'World's first' mental-health benchmark being developed for Singapore workplaces

Local charity wants to show employers the business value of happier, more resilient workers

- Krist Boo

A new benchmark is being developed to help employers improve the sense of well-being among staff, and to show them the business value of doing so.

Many organisations focus on employee programmes such as counselling, stress management or even yoga classes when reporting efforts at advancing mental resilience at their workplaces.

Now, local charity Workwell Leaders (WWL) wants to track the impact on workers of changes made to workplace behaviours, workload and work design, team collaboration and a sense of belonging.

WWL, which promotes leadership in workplace well-being, also wants to put a value on what happier and more resilient workers bring to productivity, attrition and innovation.

It has set up a work group to design a research study that will identify best practices for local organisations to benchmark against, at no charge.

WWL said the group hopes to finish the study parameters by end October. The charity will commission the research and hopes to release its findings by the end of 2024 or in 2025.

WWL chairwoman Anthea Ong told The Straits Times that this will be the first such benchmark in the world.

The former Nominated MP added that the first adopters will likely be larger companies, but the benchmark will be designed to encourage these firms to move their best practices down their supply chains of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).