While 94% of HR professionals believe that organizations can improve the overall health of employees by offering mental health resources, 21% of respondents working for organizations that don’t offer mental health benefits say their organizations don’t have the resources to address mental health, while another 21% believe it’s too expensive to act.
The findings come from the 2022 Mental Health Workplace Benefits survey of more than 3,400 HR professionals across a variety of U.S. industries conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Emerging from a pandemic that deeply affected many employees’ lives, nearly 78% of organizations surveyed now offer workplace mental health resources or plan to do so within the next year. Even so, mental health is still not necessarily a top priority for most organizations, with less than one-third of HR professionals (32%) in the SHRM survey viewing mental health resources as a “high priority” for their organization, and 41% of HR indicate it is a “medium priority.”
Among the other findings in the survey:
- Eighty-six percent of HR professionals indicate that offering mental health resources can increase employee retention, and 72% believe such resources attract new talent.
- Respondents in industries such as health care (61%), the non-profit sector (47%), government/public administration/military (41%) and education (39%) claim their employees are more likely to experience mental health issues than other industries.
- Eighty-eight percent of HR professionals believe offering mental health resources can increase productivity, while 78% say offering such resources can boost organizational return on investment.
“It is clear that the need to establish mental health as a top priority within our organizations is essential,” says SHRM Foundation president Wendi Safstrom. “We must act now if we wish to create a world of work that that allows both employers and employees to thrive and lead healthy, productive organizations.”
