APA Survey Finds US Employers Unresponsive to Employee Needs

March 5, 2013 By

A March 2013 report on a new sur­vey from the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Association’s Cen­ter for Orga­ni­za­tional Excel­lence (http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/03/employee-needs.aspx) has some find­ings that our blog read­ers may find rel­e­vant and infor­ma­tive for their work­place employee sup­port prac­tices. Notably, the following.

  1. Less than half of work­ing Amer­i­cans reported that they receive ade­quate mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion or non-monetary recognition.
  2. Only 43 per­cent said that recog­ni­tion is based on fair per­for­mance evaluations.
  3. Less than half said their employ­ers ‘hear’ them by seek­ing input, and only 37% of employ­ees said employ­ers take action on this feedback.
  4. Less than half of employ­ees sur­veyed said that there were resources to sup­port their men­tal health needs (and fewer still, 36%, said that there were resources to sup­port man­ag­ing stress).

Says Nor­man B. Ander­son, PhD, CEO of the APA:

This isn’t just an HR or man­age­ment issue. The well-being of an organization’s work­force is a strate­gic busi­ness imper­a­tive that is linked to its per­for­mance and success.

For women, the office is not “a level play­ing field”

The sur­vey fur­ther inves­ti­gated how female employ­ees per­ceived the work envi­ron­ment. Sum­ma­riz­ing the results:

  1. Forty-eight per­cent of women felt less val­ued than men.
  2. Fewer employed women than men reported that their employer pro­vides suf­fi­cient oppor­tu­ni­ties for inter­nal career advance­ment (35 % ver­sus 43%) or resources to help them man­age stress (34% ver­sus 38%).
  3. More women than men said they “typ­i­cally feel tense or stressed out at work” (37% ver­sus 33%).

Work-Life Fit?

In terms of work-life bal­ance, the sur­vey results revealed:

  1. Only 52% of work­ers believe employ­ers value work-life balance.
  2. Only 39% of work­ers reported that their employ­ers pro­vide options for flex­i­ble work.
  3. Sur­pris­ingly per­haps? Thirty-seven per­cent of women reported reg­u­larly using employee ben­e­fits designed to help them meet work-life demands (whereas almost half of male work­ers reported tak­ing advan­tage of these ben­e­fits); and just 38% of women said they reg­u­larly uti­lize work arrange­ments, com­pared to 42% of men.

Con­clud­ing the report, David W. Bal­lard, PsyD, MBA head of APA’s Cen­ter for Orga­ni­za­tional Excel­lence, comments:

When employ­ers acknowl­edge that employ­ees have respon­si­bil­i­ties and lives out­side of work, they can take steps to pro­mote a good work-life fit and help indi­vid­u­als bet­ter man­age these mul­ti­ple demands…Forward-thinking orga­ni­za­tions are reeval­u­at­ing work prac­tices, pro­vid­ing employ­ees with resources that sup­port well-being and per­for­mance and apply­ing new tech­nolo­gies that help shift work from some­where we go from 9-to-5 to some­thing we do that is mean­ing­ful and cre­ates value.

 
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About Home­wood

For more than 129 years, Home­wood has been a cor­ner­stone of Cana­dian addic­tion and men­tal health treat­ment. We save lives. We have helped thou­sands of Cana­di­ans for decades to cope with the dev­as­tat­ing effects of men­tal ill­ness and addic­tion. Founded in 1883, we are renowned for the qual­ity of our treat­ment, our med­ical integrity, and the breadth and depth of our inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team.

Home­wood is part of Schlegel Health Care, a family-owned health care orga­ni­za­tion based in Kitch­ener, Ontario, that incor­po­rates three other entities:

Home­wood Human Solu­tions (www.homewoodhumansolutions.com)

Home­wood Human Solu­tions™ offers a one-of-a-kind approach to the mar­ket: the high­est qual­ity of clin­i­cal sup­port and inter­ven­tion avail­able within the EFAP indus­try, and an unmatched con­tin­uum of ser­vices — span­ning health pro­mo­tion, men­tal health and addic­tions treat­ment, and prevention-focused work-life coun­selling services.

Home­wood Health Cen­tre (www.homewood.org)

Home­wood Health Cen­tre is Canada’s unsur­passed med­ical leader in addic­tion and men­tal health treat­ment, pro­vid­ing highly spe­cial­ized psy­chi­atric ser­vices to all Cana­di­ans. We are a 312-bed, Sched­ule 1 facil­ity under the Ontario Men­tal Health Act. We oper­ate nine pro­grams treat­ing a range of men­tal health and addic­tion issues.

Home­wood Health Cen­tre is located in Guelph, Ontario.

