It’s World Mental Health Day on Monday 10th October. Our new Insight Research with industry leaders suggests that digital technologies could play an important role in helping to combat mental illness at work.
Many firms have excellent processes in place for supporting mental health issues once employees report problems or start to go absent with mental health problems. But how many offer widely available tools that can help prevent the seeds of mental illness – stress, anxiety or depression for example – from escalating to a serious issue?
The second in our series of Insight Research conducted by the University of Sussex features interviews with digital innovation and wellbeing professionals from Bupa, AXA PPP, Vitality, Cigna, South Western Ambulance Service, University of Wolverhampton, Edinburgh Napier University and Aston University to understand the role of digital in delivering employee wellbeing initiatives across various organisations and sectors.
They tell us that few employers are really using new digital tools to their full potential. Our experts believe that the real power of digital lies in helping employees to prevent mental and physical health problems before they become critical. And to self-manage health issues that they feel are important to them personally.
Read the Insight Report
Digital in action – our own findings
Findings from over 1,000 participant on Do Something Different programmes has shown that small changes to habits and behaviours can significantly reduce anxiety and depression, so we know that digital can play a vital role at scale if employers adopt it as part of their wellbeing toolkit.
If you would like to know more about how we boost wellbeing for employees in organisations large and small, take a look at our Wellbeing Collection.
