“When a flower does not bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” — Alexander den Heijer

“Fix the environment, not the flower:” An apt quote shared by Dr. Wan Rizal, member of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Health in response to the country’s new mental health and wellbeing strategy aimed at rectifying past efforts that focused too much on treatment and not enough on prevention. For the fact of the matter is, you cannot fix an outcome without addressing its root causes. Anxiety, depression, burnout, and all these other conditions will continue to sprout so long as the soil remains contaminated; the environment remains toxic.

People need healthy environments in order to lead healthy lives. This is something that leaders in Singapore have begun to reckon with more and more, as they devote more attention to promoting safer schools, communities, and, above all, workplaces. As the nation with one of the highest rates of mental illness and one of the longest working hours, experts are beginning to connect the dots between the conditions of the workplace and the state of individuals’ mental wellbeing. Put simply, emerging research is continuing to reveal a direct connection between high levels of work-related stress and symptoms of anxiety, depression, PTSD, and more.

In the past year alone, survey findings show that more than a third of Singaporean employees say they have felt stressed to the point that it has impacted their overall wellbeing; for 26 per cent, to the point that they could no longer cope; and for 24 per cent, to the point that they felt depressed, sad, or hopeless almost every day for a couple of weeks or more. This comes as a growing number of employees say they no longer feel supported by their peers or employers compared to what was reported during the pandemic. This is a particularly interesting find, as it suggests that workplaces already know what to do to alleviate mental health issues and stress, but, for some reason, have decided to pull back.

As Yvonne TEO, Vice President of HR, APAC at ADP Research Institute, who conducted the survey, attests, “During the pandemic and the immediate years after, many employers were aware and supportive of measures to alleviate mental health and stress. However, as the pandemic fades and businesses shift their focus back to growth, these support systems have waned. Yet, workers remain under a tremendous amount of strain.”

And she’s right: even as organisations refocus on organisational objectives like “growth,” “productivity,” “performance,” and the like…research is proving that the mental health consequences of the pandemic are not going away, and in fact are only just now beginning to come into view. What this should signal to employers is that a ‘growth mindset’ must ultimately include a dual commitment to wellbeing and resilience: just as people need healthy environments to maintain healthy lives and healthy minds, business outcomes like high performance, productivity, and profitability need healthy organisations and healthy workforces to cultivate them. It all ties together.

That said, to build that mentally healthy, resilient, and capable workforce demands a proactive approach. Solutions must be put in place now to help employees maintain a good level of wellbeing in order to prevent them from facing mental health challenges later on. As everyone continues to grapple with the lingering effects of the past few years, some of the most effective preventive solutions include those which prioritize connection, compassion, collaboration, and customization. Employees—isolated for so long, in many cases to this day—need to feel the support of their peers, managers, and leaders. Lost in a crowd of voices all shouting similar yet distinct cries for help, they need to feel heard, believed, and understood by the professionals put in place to help them. And in a society that increasingly places expediency and universality above diligence and individuality, employees need access to solutions designed with and for them.

For an investment that encompasses all that and more, employers can look no further than a holistic wellbeing solutions programme.

By partnering with a holistic wellbeing solutions provider, employers gain access to the following interventions designed to prevent and alleviate mental illness and promote continuous wellbeing:

Global Learning Solutions, or staff-wide awareness training. Central to any preventive health care strategy is community literacy and awareness concerning essential health topics. Employees need to have a robust understanding of what their daily or weekly care routine ought to look like to maintain proper health, and they need to know what warning signs to look out for that might suggest ill-health. Through on-site or virtual learning solutions led by professional trainers, employees can acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to manage their professional and personal lives, and the various health components they encompass.

For 2024, relevant training topics might include:

• Balance Not Burnout
• Creating a Resilient Mindset
• Calming the Anxious Mind
• Tackling Loneliness
• Setting Healthy Boundaries
• Staying Optimistic
• Understanding Emotional Triggers
• Demystifying Counselling, and more…

Flexible, in-the-moment, one-stop solutions. On that last point, equally essential to preventive initiatives are those solutions that seek to address the stigma surrounding ‘clinical’ or ‘traditional’ psychotherapeutic interventions, offering more ‘informal’ or client-led support instead.

