Mental health training for managers lowers absenteeism, improves performance

Mental health training for line managers was found to be associated with organizational-level benefits in a study of several thousand companies in England. These benefits included improved business performance, customer service, and staff recruitment and retention, as well as lower levels of long-term mental health-related sickness absence. The findings were published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on July 17 by Professor Holly Blake of the University of Nottingham and Dr. Juliet Hassard of Queen's University Belfast, UK, who led the project.

The objective of mental health training for line managers is to provide them with the necessary skills to assist in the mental health of the individuals under their supervision.

Ongoing research is investigating whether this training enhances the knowledge, skills, and confidence of managers to assist their staff and benefits employees. Nevertheless, there are only a handful of studies that have examined its potential business value for companies.

Hassard, Blake, and colleagues analyzed anonymized survey data from several thousand companies in England to investigate organizational-level benefits. The data was collected by the Enterprise Research Centre at Warwick Business School between 2020 and 2023.

The survey inquired about the mental health and well-being practices of the companies, including whether they provided mental health training to line managers. The researchers statistically controlled for the age, sector, and size of the companies to prevent errors in their analysis.

The analysis demonstrated that mental health training for line managers was significantly correlated with improved business performance, customer service, and staff recruitment and retention. Additionally, line managers who were trained in mental health were associated with a reduction in the incidence of long-term sick leave as a result of mental health challenges.

These findings indicate that organizations may derive strategic business benefits from providing mental health training to their line managers. The researchers suggest that organizations implement workplace policies that explicitly define the role of line managers in supporting employee mental health, and that they provide mental health training to line managers. This recommendation is based on their findings.

In the interim, the researchers emphasize the necessity of additional research in this field, which includes the comparison of the potential benefits of various mental health training approaches for line managers and the use of objective data in analyses rather than subjective survey responses.

Blake adds: "In firms of different types, sizes and sectors, we found that training line managers in mental health was related to better staff recruitment and retention, customer service, business performance and lower long-term sickness absence due to mental health. This is the first study to show that training line managers in mental health is linked to better business outcomes."

Journal Reference: Juliet Hassard, Teixiera Dulal-Arthur, Jane Bourke, Maria Wishart, Stephen Roper, Vicki Belt, Stavroula Leka, Nick Pahl, Craig Bartle, Louise Thomson, Holly Blake. The relationship between line manager training in mental health and organisational outcomes. PLOS ONE, 2024; 19 (7): e0306065 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0306065