Escient and the Black Dog Institute partnering to tackle workplace mental health.

On World Mental Health Day 2022 Escient joined with the Black Dog Insititute in bringing awareness to the prominent issue society is facing today. Escient Senior Consultant, Ben Chiu and CEO Stephen Mabbs joined the event in Sydney.

Tas Cassim, Head of Partnerships at the Black Dog Institute MCed the event and provided a warm and friendly welcome, emphasizing the importance and value that partners bring to BDI. He further highlighted the complexity BDI has in conveying medical research institute impact, and that story telling is main method to do so.

Cue Jenny Hudson (Professor and Researcher for BDI/Macquarie University). Jenny shared that the research being conducted by BDI is unique in that focuses on mental health across entire lifespan from childhood to elderly, utilising evidence-based care. They are intent on preventing mental health issues, not just solving them. They provide mental health training for small and medium businesses, and over 25,000 workers. Most alarmingly though they have seen a significant rise in depression and anxiety in young adults, particularly in women.

Currently there is a mental health crisis, numbers were increasing pre-COVID, but once COVID hit, numbers doubled due to 5 main reasons.

1. Social disconnection
2. Less exercise and physical activity
3. More time on screens
4. Sleep impacted due to irregular schedules
5. Financial stress, parental stress, home-schooling etc

There are not enough psychologists, psychiatrists or school counsellors to treat all individuals. Teachers and GPs are usually the first port of call for those in need, but they don’t have the required training. Only 1 in 4 of those that need it, receive impactful help.

Damien Coates (CEO of Dual Asia Pacific) was then introduced and shared his personal story of his own mental health struggles and his journey to get back to normal health. He highlighted 3 main pillars that helped him.

1. Communication
2. Diet and Exercise
3. Medication

Damien has raised significant funds to help mental health including raising $70k for shaving his head. He has run over 10 marathons, cycled between cities (Adelaide to Darwin, Perth to Broome) and even jumped out of plane.

He reiterated Prof. Hudson’s explanation of the crisis noting there are 36,000 psychologists and 6,000 psychiatrists for around two million Australians in need. He emphasized that, by 2030, it’s estimated that mental health issues will take over the number of physical issues recorded.

The afternoon rounded out with a panel of BDI Partners including Precision Sourcing, Escient and Alquemie Group. Moderated by Tas, participants shared their experience with BDI and how they support their staff in the workplace.

Simon Hair (Precision Sourcing) has completed numerous long-distance walks for charity 80km and has a focus that health and wellbeing are critical to work and productivity. The average working age at Precision Sourcing is 20-30 years. They recently trialled a new way of working with a white paper to be released shortly. During COVID, they reduced workdays to four with a corresponding drop in pay for employees. Following this, once business returned to normal, they continued a four-day work week but increased pay to reflect 5 days. The trial lasted from Jan 2019 to June 2019. The findings showed an increase in staff retention of 5%, an increase in productivity of 47%, an increase in efficiency, and a 100% increase in employee satisfaction.

Stephen Mabbs (Escient) believes change has to be driven from the top down – from both organisational leaders and community leaders. He continues to promote change from within the organisation. As an example, utilising a yammer channel for BDI and also for the One Foot Forward Challenge, in addition to a blood giving challenge across states. Escient complete pro bono work for BDI (treating BDI the same as any other client) and providing 2 consultants free of charge long term. Escient sees this 1% revenue as an investment. Social purpose needs to be authentic and genuine, it’s important to hold each other accountable at all levels of the organisation, it’s not just about profits but also about ESG. As such, Escient has made several changes including making pro-bono work part of KPIs, providing wellness leave, investing in a tech allowance and flexible working, providing mental health services, and ensuring all employees have buddies and supportive teams to work with.

Sascha Laing (Alquemie Group) shared how Alquemie undertook extensive research and surveying with staff and customers. Their key source of information has been General Pants’ which has a younger customer base. They found that Gen X and Gen Z are very diligent when it comes to social purpose and are more likely to pick up on green and social washing. As such, social purpose needs to be organic and really ingrained into a company’s culture. It’s not enough to just write a checque but really needs to be in the core values, not just a marketing tool.

Although this was an incredible lunch event both Ben and Stephen walked away feeling slightly in awe at all they had heard and equally proud that Escient is a part of BDIs story and is actively supporting their research and community support.