How can I help my organisation support better mental well-being practices at work?
How this project started: Why mental health?
Conversations around mental health and wellbeing in the workplace have gained increasing urgency in recent years, especially after the disruptions COVID-19 brought about.
In light of this, Common Ground and Studio Dojo piloted a citizen-led, ground-up process in 2020 and 2021, interviewing 30 young Singaporean employees and 10 employers to explore how mental wellbeing is handled in the workplace.
After presenting the results to our stakeholders, the feedback received led to the realization that many organisations were interested in how they can better support people with mental health conditions. However, they are also at a loss on how to provide mental health support at their workplaces. How can we help these organisations find support for their staff to manage mental health and wellbeing? How would they know what works or what does not? Where do they even begin?
In our search to answer these questions, we set off on a journey to reimagine the future of the workplace. We turned to UX / service designers - who brought with them fresh perspectives, creative energies and service design skills - and matched them with organisations on a journey over five months (and beyond) to explore new possibilities around mental health and well-being practices.
This project was supported by DesignSingapore Council’s Good Design Research Initiative.
A CROSS-SECTOR COLLABORATION
Serving as context (mental health) lead
Serving as process (service design) lead
We wanted to research:
What good outcomes might we see if we catalyse designers to bring their creative energies and service design skills to improve the mental health conditions in the workplace?
We want to develop:
An employee wellbeing playbook that will guide organisations to take action after identifying existing gaps in their mental health practices, empowering them to develop their own mental wellness initiatives.
By providing organisations with a possible direction in developing mental well-being initiatives, we hope to inspire other organisations to join in and take action to create more inclusive workplaces that can better support their staff in terms of mental health and well-being.
A look into our 5-month journey
“What good outcomes might we see if we catalyse designers to bring their creative energies and service design skills to improve the mental health conditions in the workplace?”
Common Ground and Studio Dojo in this process, brought together both service design and organisational development principles in an attempt to guide four organisations in creating or redesigning their mental wellbeing initiatives over the course of five months.
From the service design perspective, we were curious about how we can bring in a process-oriented lens to materialise insights into tangible concepts on complex issues like mental health and wellbeing. From the organisational development perspective, we attempted to introduce the Levels of Systems framework to apply to insights and reflect on a new way to look at data.
How do we leverage the high energy and interest from designers regarding mental health? What kinds of possibilities and innovative ideas could arise if we bring the energy of designers and organisations together?
The volunteer designers we brought in over the 5-month journey talked about the learning opportunities offered, transformative personal journey they took, knowledge and awareness gained about mental health and the gratitude for the opportunity to use their skills for good.
Jun-Nov 2021: Research Process
As part of the Reimagine Mental Wellbeing at the Workplace programme, Common Ground and Studio Dojo worked with a total of 4 organisations and 17 volunteer designers over a span of the five months to develop the prototyped mental wellbeing initiatives. The process began with looking at our prior research data, contracting with the respective interested parties, setting the mental health landscape context, and introducing the service design process to embark on.
This eventually concluded with the development of a mental well-being playbook in 2022.
Profiles: Who we convened
In 2021, Common Ground and Studio Dojo conducted a public sharing about the five-month programme and invited organisations to register their interest. After which, we conducted interviews with these organisations to find out more about what this programme meant for them before they were selected to come on board the programme.
Our Journey
Click the boxes to explore different parts of the project!