Home­wood Dis­abil­ity Treat­ment Pro­gram (www.homewood.org/disability-treatment-program)

Effec­tive dis­abil­ity man­age­ment for men­tal ill­ness must go beyond “man­ag­ing” dis­abil­ity to include both inpa­tient and out­pa­tient treat­ment. Treat­ment goals must incor­po­rate strate­gies for suc­cess­ful work rein­te­gra­tion to min­i­mize recur­rence and relapse.

The Home­wood Dis­abil­ity Treat­ment Pro­gram (HDTP) com­bines the ser­vices avail­able through the Home­wood Health Cen­tre – a nation­ally rec­og­nized men­tal health and addic­tion treat­ment cen­tre with the best national net­work of skilled men­tal health and addic­tion treat­ment pro­fes­sion­als through Home­wood Human Solu­tionsTM.

Schlegel Vil­lages (www.schlegelvillages.com)

Schlegel Vil­lages are designed, built and man­aged by the Schlegel fam­ily of Kitch­ener, Ontario. Our motto: “It Takes a Vil­lage to Care” lives on.

Cana­dian owned and oper­ated, our Vil­lages ben­e­fit from the Schlegel fam­ily hav­ing over 40 years of direct expe­ri­ence co-owning, man­ag­ing and oper­at­ing Long Term Care and Retire­ment Com­mu­ni­ties in Ontario. There are eleven Schlegel Vil­lages hous­ing approx­i­mately 2500 seniors. Each Vil­lage has a Long Term Care com­po­nent, with Full Ser­vice Retire­ment Liv­ing, Assisted Care, Mem­ory Care and Inde­pen­dent Liv­ing options being added in stages. The first Schlegel Vil­lage opened in 1998 in Guelph.

Com­ments? Thoughts or resources to share?

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NOTE: The con­tent and opin­ions offered in Healthy Work­places blog posts do not nec­es­sar­ily reflect the for­mal stance of Home­wood Human Solu­tions, unless oth­er­wise iden­ti­fied. We bring this infor­ma­tion for­ward in the inter­ests of openly shar­ing val­ued infor­ma­tion in this time of fast-growing online con­ver­sa­tions and knowledge.

 

Psychological Health in the Workplace Conference March 17–20 Banff, AB

January 29, 2013 By

Announc­ing “Psy­cho­log­i­cal Health in the Work­place” 45th Inter­na­tional Con­fer­ence on Behav­ioural ScienceScience.

From the con­fer­ence description:

…our soci­ety has devoted rel­a­tively lit­tle atten­tion to men­tal health in the workplace…recent con­sid­er­able advances in the behav­ioural and social sci­ences must be brought to bear upon these challenges…complemented by a rapidly devel­op­ing arma­men­tar­ium of effec­tive, evidence-based pre­ven­tion, treat­ment and eval­u­a­tion procedures.

Tak­ing place Marc 17–20, 2013 in astound­ingly beau­ti­ful Banff, Alberta, Canada.

Reg­is­ter online at: www.banffcentre.ca/conferences/2013/BVS1303/

 

 

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Fol­low @HomewoodHS on Twitter

Link with linkedin.com/companies/homewood-human-solutions

Watch us on our Home­woodHS YouTube channel

NOTE: The con­tent and opin­ions offered in Healthy Work­places blog posts do not nec­es­sar­ily reflect the for­mal stance of Home­wood Human Solu­tions, unless oth­er­wise iden­ti­fied. We bring this infor­ma­tion for­ward in the inter­ests of openly shar­ing val­ued infor­ma­tion in this time of fast-growing online con­ver­sa­tions and knowledge.

Days away! The 2012 Better Workplace Conference

October 18, 2012 By

Inter­ested in cre­at­ing a pos­i­tive, vibrant work­place envi­ron­ment, Home­wood Human Solu­tions is excited to announce the 16th Annual Bet­ter Work­place Con­fer­ence, tak­ing place in Van­cou­ver, BC.

Many of you may know the con­fer­ence by its pre­vi­ous name (the Health, Work, and Well­ness Con­fer­ence) and are undoubt­edly expect­ing this year’s event to be big­ger and bet­ter than ever. Well, you won’t be disappointed!

Among this year’s topics:

  • lead­ing trans­for­ma­tional change;
  • well­ness and resilience solutions;
  • spirit at work;
  • trends in the role of EFAPs in orga­ni­za­tional health;
  • main­tain­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity dur­ing orga­ni­za­tional change;
  • liv­ing our values;
  • health care con­sumerism pre­ven­tion, pro­mo­tion, and accountability;
  • cre­at­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal safety in the workplace;
  • lead­er­ship and mindfulness.

In addi­tion, the con­fer­ence will have three dis­tinct streams of pre­sen­ta­tions based on emerg­ing orga­ni­za­tional health challenges:

  1. Trans­form­ing com­plex change (main­tain­ing high per­form­ing work­place cul­tures when employee demo­graph­ics are under­go­ing major shifts);
  2. healthy minds (human and orga­ni­za­tional resilience); and
  3. lead­er­ship tool­box (rapid adap­ta­tion, strate­gic think­ing, people-centered communication).

