Psychological Support – An Effective Investment in Your People

Helping your people to thrive is smart business. Thriving people will perform better, cope well with organisational changes and contribute positively to teams. Investing in psychological support is an effective way to promote this thriving, particularly for people operating in challenging roles.

One of the questions Umbrella are often asked is – how much is the investment? The short answer is that it varies. The more complete answer is – it depends on many factors, which they will review here.

Ensuring positive behaviour change
While people are referred for psychological support for a range of reasons, one common theme underpins them all. Something needs to change. This could be changes within the person – the way they are thinking or reacting for example, or changes for how they are interacting with others or behaving at work. Often old ways of doing things that were helpful have become unhelpful for some reason. Perhaps perfectionist standards were useful in a previous role but are now a hindrance because the role has changed, or work volumes have increased.

The desired outcome is to see the person develop more helpful alternative behaviours, and to be able to use these new behaviours routinely. Often, by the time someone is referred for psychological support the person themselves or people around them are feeling quite stuck. In order to create meaningful change, we need to be able to understand what is stuck, identify alternatives, and then help the person to implement these new behaviours and fine-tune them based on how they go in the real world. All of which requires time and practice.

Ensuring the changes last
As well as making changes, Umbrella want to give people the skills to continue their progress and keep making gains after the support sessions have finished. Without this step, people are vulnerable to falling back into old patterns, and may need further support in future. “Top up” sessions are often important as well as sessions to plan how to maintain the new behaviours going, notice any backward steps before they become a problem, and other steps to ensure ongoing success.

People are complex
Employers may not know all of the factors that are contributing to a person’s need for support. Often there are many things going on.  Untangling and making sense of this is one of the benefits of psychological support. However, it can take time for even the most skilled psychologist.

Motivation for change may vary and need boosting
Often people attend sessions with strong motivation to take any advice and make positive changes. At other times, the person be may be feeling so overwhelmed and worn down by what’s going on that they can’t see the wood for the trees. At yet other times, a client might arrive for an initial apportionment with a completely different view on the problem than the person who referred them. Psychologists are well trained to work with motivation, hopelessness, and developing positive beliefs change. However, the less ‘ready’ an individual is to make changes, the longer the psychological process will take.

So, back to the original question – how much is the investment?
Research both locally and internationally shows an average number of sessions at around five. For some people, 3 – 6 sessions is enough to help them gain a different perspective and develop some new effective tools. Shorter periods of support are more effective where there are very specific problems, which have not been going on for too long, where the individual already has a good toolkit of coping strategies, and where they recognise change is needed and are motivated to take action.

Alternatively, where there may be multiple current challenges, with some of these problems having been present for years, or when the individual does not believe there is a problem, longer periods of support will likely be required to achieve meaningful change. In these circumstances 10 – 20 sessions are not unusual.

Is the investment cost effective?
Yes. Research in this area has demonstrated it is a worthwhile investment, with a strong ROI. A 2017 Deloitte report[1] based on an extensive review of the research, assesses the ROI for individualised psychological support with a licensed mental health practitioner as up to 5:1. Their figures indicate that you could expect a ROI of between 3:1 and 5:1 for the type of psychological support services Umbrella provides. And, as the Deloitte report notes, these estimates are conservative. It’s not hard to see how the costs can build up when we consider the impacts of absences from work, reduced productivity, impact on other colleagues, as well as potential turnover costs.

Umbrella are always happy to discuss a potential referral with you, including how they could help and to give a more specific estimate of how many sessions may be needed based on a more detailed understanding of the situation, so for more information on workplace wellness, workplace mental health and employee wellbeing please go to http://umbrella.org.nz .