Employee well-being outcomes from individual-level mental health interventions: Cross-sectional evidence from the United Kingdom, 2024, William J. Fle

[SNT Gatchaman]

Employee well-being outcomes from individual-level mental health interventions: Cross-sectional evidence from the United Kingdom
William J. Fleming

Initiatives that promote mental well‐being are formally recommended for all British workers, with many practices targeting change in individual workers' resources. While the existing evidence is generally positive about these interventions, disagreement is increasing because of concerns that individual‐level interventions do not engage with working conditions.

Contributing to the debate, this article uses survey data (N = 46,336 workers in 233 organisations) to compare participants and nonparticipants in a range of common individual‐level well‐being interventions, including resilience training, mindfulness and well‐being apps. Across multiple subjective well‐being indicators, participants appear no better off. Results are interpreted through the job demands–resources theory and selection bias in cross‐sectional results is interrogated.

Overall, results suggest interventions are not providing additional or appropriate resources in response to job demands.

Link | PDF (Industrial Relations Journal)

 

[Sean]

That would be the social part of psycho-social.

 

[SNT Gatchaman]

Specific mental well‐being interventions either seek change in the individual or in the organisation (LaMontagne et al., 2007). Despite formal recommendations (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence [NICE], 2022) and evidence supporting the effectiveness of organisational change and work redesign on improving worker well‐being (Fox et al., 2022; Lovejoy et al., 2021), interventions that target the individual worker are most common.

These research questions prompt three hypotheses to be tested:

H1 : Individual‐level mental well‐being interventions improve subjective well‐being outcomes.
H2 : Interventions improve subjective accounts of the work environment.
H3 : Effects of the interventions vary between social demographics and organisations.

Results show that those who participate in individual‐level interventions have the same levels of mental well‐being as those who do not. The large multiorganisational sample reveals that this is consistent across multiple organisational contexts. Ultimately, there is no support from this analysis to support H1 that these interventions are beneficial for workers' subjective wellbeing, instead indicating a null hypothesis is more appropriate. While these findings do not entirely discount positive effects for some individual workers, any such effect may be averaged out by a negative effect elsewhere. However, the lack of any notable differences across gender, ethnicity and income groups offers no support to H3, indicating the null results are maintained between social demographics and organisations. These primary findings are counter to much of the existing narrative in empirical literature and policy discourse.

JD‐R [job demands‐resources] theory offers explanation for the null and negative results found for resilience training and mindfulness. The intention behind these interventions is that workers can be taught to consciously develop their coping mechanisms, and in turn, better manage experienced job demands. Null and negative results suggest that these initiatives are either failing to develop these psychological resources as intended, not adequate for balancing job demands, or not relevant to contextual job demands. This explanation would hold regardless of whether workers are receiving this training to promote positive mental health, for a specific job role, or targeted to them as individuals. In an alternative explanation less related to JD‐R, critics of individual level interventions suggest that they can produce the converse ‘toxic side effect’ of causing feelings of stress by implying it is an individual problem and self‐imposed.

 

[NelliePledge]

The interventions mentioned aren’t centred on the needs of the individuals, sausage machine generic workshops telling you you should be more resilient, or using a well being app to gee you up isn’t going to help people actually cope with difficult situations.

 

[Trish]

This whole scam of resilience training for employees is a dreadful way of companies putting the blame on victims of workplace bullying and unreasonable work demands. It's the employers and bosses who need to behave better towards their employees and provide good working conditions and environments.

 

[NelliePledge]

Yes over tight management regimes with demanding performance targets and excessively strict approach to absence which doesn’t allow some discretion to be applied rather requiring managers to act like robots with no empathy is what needs addressing.

 

[rvallee]

When this is what mental health is reduced to:

resilience training, mindfulness and well‐being apps

You should expect that:

participants appear no better

Because it simply ignores reality. The mental health evidence-based medicine approach is a top-down model that doesn't bother with reality, simply tries to push the same old solutions regardless of the problem. Why they expect this to work I truly have no idea, but it has never stopped them from doing the same things over and over and over again expecting the same fake results, because they've simply always fudged the results.

This:

Results show that those who participate in individual‐level interventions have the same levels of mental well‐being as those who do not

Is exactly the same thing as with the biopsychosocial approach to chronic illness. In countries that have gone all-in implementing it, the outcomes are the same as in countries that don't do anything. Because it does absolutely nothing, so the outcomes are equally bad.

But they still go ahead and do the same thing over and over and over again while expecting the same fake results. It has somehow worked very well for mental health practitioners for several decades by now. For everyone else? Not so much. For the companies, they can simply boast about promoting mental health and not bother with doing anything else.

This is what the evidence-based approach to mental health has become:

Now get in the booth and be merry. Or don't, just fill in the questionnaire saying so and that's good enough for them.

 

[Sean]

Results show that those who participate in individual‐level interventions have the same levels of mental well‐being as those who do not

In other words, a null result. The intervention does not work.