Home­wood Human Solu­tions is proud to be a repeat spon­sor and part­ner of the Bet­ter Work­place Conference.

Reg­is­ter now for The Bet­ter Work­place Con­fer­ence 2012. Online reg­is­tra­tion is here.

When: Octo­ber 16–18, 2012

Where: Fair­mont Hotel, Van­cou­ver, BC

 

 

Tools for Making the Business Case for Investments in Workplace Health and Wellness

June 18, 2012 By

Health and well­ness pro­grams are almost a given in most orga­ni­za­tions, but, accord­ing to The Con­fer­ence Board of Canada, Cana­dian employ­ers are in an incip­i­ent stage of actu­ally mea­sur­ing the return on invest­ment (ROI) that these pro­gram generate.

In a break­through approach, the Con­fer­ence Board of Canada has pub­lished a report that pro­vides orga­ni­za­tions of all sizes, in an objec­tive and non-partisan way, with advice, tools, and an eval­u­a­tion frame­work on how to mea­sure the health and well­ness pro­grams return on invest­ment (ROI).

It is known that invest­ments in health and well­ness pro­grams can lead to higher pro­duc­tiv­ity, moti­vated employ­ees, a thriv­ing orga­ni­za­tional cul­ture, as well as reduce ben­e­fit costs, absen­teeism and pre­sen­teeism.  By uti­liz­ing a reli­able ROI cal­cu­la­tor, orga­ni­za­tions can bet­ter tar­get their invest­ments to the health con­di­tions most preva­lent in their work­force and to areas where their employ­ees are more sus­cep­ti­ble to change. In addi­tion, hav­ing a snap­shot of pro­gram out­comes, employ­ers can bet­ter allo­cate funds and deter­mine which health and well­ness com­po­nents are crit­i­cal for the suc­cess of their program.

Home­wood Human Solu­tions is one of the spon­sors of this report which is avail­able through The Con­fer­ence Board’s web site.

The French ver­sion of the report will be avail­able by August.

For more infor­ma­tion about the report and how to obtain a copy, click here.

 

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New study to provide hard data on healthy workplace ROI

June 12, 2012 By

Hap­pen­ing now! The Sun Life Finan­cial Well­ness Insti­tute and the Richard Ivey School of Busi­ness, have part­nered to exam­ine the extent to which exist­ing empir­i­cal research sug­gests a strong busi­ness case for Cana­dian work­place well­ness pro­gram, and the expected costs, and indi­vid­ual and orga­ni­za­tional out­comes, of evidence-based HealthyRE­TURNS well­ness programs.

Dr. Michael Rouse, health sec­tor direc­tor with the Ivey School, calls human cap­i­tal “the most impor­tant resource” avail­able to employ­ers, and offered the fol­low­ing overview of the research:

Employ­ers under­stand the link between pro­duc­tiv­ity, engage­ment and healthy work­ers, Rouse stated. How­ever, their focus is on man­ag­ing grow­ing health-care costs. For that rea­son, the Canada-wide study aims to pro­vide evi­dence of the return on invest­ment from sup­port­ing healthy work­places. Here are more high­lights of the research:

  • It will be mod­elled from Sun Life Financial’s Healthy Returns Pro­gram, mea­sur­ing the impact on employee health, pro­duc­tiv­ity and two-year health-care costs.
  • The dif­fi­culty that exists in assess­ing return on invest­ment is not due to lack of research, as much research has been done.
  • What has caused dif­fi­culty is that most Cana­dian reports and stud­ies have been viewed as flawed, so they are hard to apply in a wide setting.
  • Even in the United States, where most of the stud­ies have taken place, few are judged to have the required data and rigour to cement a busi­ness case:
  • Accord­ing to one report that looked at more than 100 work­place health stud­ies, fewer than 10% met rig­or­ous standards
  • The remain­ing stud­ies con­cluded that sup­port­ing employee health can result in aver­age annual sav­ings of nearly $400 per employee, at a cost of just over $150 per employee
  • The return on invest­ment found in those stud­ies resulted in a return on invest­ment of more than three dol­lars for each dol­lar spent
  • Sim­i­larly, Cana­dian research by the Ivey School looked at more than 500 stud­ies and found only four that met rig­or­ous stan­dards.
    Of those four, pro­grams that sup­ported employee health reduced absen­teeism by an aver­age of 1.5 days, com­pared to an aver­age of five to 11 days per year in Canada.