Two great examples of this include:

• Be Well at Work: a holistic model of support allowing employees a simplified, streamlined access to all services available through their organisation’s wellbeing programme, in which one phone number serves as a single point of entry, connecting employees to a specialist trained in client-centred conversation to determine emotional, physical or practical needs and connect them to the best support
• iConnectYou: a mobile app giving individuals one-touch access to wellbeing services, including 24/7 access to professional support via telephone, text, or video; scheduling functionality; and the ability to pre-select a specialist for asynchronous texting support

As their one-stop, one-touch descriptions suggest, what makes these solutions so effective at promoting proactive health maintenance or responsible self-care is the freedom they offer individuals to decide when, where, and how they receive professional support. With these solutions, employees don’t have to wait until a counsellor or clinician is ready to meet with them; they don’t have to take time off from work to meet face-to-face with someone during standard business hours; they don’t have to wait until a third or fourth counselling session just to receive a referral to a more targeted source of support; and, most importantly, they get to avoid the feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, guilt, shame, or embarrassment that often comes with receiving more traditional treatment in which case people feel less in control of their situation and powerless to improve it.

Manager Assist, or ongoing consulting and counselling support for managers. Whilst customisable support solutions are important for reinforcing people’s agency, sense of self-efficacy, motivation for self-care, and openness to help, a good preventive strategy will nevertheless bolster bystander intervention to increase people’s odds of coming into contact with the right support. And in the context of the workplace, the most important bystander are people’s direct managers.

That said, another crucial solution that employers may gain access to by partnering with a wellbeing solutions provider is Manager Assist, or in-the-moment, one-on-one support for managers to help them learn how to recognise, reflect and respond to signs of poor health in the workplace. This includes learning how to identify changes in performance, appearance, or emotion; become mindful of body language, safety concerns, and specify problem and solution; and to address the employee with sensitivity, compassion, and understanding, the ability to signpost them to the right services, and a willingness to listen attentively, collaborate on an action plan or next steps, and to regularly follow-up to ensure progress is made.

By staying on the lookout for warning signs of distress, managers can combat potential gaps in employees’ self-awareness that would otherwise allow health problems to flourish unchecked; ensure that employees receive timely support; and foster a culture of caring—itself a protective factor against ill-health.

Wellbeing Ambassadors: like manager support, leveraging peer support is also a proven way to cultivate a culture of care and wellbeing in which everyone is encouraged to look after their own health and that of their peers, overcoming stigma surrounding mental health, help-seeking, and receiving care. Through a wellbeing ambassador programme offered by wellbeing solutions providers, organisations can aspire to:

• Foster greater participation and engagement with wellbeing programmes, services, and events
• Advocate for a positive outlook on health and wellbeing
• Create opportunities for employees to build knowledge and apply health learnings in the workplace

By using peers as spokespeople, employers can increase the likelihood that employees will be empowered to use services championed by their peers; empowered to open up—to themselves or others—about their own health experiences or journeys; and address signs of distress earlier on.

Consulting: finally, while peer/manager support and multimodal solutions are universally beneficial across all sectors and all types of workplaces, still necessary for effective support are those solutions that address the unique challenges facing a workforce, or that redress the unique characteristics of a workplace. To accomplish this, employers can invest in consulting support from experts who are adept in problem-solving and solutions-mapping based on psychological risks, workforce demographics, and other forces at play in one’s specific workplace.

With the help of expert consultants, employers can receive needed help in:

• Developing organisation-wide emotional support awareness initiatives
• Implementing global or multilocational benefits and programmes
• Identifying psychosocial risks to be targeted (e.g., substance abuse, harassment, burnout, etc.)
• Increasing organisational readiness to respond to disruptive events (e.g., trauma response and prevention)

By embracing preventive solutions and not just reactive ones, organisations can help to create an environment in which employees not only survive, but truly thrive. By fostering a culture of care and wellbeing, in which employees are inspired to take a proactive approach to their health and assume a supportive role in maintaining the health of their peers, employers can successfully adopt a true ‘growth mindset,’ in which every individual is empowered and able to blossom—just like a flower in well-nurtured soil.