Creating a mentally healthy workplace: Q&A with SuperFriend's CEO

SuperFriend is the only mental health foundation with a specific focus on lessening the impacts of mental health related illnesses and suicide in the superannuation and group insurer industry. The foundation partners with organisations to provide employers, employees and members with bespoke frameworks that effectively support positive mental health initiatives in the work place.

CEO, Margo Lydon, spoke with Industry Moves about the services that the foundation offers, what drew her to the mental health space and why it's important to look at mental health through a preventative lens.

"People just want to be treated with dignity and respect, and they want practical help that will assist them in moving forward." - Margo Lydon, CEO, SuperFriend.

Q&A with Margo Lydon, SuperFriend CEO...

What was the impetus for setting up SuperFriend in 2007?

It was established when the Industry Funds Forum, who are the CEOs of some of Australia's largest industry funds, started to do some analysis on their claims; particularly looking at mental illness and death claims where the cause of death was suicide. After looking at these results, they realised that if they banded together they could make a significant difference in preventing mental health related illness and deaths within their members, employers and those working within the financial services industry.

The establishment of the foundation saw usual competitors coming together as a collective to make a difference in the Australian mental health landscape.

Are people in the financial services industry at higher risk of experiencing mental health issues?

We work with both the staff who work across the financial services industry and also the members of the funds, which is over half of the working population. We know from research that financial services staff do have an increase in mental health claims coming through, in comparison to the broader working population. The work that we do doesn't only target the superannuation and financial services industry, but also all workplaces that are associated with them.

You joined the foundation as CEO in 2010, what lead you to this role?

The foundation was very small when I first joined, with only two staff on board at that point. I joined after spending a decade working in a privately owned facility that treated people with eating disorders. Even though I'm not clinically trained, my role within that organisation put me in the frontline of providing support to those clients and their families. I learnt a lot about mental illness and how to effectively support people who are at their lowest and most vulnerable points. People just want to be treated with dignity and respect, and they want practical help that will assist them in moving forward.

I came in during SuperFriend's infancy but I realised that the foundation could have a genuine impact by using practical tools and resources to help prevent small problems from snowballing into bigger issues. There are always going to be people in your workplace that experience mental illness and even those who are lucky enough not to can always benefit from increasing their awareness on the topic and strengthening their own mental health.

Do you have a specific goal in mind for reaching a certain amount of partners from within the industry and how do you work with these partnering organisations?

We don't really have a 'numbers' goal in mind, it's more about a values and ethos alignment. We're looking for partners who want to be actively involved in being part of a solution.

We work with our partners through facilitating introductions to the employer, where we will go out with the relationship manager from the fund and talk to the employer about what they're currently doing in the mental health and wellbeing space, how they can manage having difficult conversations around mental health with their staff, and what they can implement to bring about positive change.

Another strategy that we employ is supporting the fund with their direct communication with members. For example, we run programs alongside funds to help their members to prepare for a happy retirement, in both an emotional and physical sense, by helping them to figure out what are they going to do in the day to fill in their time in order to feel a sense of purpose, meaning and connection.

Finally, we help our partnering funds and group insurers to invest in their own people and their own culture. We assist them to implement strategies to help them walk the talk themselves before they're out there talking to members and employers.

Rather than focusing on the 1 in 5 people that will experience mental health issues, SuperFriend focusses on the "5 in 5 workers that have the opportunity to thrive in the workplace." What is your strategy behind this?

When you look through a preventative lens when dealing with mental health issues, irrespective of whether or not you experience one yourself, you typically open your mind up to what you can do differently - we call this a strength based mindset. It's all about what is possible. We all have mental health. Some of us experience mental illness, some of us don't, preventative measures help everyone to be more aware and to improve their mental health.

We know, statistically, that 45% of the population aged between 16-85 will experience mental illness. That's almost 1 in 2 of us. We always make sure that our work is evidence based and there is a recent model around workplace health and wellbeing that speaks to the 5 in 5 Australians. It's called the Integrated Approach to Workplace Mental Health Model, developed by Professor Tony Lamontagne.

There are three elements to this model:

The first is to prevent harm, so in a physical sense that would mean putting the guard down on a piece of machinery, in a mental health space it's around thinking about what an organisation can do to prevent harm, such as training managers in workplace mental health and wellbeing. It's making make sure that your workplace culture is a positive one.

The second is that when someone is unwell, whether that be physically or psychologically, employers have a legal responsibility to act. For example, it could be ensuring an Employee Assistance Professional (EAP) or counselling service is available to all staff, or providing time off for people to attend appointments with their psychologist.

The third is promoting the positives. This is an area where SuperFriend are taking a lead. We use a lot of positive psychology such as mindfulness and resilience to show people how to build a positive workplace culture from a strength based perspective. The benefits of implementing these steps in an integrated way, for both employees and employers, proves why it's important to consider the 5 in 5 Australians.