Quot­ing Sun Life Financial:

Although stud­ies have been con­ducted in other coun­tries and on spe­cific aspects of pro­duc­tiv­ity, this research will pro­vide much needed quan­tifi­able evi­dence on the impact and ben­e­fits of work­place well­ness pro­grams on the long-term health and well-being of Canadians.

For more infor­ma­tion, or to see if your orga­ni­za­tion is eli­gi­ble to par­tic­i­pate click here for a descrip­tive PDF.

Pre­lim­i­nary find­ing are expected later this year, with ongo­ing research through 2012.  A full report is planned for 2013. Stay tuned, we will be fol­low­ing the progress!

About the Sun Life Well­ness Institute

The Sun Life Well­ness Insti­tute is posi­tioned to col­lab­o­rate with aca­d­e­mic, pub­lic, pri­vate and well­ness com­mu­ni­ties to pro­mote research and knowl­edge shar­ing. The Insti­tute is an ini­tia­tive of Sun Life Financial.

About Richard Ivey School of Business

The Richard Ivey School of Busi­ness is home to the Ivey Cen­tre for Health Inno­va­tion and Lead­er­ship. One of the Centre’s key man­dates is to address health care’s “inno­va­tion adop­tion deficit” and the per­sis­tent lack of highly-trained and skilled lead­ers and change-agents able to com­mer­cial­ize inno­va­tion or effec­tively imple­ment new sys­tems and man­age­ment processes in both the pri­vate sec­tor and in our pub­licly funded health care institutions.

 

 

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Released! Psychological Health and Safety Guide for Employers

April 27, 2012 By

As noted in an ear­lier post, we have been fol­low­ing progress on pro­duc­tion of the Psy­cho­log­i­cal Health and Safety Guide for Employers.

The full and com­plete action report is now released and avail­able from our media library (down­load here), from the Men­tal Health Com­mis­sion web­site as a PDF, or as an inter­ac­tive ver­sion.

To sum­ma­rize key points:

  • The Action Guide is based on the idea of pro­tect­ing employ­ees’ psy­cho­log­i­cal health and safety.
  • There will soon be a stan­dard for psy­cho­log­i­cal health and safety in the work­place, the National Stan­dard of Canada for Psy­cho­log­i­cal Health and Safety in the Work­place, sched­uled for release in late 2012.
  • A frame­work for psy­cho­log­i­cal health and safety action plan­ning and exe­cu­tion is being devel­oped con­sis­tent with ISO stan­dard for orga­ni­za­tional qual­ity (described below).

Under­stand­ing the P6 Frame­work is key to progress in the area of psy­cho­log­i­cal health and safety. There are six components:

  • Pol­icy: A clear state­ment of the organization’s commitment.
  • Plan­ning: Lay­ing out a log­i­cal model for change, objec­tives, processes, measurables.
  • Pro­mo­tion: Actions taken to pro­mote the gen­eral psy­cho­log­i­cal health of the workforce.
  • Pre­ven­tion: empha­sizes the need to ensure that staff under­stand the com­mit­ment to psy­cho­log­i­cal health and safety.
  • Process: empha­sizes the need to audit the ade­quacy of poli­cies and eval­u­ate the out­comes of actions.
  • Per­sis­tence: empha­sizes the role of man­age­ment and orga­ni­za­tional lead­er­ship in seek­ing con­tin­ued improvement.

In addi­tion to out­lin­ing the frame­work and pro­vid­ing sev­eral key resources for each com­po­nent of the P6 frame­work, the action guide:

  • Demon­strate that psy­cho­log­i­cal health and safety is a crit­i­cal con­cern for all Cana­dian employers.
  • Iden­ti­fies some effec­tive and fea­si­ble actions.
  • Pro­vides a tool to sup­port you in address­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal health and safety.

The report was authored by our psy­chol­o­gist col­leagues, and long-term men­tors of this blog post author: Drs. Merv Gilbert and Dan Bilsker from the Cen­tre for Applied Research in Men­tal Health and Addic­tion, Simon Fraser Uni­ver­sity (www.carmha.ca)

 

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Business Case Bibliography

April 25, 2012 By

Dr. Mark Attridge, one of the authors of our Annual Reports, has released a review paper on the topic of mak­ing the busi­ness case for pro­vid­ing men­tal health and addic­tion ser­vices to employ­ees and fam­ily members.

The list empha­sizes EAP ser­vices and most works exam­ine finan­cial issues of:

  • cost-benefit
  • cost-effectiveness
  • return-on-investment

The reports are pre­sented in five sec­tions by type of author source:

  • Brief reports in indus­try publications
  • Employer guides
  • Review papers in sci­en­tific journals
  • White papers and gov­ern­ment reports
  • Books

Down­load the bib­li­og­ra­phy here. EASNA Research Notes Vol­ume 2, Num­ber 4, Decem­ber 2011.

 

Visit our home­page: Home­wood Human Solutions™

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