Healthcare’s Mental Health Crisis: How Total Rewards Can Help

Total rewards professionals within the healthcare industry have been aware that a mental health challenge exists within their organizations’ workforces. However, a recently released research report provided a deeper look at the crisis, with dire statistics pointing to the need for meaningful intervention.

In the report from mental wellness solution provider Spring Health, based on a survey of healthcare workers in more than 100 client organizations:

16% of participants screened positive for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD);
63% screened positive for depression and/or anxiety; and,
77% said their own adverse mental health interfered with their work, social or personal lives.

In addition, these workers, on average, reported 2.4 days of disrupted productivity every week.

Additional research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), American Hospital Association (AHA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) confirms the vital signs necessitate action.

What can total rewards professionals glean from all this? And, more importantly, what can they do to help?

Taking a Pulse of the Situation

At the NIH, researchers Thorsten Grünheid and Ahmad Hazem identified a high rate of “moderate to moderately severe depression” among healthcare practitioners working at every role and level. Mental health conditions manifest to such workers as anxiety, sleep disturbances, burnout, exhaustion and other problems. The authors wrote, “The current mental health well-being of frontline health workers is poor. Many are dissatisfied with healthcare and consider[ing] leaving the industry.”

As Grünheid and Hazem wrote, healthcare providers treating patients during the COVID-19 pandemic risked their own physical and mental health, with widely acknowledged increases in burnout and attrition from the industry as a result.

Nearly five years out from the start of the pandemic, healthcare organizations are in a position to evaluate their mental health programs and total rewards offerings, noted Anthony Dix, the director of human resources at Sauk Prairie Healthcare in Wisconsin. “We have to keep the ‘human’ part of human resource management and find different ways to engage in the art of listening and incorporate what is really meaningful for our teams beyond benefits,” he said.

This is an area where total rewards professionals can truly innovate and positively shape workplace cultures for the benefit of all, Dix said.

The Spring Hill report called out listening, in the form of collecting regular workforce sentiment and then analyzing the related data and insights, to drive related strategies and solutions.

“To build the most mentally healthy organizations, HR leaders need access to high-quality, relevant and timely data, recommended actions with a proven [return on investment] and integrated tools to support mental health in the workplace,” the report stated. “These insights

allow HR and benefit leaders to keep a pulse on their organization, identify areas needing attention, form strategies and deploy tools to support workplace mental health.”

A Pre- and Post-Pandemic Crisis

The pandemic provided little time for providers to attend to and recover from their own health issues, creating exhaustion with every surge, the AHA wrote in a behavioral health strategies guide.

Today, “Reducing stigma and improving access to behavioral health services for the healthcare workforce, combined with fostering human resilience, can improve mental and often physical health, reduce the total cost of care, reduce suicide and support a healthy workforce,” the AHA stated.

Toward reducing stigma, the Spring Hill report stated focused efforts “might encompass confronting [the issue], making mental health part of all internal communications, highlighting awareness campaigns, starting more conversations about mental health and offering training to supervisors.” It also stated, “Enterprise resource groups (ERGs) can act as internal mental health advocates by leveraging content, webinars and resources to further mental health education and normalize talking about mental health challenges at work.”

Spring Hill advised that additional educational measures can include mental health first aid training, focused e-learning and compassion fatigue webinars.

The AHA guide added that effective response also involves understanding “the difference between burnout and behavioral health disorders” and addressing specific employee needs with appropriate interventions.

The CDC, calling for greater support for healthcare workers in a Vital Signs publication, wrote, “Poor mental health symptoms increased more for health workers than for other worker groups. Health workers reported fewer mental health issues when they said they work in supportive environments.”

Specific support strategies from the CDC include offering teams greater input in workplace decisions, promoting stress management, addressing workplace harassment and ensuring workers have the time to complete their work.

Total Rewards Strategies for Mental Health

According to Dix, proactive steps are needed because:

This is not purely a pandemic issue;
Unhealthy conditions existed and were building before it; and,
The situation is not going to resolve itself.

Dix advised organizations and their total rewards professionals to:

Review the basics. Addressing concerns employees have about staffing levels, breaks and other aspects of healthcare workplaces today is an important step, whenever possible.
Find the right extensions and support. “Services that can truly be a partner and an extension of your benefits are a great add-on,” Dix said. At Sauk Prairie Healthcare, offering access to the Calm app was very popular during the onset of the pandemic and became another benefit with high utilization. Ultimately, the organization decided to keep it based on positive feedback.
Listen to your team. Well-being benefits and offerings must be relevant and appeal to your organization, Dix added, or the new programs are unlikely to succeed or provide good results.

These intervention strategies could help organizations address attrition. Dix cited declining interest in some healthcare roles as another consequence of today’s mental health crisis in healthcare.

“The bodies just aren’t there,” he said. “The pandemic changed perspectives and really showed that we live in a society where people just don’t always know what that life/work balance looks like. For those of us in HR, the importance of our role strategically has never been greater.”

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