Workplace Wellbeing and Mental Health in Sustainable Human Resource Management

The mental health of employees can be affected by factors including workload, supervision, job security, and availability of support. Organisations often focus on offering support such as counselling, awareness activities and tools to help individuals. This conceptual paper explores how sustainable HRM can be used to link services to changes in working conditions. It draws together guidance from occupational health, sustainable HRM literature and theories around job demands, resources, motivation and psychological safety. This has led to the development of the Sustainable Well-being HRM model. The model includes six areas of practice; psychosocial risk management, job enrichment, inclusive leadership, mental health awareness and support, fair flexibility and adjustment, and accountability. A prevention hierarchy, matrix of practice and implementation plan demonstrate how each of these can be embedded into current HR practices. This paper also develops propositions for future research. This paper contributes to the field by bringing together existing concepts into a practical model. However, the model has not been verified therefore the relationships should be viewed as propositions. The analysis suggests that employers should consider the impacts of changes to working conditions when implementing wellbeing initiatives. Whilst protecting mental health may not always be easy to show clear financial gains it is an ethical duty.