Measurement for smaller businesses or teams

Measuring makes sense for healthy businesses

You need good data about your business or team to make good decisions. Measuring how mentally healthy your workplace or team is does not need to be hard. Good measures can help you:

• figure out what is and is not working to make your workplace more mentally healthy
• solve specific problems about your work, interactions or the workplace
• comply with work health and safety obligations
• improve your business practices and meet goals
• help you improve the mental health of you and your people.

Measurement does not have to be hard

Unlike many larger organisations, small businesses or teams generally do not require complex measurement systems to get the information they need.

The key is to look at measurement as part of a continual improvement approach.

Identify your goals

Knowing what areas to focus on helps you identify what data you need. These questions can help you identify your focus areas:

• Are we meeting our legal obligations to identify and manage risks to our workers’ mental health?
• Are our workers made aware of, and protected from psychosocial hazards?
• Do people feel safe to speak up when they are experiencing mental ill-health or distress?
• Do we adequately support our workers with mental health needs?
• Are our workers satisfied with their work environment and feel supported?
• Do we reward positive behaviours at work? 

If you do not know where to start, consider the ‘Protect’ pillar and associated legislated work health and safety obligations.

Create a data plan

A data plan can help identify and address data gaps by highlighting:

• where you need to source data from
• when and how often you need to collect it
• how much data you need to collect
• whether the data you already have can answer your questions
• how and when you will provide feedback on results and next steps.  

Use your existing data sources as much as possible

Data can be numbers and measures or descriptions, explanations and observations. Gathering data from your day-to-day operations can be an easy and efficient way to better understand what is happening in your workplace.

You probably already collect most of the data you need:

• records about your people (e.g. time off, resignations, workers compensation claims)
• work records and diaries (e.g. hours worked, tasks and duties)
• workplace interactions (e.g. between workers or with customers or clients)
• financial data (e.g. cost of injury and lost time, cost of resources for mental health).

However, you may also need to collect data from people to understand more about how the workplace is tracking. You can collect this data via:

• team meetings – e.g. good if you have an issue that affects all people and you want different opinions
• one-on-one chats – e.g. good if the issue is sensitive or private, or affects only a few people
• surveys – e.g. good if people want to respond privately or you want to track the same thing over time
• wellbeing self-checks – e.g. good when people prefer privacy or want more information on their own wellbeing.

Where you can, use information and data from day-to-day activities (e.g. time sheets, work diaries), rather than run separate data collection activities.   

Interpret your data

Interpreting your data helps you review your actions and plan new actions. These questions can help you uncover the story behind the data:

• How has your performance changed, compared with expectations, past results, benchmarks or rules of thumb?
• What does the data tell you about an issue or question?
• Are there other explanations for a result?
• Are you missing any data?
• Are any of the results conflicting?

And remember, if this is the first time you are asking people to open up about things they think are issues or areas for improvement, it may look like new problems are emerging. However, these issues could have been there for a long time and people are only just feeling comfortable to raise their concerns.

Tips for success

1. Keep good records – It makes it easier to look at trends over time. But remember, record keeping needs to be confidential and secure.
2. Share your plan with your team – This builds trust and encourages people to participate, which makes it more likely you will collect good information.
3. Consider how you can use surveys – Free online survey toolkits can be useful because they provide all the questions and come with detailed instructions. But, there are some factors to consider:
   • Many are designed for larger businesses, so may not be appropriate or may involve too much work.
   • Surveys may not be anonymous if you have only a small number of people in the team or business. You may need to explain that it may be difficult to keep results anonymous.
   • Some surveys may not be tested for accuracy, reliability or validity.
4. Remember measurement can change behaviour – People often change their behaviour when they know they are being observed or they have an incentive to achieve a specified goal.
5. Watch out for unintended consequences – Sometimes, goals can create the opposite outcomes. For example, rewarding reductions in conflict can increase stress if people start ignoring each other instead.
6. Beware of some common pitfalls – Learn more about common measurement pitfalls here.