 5, 2021 at 11:00 a.m.
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For the past ten years, companies have been reinventing themselves to attract a new generation of workers. Open spaces, flexible hours, ping-pong tables are among the initiatives to make a business attractive to millennials and echo-boomers.
However, human resources departments, now often referred to as “culture and talent,” are still seen as cost centers, rather than an investment. If your financial advisor presented you with an investment product that would generate a return of 500% to 1000% in the next year, would you hesitate for a long time? Yet this is what many mental health wellness solutions offer.
In the current reality where teleworking obliges, employee engagement is more and more difficult to gain, and the output, more and more difficult to manage, budget cuts in solutions aimed at the well-being of the employees could s turn out to be a costly decision. We believe that in the current context, it would be highly beneficial for businesses to improve insurance coverage and promote the use of psychological support services; in short, to adapt their working environments from a human point of view, just as they urgently had to be creative in terms of technology during the first wave. Many employers are already showing leadership in this regard.
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According to Julien Héon, vice-president of growth and services at Haleo clinic, application for sleep, employers must do more to remove the barriers limiting access to support services.
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More specifically, employers must be encouraged to do more to remove the barriers limiting access to support services:
1. by increasing the maximum coverage for recourse to a psychologist (an average of $ 800 per employee);
2. removing or increasing the reimbursable maximums per session;
3. by expanding the professions covered to include the social worker and the psychotherapist.
The studies are unanimous. Mental health problems are on the rise, and the direct impacts on organizations have long been known. For example, in our field, that of sleep, an individual struggling with an insomnia disorder will be absent on average 10 days per year, and will see his insomnia jeopardize his productivity by 45 days on average each year. We know that more than one in two Canadians experience symptoms of insomnia, including two in three with mental health problems.
Symptoms of psychological disorders can be numerous, but often the first indicators of mental illness are sleep disturbances. Knowing how to detect and treat sleep disorders in workers could prevent complications and increase productivity. Employers must ensure that they provide their employees with information, screening tools and accessibility to treatment for sleep disorders.
Vaccination is progressing, but wave three is a quick reminder that we still have several months to go before it returns to normal. You, the employer, who have invested in the modernization of your facilities to attract talent, in your technological tools to deal with confinement, invest in your asset to the highest potential, the mental health of your employees!
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