This blog is a part of our Ask Mind Share Partners series.
There are several opportunities to strengthen your talent attraction and retention strategies by showing workers you care about their wellbeing. Rebekka Sullender Bagatsing, People Team Lead & Principal at Mind Share Partners, weighs in on this topic below.
Let job seekers know from the start how you support wellbeing.
Let’s start with talent attraction. First engagements with a prospective employer typically occur on the employer’s job posting and website. Salary and benefits are among the most important factors that job seekers consider. Mind Share Partners’ 2023 Mental Health at Work report found that finances and work itself were reported by U.S. workers to have the greatest negative impact on their mental health.
Offer salary transparency in your job listing. This would ideally be a 10k range that is realistic of where the candidate would likely land if hired. (Don’t do the thing where you put a 50k range— that doesn’t help anyone.) Job seekers use this information to see if a job is going to work for their lifestyle and what they need.
Be transparent about benefits. Similarly, share your mental health benefits and be really specific. For example, if you provide medical, dental and vision insurance, be clear if this covers things like mental health care and therapy appointments. Let job seekers know if you offer additional support for mental health, such as through employee assistance programs or supportive Paid Time Off (PTO) policies.
Provide clear information on your website. Make salary and benefits information transparent on your website too. For example, be explicit about the ways your organization prioritizes employee wellbeing, the specific benefits you offer, and company values that align with this.
Integrate the topic during interviews. Be sure to integrate mental health and wellbeing early on into your interview process. Even as early as when you begin your initial phone screens, review the benefits you offer—including mental health benefits—with applicants, and address any questions. Provide anecdotes about how your company culture incorporates strategies to wellbeing.
Create equitable work policies. Make sure your work policies reinforce your benefits. Do you have anti-harassment and safety policies protecting your workers' wellbeing? When your workers take vacation are they able to fully disconnect from email? Be sure that your work policies are helping, not hindering, wellbeing.
Three actions to retain talent.
Employee feedback is an invaluable tool. We’ve seen a lot of organizations use “employee listening” to better understand the exact ways their work culture is helping or harming employee wellbeing. Dr. Alyson Smith, managing director of health and wellness at Delta Air Lines, shared that her team “works with their human resources and wellness teams to gather feedback from employees through a flourishing index, engagement surveys, and qualitative interviews.” You can also learn a lot from exit interviews, including if wellbeing was a factor in their decision.
Managers also play a major role in retention. They hold the influence that really makes or breaks an employee’s experience. Training managers to build skills around both talking about mental health with their teams, and best practices for checking in around mental challenges goes a long way. Beyond that, when managers have an understanding of how different workplace factors (like workload, work stress, and job role) impact their team’s wellbeing, they can take actions to do something about it. This can include check-ins, adjustments to workload, accommodations, and encouraging employees to use PTO—and fully unplug while they are using it.
Provide clarity and flexibility. Whether you are remote, hybrid or fully back in the office, flexibility has become increasingly important to workers. Can employees have flexibility around when they work—including allowing frontline workers to have a say in the days and preferred hours they are working? Can an employee leave early to pick up their kids from school on certain days, and make up that time by working a little earlier or later? Just as important, make sure that job roles have clear responsibilities and goals to allow flexible work practices to be more successful. This helps to eliminate uncertainty, which is a risk to mental health at work.
Employers need to adjust their strategies to attract and retain today’s talent by making wellbeing a central part of their work culture. Need some help? Reach out and book a call with us>
This blog is a part of our Ask Mind Share Partners series, where we answer questions we hear frequently in our work, and questions submitted by you. Have a question for our team? Submit it here.
About the Author
Rebekka Bagatsing, People Team Lead & Principal at
Mind Share Partners
Rebekka Bagatsing leads the work of attracting, engaging, developing, and retaining great talent for the organization. Rebekka’s focus areas include talent planning and acquisition, onboarding, benefits and compensation, performance management, staff development, and culture. In addition, she facilitates Mind Share Partners’ workplace training and leads strategic projects for clients. Rebekka holds a Masters in Education Policy and
Management from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
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