There is no point having nice corporate initiatives if there is no strategy behind them, according to the CCLA's stewardship lead.
Amy Browne, who joined CCLA Investment Management three weeks before lockdown in 2020, said it was becoming clear that stakeholders and shareholders alike were pushing for definitive action on mental health in investee companies.
Moreover, they were starting to see through the jazzy initiatives that companies launch from time to time, and demanding to see quantifiable, strategic change.
Browne, who started life as an international model before retraining as a portfolio manager at Sarasin in 2010, said she was keen to hold companies to account over making positive, structural changes to improve mental wellbeing.
Ahead of the next CCLA Corporate Mental Health Benchmark for the UK, which is expected in June this year, and the global one, which will be published in October, she said it was clear companies needed to do more to focus on mental wellbeing among staff.
Browne pointed to a 2020 article in scientific journal The Lancet, which suggested there is an estimated 12bn working days lost globally each year to depression and anxiety alone.
This comes at an annual cost of $1trn in lost productivity. The figures for the UK are similarly stark.
Deloitte's 2022 mental health report suggested UK employers in the private sector lose £43bn-£46bn each year to poor workplace mental health.
"Mental health has become a material concern for investors", she said.
After leaving Sarasin, she worked for Gam, before becoming a charities portfolio manager for Cazenove Capital Management.
"I joined CCLA in February 2020, had three nice weeks in the office - and then came lockdown.
"During this initial time, I spoke with 10 or 11 companies in-depth about how they support the mental health of employees, and when lockdown happened I was tasked with writing a letter to the CEO of every FTSE 100 company about what they were doing to protect the health of their employees during the pandemic."
She "chased and chased" and eventually got 74 responses. "Some were generic - 'Thank you for the letter, we will share it with the relevant teams'.
"But some were inspirational - CEOs who had lived experience or had given up their bonuses to help employees with mental ill health."
Strategy is key
However as time went by, CCLA became concerned that positive initiatives, while good in themselves, were not achieving as much as having clear, long-term plans in place.
"There are initiatives such as 'wellbeing hours' or sending gift packages to staff, but little strategy behind the initiatives.
"And if I can steal a line from someone else - an initiative without a strategy is like shooting into space. You don't know where the problem lies, or where the target is. You can’t keep up with the changing needs of your employees over time."
