Guide to developing your Strategy and Action Plan

Description and instructions: Define what your Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy will seek to achieve.

In this step you should: 

1. Briefly explain the purpose of your Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy and commitment to creating a mentally healthy workplace to your workforce.
2. State your Vision.
3. State the goals you wish to achieve through your Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy. 
4. Outline the engagement and co-design process you will undertake to create the Strategy, including where and how your workforce will be involved and engaged.
5. Provide information on how the Strategy will be used within your organisation.

Tip: To save time, fill out the template: 'Template 1: Your Vision and Goals for your Mentally Healthy Workplace' (included as attachment to download from this page).

This template has some prefilled examples to help you. The template also provides guidance for how sole traders and organisations of all sizes can set SMART goals - goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound.

Description and instructions: Assess what your organisation is already doing to support workplace mental health and wellbeing. This step identifies and documents what you already have in place which may contribute to your Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

In this step you should: 

1. Ask yourself 'self-assessment' questions such as: 
   1. What is this workplace already doing which contributes to the vision and goals identified in Step One? Look at any data, policies, practices – even those that do not focus on worker mental health and wellbeing. 
      1. For example: Your workplace may have a practice of facilitating workers to manage their working hours around their children’s school drop-off and pick-up times. This benefits their overall mental health and wellbeing knowing their workplace supports them to prioritise and balance their family commitments. 
      2. Another example is considering professional development opportunities that enable workers to learn and grow – which also can contribute to improved mental health and wellbeing, as well as benefit the organisation.
   2. Of the things you are currently doing, what is working well that can be amplified across the organisation?
   3. Of the things you are doing what can be improved / done better (or stopped)?
   4. Where are the gaps that need to be addressed to support your mentally healthy workplace vision and goals? Develop priority action areas to address any existing gaps. This could include gaps in data collection, for example, cultural diversity data.
2. Use a survey-based self-assessment tool to support you in answering these questions.

Tip for medium to large organisations: If you are a medium to large organisation, you are encouraged to explore and use the tools listed below: 

• WorkSafe Victoria - WorkWell Toolkit
• Comcare - People at Work assessment tool
• Thrive at Work survey

Tip: Whether you choose to use a self-assessment tool or not, to help you save time, fill in the template: 'Template 2: Assessing the current state of your workplace against your desired vision and goals for a mentally healthy workplace' (included as attachment to download from this page).

The template can help you summarise and define the 'current state' of your workplace. The template is structured using the 'areas of focus' of the Victorian Mentally Healthy Workplaces Framework, which represent the key drivers of a mentally healthy workplace.

Reminder: Consider your workplace setting, and if feasible, engage with your workers to understand the hazards they experience.

Description and instructions: After completing your self-assessment and developing an understanding of your current state (in Step 2 above), you now need to identify priority action areas / initiatives your organisation can implement. This allows you to specify and prioritise the actions you must take to continue what is working well and address any identified gaps. 

In this step you should: 

1. Determine the key priorities your organisation needs to focus on as you work towards becoming a mentally healthy workplace, and the specific steps your organisation must take to action these, or new initiatives to implement.
   1. Key priorities can be determined by reviewing the gaps that you have identified, and determining how these can be addressed. 
   2. Remember to engage with the relevant workers who are either directly or indirectly impacted by these gaps. This could include addressing the effects of discrimination in the workplace, for instance, by engaging with workers from diverse background on their experiences of workplace inclusion.
2. Consider the effort required (i.e. the number of resources, time required etc.) alongside the level of impact these actions / initiatives will have both for worker wellbeing, including social and emotional wellbeing, and the broader organisation. 
   1. Make sure that the effort dedicated to these initiatives does not outweigh the positive impact it will have for you and your team members.
   2. Understanding effort vs. impact will allow you to prioritise the order that you might want to implement your actions / initiatives.
3. Determine timeframes for when you would like your key priorities addressed by. 
   1. Specify the timeframe when within which you would like your organisation to implement the actions / initiatives you have identified. 
   2. Timeframes will vary depending on the priority action / initiative, stakeholders involved, urgency and availability of resources. Plan around these factors to determine what timeframe is most suitable.
4. Define the roles and specify who is responsible for taking ownership of each priority identified. 
   1. Everyone in the workplace should know what they must do to achieve a mentally healthy workplace.  

Tip: The Framework provides practical actions that can be taken by organisations, with actions specific to different areas of focus that may be relevant to your workplace needs (e.g. Workplace Culture, Policies, Leadership).

Tip: For organisations of all sizes on how to go about determining who is responsible for the different priorities within your workplace: 

• State the role of leaders, teams and individuals in driving mentally healthy workplaces, with consideration for each individual or group’s capability and capacity.
• Identify a ‘lead’ person who is accountable for each prioritised action / initiative. Depending on the size of your organisation, you may wish to assign a set of shared and / or specific roles and responsibilities to different leaders, teams and / or individuals.
• Define each role by having open conversations with individuals to understand where they want to help and agree on how these preferences can be balanced with the needs of the organisation.
• Encourage workers to comfortably raise challenges in their roles, so roles can be reviewed and supports can be offered if needed.
• Ensure that privacy and confidentiality of any disclosed mental health or wellbeing concerns are respected, and that there are processes and expectations in place regarding how that information is treated.

Description and instructions: Having a way to measure and monitor progress of your goals and actions is an important way to keep your organisation accountable and to build trust and engagement within your workforce.

In this step you should: 

1. Discuss and identify what indicators would show you are making progress in the right direction (lead indicators), and not just measuring what has happened (lag indicators).
   1. Example of lead indicators: (For small to large organisations) Percentage of leaders who have completed ‘psychological safety training’ or ‘cultural inclusion training’ and are using their training with their teams. (For sole traders) having accessed resources that educate you on mental health in the workplace.
   2. Example of lag indicators: (For small to large organisations) Rate of worker turnover. (For sole traders) How burnt out you are feeling
2. Decide on measurable indicators that relate to your goals / priority areas. 
   1. These can be data-based (e.g. survey data results, workers compensation claims data, absenteeism rates, attendance at training sessions, proportion of policies reviewed through a wellbeing lens) or;
   2. Statement-based (i.e. verbatim comments, feedback/conversational comments) (e.g., worker engagement survey data, culture survey data, feedback surveys)
   3. Try to combine these to give you a more holistic picture.

Tip: For sole traders and organisations of all sizes - Engage with your workers to gather feedback on what metrics may be the most suitable. Consider new methods of data collection to obtain information that you otherwise may not already have access to. An example of this might be measuring worker satisfaction through a survey about a service provided in your workplace.

Once you have defined your baseline for your indicators, you should consider when you are going to review your progress. Quarterly check-ins are a good place to start to review your indicators, see what is working well and consider opportunities for improvement, so you can keep momentum going.

Congratulations on taking steps to become a mentally healthy workplace and creating your own Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy! A strategy document can become very lengthy, so having a summarised and high-level overview of your 'Strategy on a page' can be useful. 

In this step you should:

1. Summarise the vision and goals you created in Step 1. 
2. Summarise the priority action areas / initiatives you identified in Step 2 and who is responsible for these. 
3. Summarise a timeline by when you would like your action areas / initiatives achieved by.

Tip: For sole traders and small organisations - to save you time, fill out the template: 'Template 3: Mentally Healthy Workplace Strategy Summary Page' (included as attachment to download from this page).

Once completed, print this template to display in various locations throughout your workplace as a visual prompt and reminder to yourself and workers.