Since launching the foundation, what has been one of your key achievements/success stories?

We've had so many. As the CEO I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved as a small organisation with limited resources. Two main pieces of work that we have delivered, and that I am particularly proud of, would be our Mental Health & Wellbeing Training and our Taking Action framework, which was released in October 2015.

I think our training is genuinely making a difference in people's lives and we know that, anecdotally, it has saved people's lives. It's definitely a flagship program for us.

Taking Action is a best practice framework for the management of psychological claims. This is an Australian first, providing insurers with a road map around how to properly manage mental health related claims. We've now signed a MOU with SafeWork Australia to adapt that framework to the worker's compensation jurisdiction in every state and territory. I think this is such a tremendous outcome for such a small organisation. It's through the organisations that we work with and partner with, that we are able to achieve this.

How do you gauge your impact on the industry?

There are various ways that we are having an impact. Everything that we do, we measure as best as we possibly can. This year we've undertaken a significant piece of work called a strategic logic, which is part of an evaluation framework that measures everything we do in relation to six activity areas, which are all linked to our strategic objectives and mission.This keeps us sharp and focused and therefore, over the next few years, we'll have outcome measures that we can report against that will give us more information about the impact we're having.

Another example is that we've run a pilot program called SuperSpan, in conjunction with our partners, that has indicated some very positive outcomes. It is all about building the capacity of relationship managers working in rural and regional areas of Australia and helping them to have those difficult conversations about severe mental health issues and suicide. They might be speaking with a commercial farmer who has been experiencing drought for the last five years, and this program helps the fund's relationship manager to get their members and employers the help that they need.

Do you think SuperFriend has had a impact on lessening the percentage of lives lost to suicide in Australia?

We've got to be careful when comparing statistics. Suicide and mental illness in Australia is a multi-billion-dollar issue, there are statistics that say it's a $10.9 billion cost to the economy, other statistics put the cost at $34 billion per year. We as a small organisation, and on our own, are unlikely to have an impact that is in correlation to saving 'X' number of lives that we can accurately measure. The way that we work is playing an active role in our part of the total solution and being clear, focused and realistic about our part.

Can you tell us about your program that helps managers to effectively address mental health issues within their own teams?

Part of our philosophy is to assist teams in understanding where they are currently at and where they can commit to further strengthening their mental health and wellbeing plan. We like to start off with a tool called Wellbeing Works. It's a 90-minute guided conversation, with a number of staff from different areas across an organisation, where we work through a range of questions to determine where they are at on a scale of readiness, what they have achieved currently and what else they could be doing that we could assist with. We then provide a bespoke report back to that workplace that outlines what their next steps could be.

We also offer other programs such as: Managing Bereavement, Grief and Loss, which is an online module that helps managers and colleagues understand how to best support someone who is suffering a significant loss; we have our general Mental Health and Wellbeing Training course for managers, that helps those leaders to become better people managers; and SuperFit Mates, which is a peer-to-peer mentoring program designed to help staff to detect early warning signs and step in and have conversations with their colleagues around mental health.

Where can people go to seek help if they feel like they are struggling or if employers want more information about how to create a mentally healthy workplace?

I would definitely direct people to our SuperFriend website, where we have a range of resources and tools, many of which are free. SuperFriend is part of the Mentally Healthy Workplace Alliance which is an initiative established by the National Mental Health Commission. There are a range of government and non-government bodies sitting around that table, including SuperFriend, and through that alliance Beyond Blue has set up Heads Up, which is a website that is freely available and provides a range of resources for employers that helps them to create a mentally healthy workplace.

I would urge people to be aware that Lifeline is available and they are a fantastic service. You don't need to be in crisis at that moment to make a call, they're able to help you if you're concerned about someone else.

Finally, I would urge people to contact their local doctor if they aren't sure of where to start in seeking help.

What's the best piece of advice that you have ever received?

"Believe in yourself and back yourself". This is in the context of stepping outside my comfort zone, trying new things and believing in myself that I can do it!

How has SuperFriend helped those in the industry?...

Joel Clapham has been in the superannuation industry for nearly 10 years, most recently as general manager of communications & marketing for an industry fund, and is now taking some time off to get his mental health back on track. Here's what he has to say about SuperFriend...

Joel Clapham
"SuperFriend are brilliant. At a professional level they work really closely with funds, members and employers to achieve that and educate the workforce about managing mental health. At a personal level, the SuperFriend staff have been so supportive of me. My marketing counterpart, Melanie Schoo, has kept in touch and been an ear and shoulder for me. That's the real value of SuperFriend - their people live and breathe the ethos of support. I can't speak highly enough of them."

Read Joel's full Q&A here.

If you would like to talk to a representative from LifeLine you can phone 13 11 14