What’s mental health worth? | IMPAC health and safety

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Last month, the New South Wales Government announced a $55 million investment in workplace mental health initiatives.

The Mentally Healthy Workplaces in NSW Strategy 2022 is a long-term plan for mentally healthy workplaces. Matt Kean, NSW’s Minister for Better Regulation said, “This Strategy represents the single-biggest investment in workplace mental health in [Australia’s] history.”

The plan includes manager training and recovery at work programmes, research projects to help inform ongoing strategies, a media campaign, and online resources to raise awareness, as well as assessment and mentoring tools to better support businesses.

Inhale/exhale… mental health support is being prioritised in Australia. Photo by Tim Goedhart on Unsplash.

How’s New Zealand doing?

We have a tonne of great workplace mental health initiatives and resources in New Zealand.

There’s the Mental Health Foundation’s Open Minds, to equip managers with the confidence and skills to talk about mental health in the workplace. They provide stories, posters, tips, and factsheets.

The Mental Health Foundation also offer a great page on Workplace Wellbeing, filled with information on campaigns, brochures, a weekly e-bulletin, and our favourite resource; a step-by-step guide to Five Ways to Wellbeing at Work.

Wellplace.nz is a gold mine of knowledge on building a healthy workplace, and they have some great information on the business benefits of investing in wellbeing, with links to studies and legislation.

All Right?, a Healthy Christchurch initiative launched to support Cantabrians as the region recovers from the earthquakes, has resources ‘The impact of work on mental health’ and ‘What does a mentally healthy workplace look like?’

And of course, we have Mental Health Awareness Week – this year it's running from 8 to 14 October.

New Zealand’s investment

The 2018 Budget announced that there will be a focus on wellbeing in 2019, and it stated, “The Government is committed to putting people’s wellbeing at the heart of its policies.”

It goes on to say that details of the Wellbeing Budget will be announced later in the year – we’re looking forward to seeing if our government will follow NSW’s lead when it comes to prioritising workplace mental health.