In support of World Mental Health Day, the Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association (AREEA) has released a new tool for best-practice insight into workforce mental health initiatives.
AREEA’s Mental Health Maturity Assessment Tool provides employers with an easily accessible platform for assessing their mental health actions and initiatives against industry best practice.
The initiative was introduced Monday 10 October, in recognition of this year’s World Mental Health Day.
AREEA’s Director of Operations, Tara Diamond, said the tool would allow employers to deliver mental health programs that achieved more than simply ‘ticking a box’.
“The Tool pinpoints where organisations are meeting best practice and where they can improve, by factoring in nearly 20 ‘activity areas’, such as across leadership, reviewing and auditing, stigma reduction, resilience and coping programs, and much more,” Ms Diamond said.
“It provides industry with a tool that isn’t about ‘ticking a box’ and reaffirming the work that is being done, but driving constructive and collaborative thinking about where and how efforts can be improved.
“Key to that is understanding an organisation’s level of maturity is not static, but fluid, and that organisations will constantly be moving forwards and backwards depending on how quickly and effectively they react to different mental health pressures.”
AREEA’s new assessment tool builds upon its Resources and Energy Industry Workforce Mental Health Framework, released in 2021.
Specifically, the Assessment Tool helps employers benchmark their actions and initiatives against the various levels of the Framework’s ‘Maturity Scale’.
Completing the tool involves responding to questions and prompts relating to an organisation’s current activities, capabilities and initiatives.
The tool then auto-builds a variety of bespoke graphs and charts displaying results, including options for tracking progress against prior results.
“AREEA’s Mental Health Framework was developed under the guidance of our Mental Health Advisory Board and in collaboration with Beyond Blue, Safe Work Australia and other authorities,” Ms Diamond said.
“The Maturity Tool reflects the next step of development in these important employer resources. It provides a detailed, practical tool to aid in the maturity assessment process and to identify capability gaps and areas for further development.
“Looking after the mental health and wellness of employees is a huge focus for resources and energy employers. The initial response to this new resource has been overwhelmingly positive and we expect take-up to be very strong in coming weeks and months.”
