Among the many changes brought about by COVID-19 pandemic is the wider conversation about employees’ health, which also includes mental health. According to global broker Aon, workforce mental health and wellbeing are more important than ever in today’s complex and unpredictable environment. Technology has served as a conduit for many businesses to continue functioning even under lockdown, and it has also made it easier for organisations to support their employees with their diverse mental health needs.
In a recent webinar by Aon, titled Throwing Light on Workplace Mental Health and Wellbeing, Wai Mun Lim, founder and CEO of Doctor Anywhere, and Dr Raymond Ong, medical director of Doctor Anywhere, shared how employees’ needs have evolved due to the pandemic. They also discussed why businesses need to adopt a more comprehensive and strategic approach to reduce workplace mental health risk.
“Right now, it’s not just about physical health. It’s also very important to ensure holistic wellbeing,” Ong said. “[Doctor Anywhere] has services in all verticals, and we have counsellors supporting clients virtually, as well as offline. We also have nutritionist-dietitians and physical fitness therapists on our platform.”
According to Ong, poor mental wellbeing is a major burden in society, and many bad mental health outcomes are linked to other issues, such as not eating or sleeping well, as well as various issues at home and the workplace. However, there is an aversion among people in Singapore and in other Asian societies to seek help for mental health issues, due to stigma from the more conservative dominant cultures.
Doctor Anywhere works with various companies to identify segments of that company’s workforce that are experiencing mental health issues and understand the circumstances before reaching out to them.
“We found in a certain company that they have a large group of blue-collar workers, aged 40 and above, who have been with the company for more than 10 years, and have been very dissatisfied and unmotivated over the past few months,” Ong said. “We identify key segment populations and, from there, we are able to recommend solutions.”
Ong believes that this approach is more effective than a series of one-size-fits-all talks and workshops, where there is no tracking of outcomes.
Doctor Anywhere uses a self-discovery model, where patients are able to learn more about themselves – including their personality types and how they address various issues, such as conflict resolution.
“Our platform analyses the company as a whole, to known how the employees are, in terms of mindset, happiness level, and so on,” Lim said. “And then we will try to understand what could be wrong with the employee. What could be troubling them? We then bring in psychologists to zoom in to what could potentially be troubling the employees, so it becomes relevant. When it’s relevant, you tend to have a higher participation rate and it becomes more effective.”
Afterwards, Doctor Anywhere will introduce solutions and providers from which employees can get help from.
“Our programme is truly anonymous,” Ong said. “Part of our intervention strategy is training managers, not just about mental first aid, but also different skill sets.”
With regard to the earlier example about poorly motivated blue-collar workers, the intervention was done at a managerial level, when Doctor Anywhere found that the issue was due to poor communication of managerial decisions. As a result, they worked together with the supervisors and trained them on how to better understand and communicate with the staff, as well as implement a more participative decision-making process.
