Digital mental health training: Why it works, and how to implement it successfully at your organisation

With the rise of digital solutions offering mental health training at a whole-organisation level, we take a look at its benefits, and what it takes to embed it successfully in your organisation. To find out more on this topic, download our handbook: An Essential Guide to Mental Health Training.

The last few months have brought a few things into sharp focus for businesses globally. The first is that there isn’t always a plan. The second is that even when there is, you might have to tear it up and start again.

The final thing is that employees are only able to perform as well as they feel. And when employees aren’t feeling their best mentally and emotionally – as has been the case for many over the past few months – they're less able to bring their full selves to work.

But when your workforce is increasingly disconnected – physically, and emotionally speaking – it can be difficult to ensure you’re supporting the unique wellbeing needs of each individual in your organisation. And with classroom and face-to-face mental health training hanging in the balance for the moment, organisations are increasingly turning to digital options to help them support employee wellbeing needs in an inclusive, and proactive way.

At our recent webinar with HR Grapevine, we invited some guests to join us and tell us about their journey to implementing a digital mental health platform in their organisation. Dave Roberts, Head of Reward at Virgin Media, and Stella Gervinho, Head of Wellbeing at GVC, talked through how and why they implemented Unmind, and discussed the benefits of introducing a digital mental health training platform into their wellbeing strategy.

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When you get mental health support right, absence in general doesn’t go up – but the amount of mental health absence does. That’s a sign of honest conversations happening.

Dave, Head of Reward, Virgin Media

How does digital mental health training differ from traditional methods?

Corporate mental health training can take many forms, including face-to-face training, seminars, certification courses, and digital solutions (like us!). Traditionally, the focus of this training has been on line managers, who, as the link between employees and the rest of your organisation, are best placed to notice and take action on any issues swiftly.

But we all have mental health all the time, no matter where we sit in an organisation – and  feeling empowered to take action on it shouldn’t be limited to line managers. This is where digital mental health training comes in. Digital mental health training has democratised access to knowledge on mental wellbeing for all employees, meaning that employees at any level feel equipped to proactively nurture and learn about their own mental health.

For Stella, there’s space for both options in an organisation – but a digital solution offers organisations the opportunity to build a mental wellbeing culture that is both inclusive and accessible to all.

“Mental health is a spectrum – it goes up and down,” she noted. “In an organisation, you have people that are thriving and doing really well, and you want to keep those people well,” she added. “You have people that might be struggling with common mental health issues like stress and anxiety, and you have people who might be struggling a bit more or are off work. It’s important to have something for everyone – and with a digital approach, you can scale it to everyone, which makes it really inclusive.”

Dave agreed, adding that the technology-enabled nature of digital training makes it more scalable to large organisations: “We initially created some in-house mental health training that was classroom-based, and it was very difficult to scale up. 

“For a long time we had a situation where there was a lack of willingness to talk about mental health – a lot of that comes down to people’s fears around having those conversations. With easily accessible training that’s not just focused on line managers but [the whole] population, it will make having those conversations easier.”

How to implement digital mental health solution successfully at your organisation

Successful implementation and transition to a digital mental health platform hinges on laying the right groundwork ahead of time. For Stella, the first steps focused on ensuring that the wellbeing strategy at GVC stayed connected to the organisation’s overarching goals, and laying the foundations for a culture built on wellbeing.

“My challenge was making sure our mental health programme wasn’t disconnected from what we were doing as an organisation,” she said. “At GVC, we’re trying to entertain people, and we want to make sure our customers play safely and responsibly. We need to start that with our people. If you look after your people, then they will look after your customers.

“There was still quite a lot of misconception around mental health, and people thought that mental health was about mental ill-health – which is not the case,” she added. “We started from the beginning [to help people] understand what the common conditions are, what you can do to help, and the roles we can all play. We set up the culture of the organisation first, and once we had done that, then we could start thinking about the supporting tools we put in place.

“We partnered with Unmind – for us, this has been an absolute must-have. About 50% of our population is in shops spread out across the UK, and they work alone. We needed to make sure we had a platform that everyone had access to.”

Stella’s priority during launch was on knowledge-building around the topic of mental health, and driving awareness through internal communication channels to cascade the platform throughout the whole organisation. 

For Dave, one helpful strategy that helped cement a culture of mental wellbeing at Virgin centred around encouraging senior leaders to share their own mental health journeys.

“Our wellbeing strategy in its own right is based on people thriving,” he noted. “It’s ultimately about people bringing their best selves to work. Right from the outset of our wellbeing strategy, we’ve always wanted people to tell their stories. We post those videos internally, but the most empowering ones come from senior leaders. 

“I think it’s a willingness to show vulnerability, and that it’s okay to not be okay. Telling that story seems to make it more okay for people to talk about it more broadly. It’s been quite successful at Virgin Media in changing the corporate culture around mental health. Unmind is broadening our mental health support beyond the line manager audience. It’s moving the whole dial towards a more proactive approach.”

Measuring the success of your digital mental health training platform

When implementing a digital mental health training platform, it’s only natural to want to be able to measure its success, and see how it positively impacts your employees and wider business.

But Dave cautioned wellbeing leaders and CEOs about using data on absenteeism as a potential metric – and suggested that instead, we need to reframe how we quantify success.

“In the early days, there was this panicked approach at the level of mental health absences we had, and focusing on that as the problem that needed to be solved,” he recalled. “What you find when you get it right is that absence in general doesn’t go up – but the amount of mental health absence does. That’s a sign of honest conversations happening. 

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Mental health is a spectrum. It’s important to have something for everyone – and with a digital approach, you can scale it to everyone, which makes it really inclusive.

Stella, Head of Wellbeing, GVC

“When people are being honest about their mental ill-health, they feel like they can have a conversation,” he added. “And when they’re taking time off work they can genuinely say why – that’s a good thing. The same thing applies to the usage of our EAP scheme. The usage of that has trickled up – I see that as a really positive thing. It’s really important that people focus on the fact that people are using that. It does mean that they’re struggling, but they’re taking action to sort the situation out rather than taking no action.”

Beyond Dave’s suggestions, organisations can look at broader metrics that connect to overarching wellbeing goals, such as how employee understanding and literacy is improving on mental health, as well as employee engagement data, and how safe employees feel at work.

Above all, nurturing mental health at a whole-organisation, whole-person level, will ensure that employees feel safe disclosing any mental health struggles, and are more likely to seek support at the right time. 

To learn more about nurturing the mental health of your organisation, click here to book a chat with one of our specialists.