PSA wins workplace mental health award after polling 3,000 migrant workers, contractors on what they needed to feel safe, connected

SINGAPORE: To find out what it could do to provide a psychologically safe working environment, Singapore-based port operator PSA Corporation commissioned a multilingual well-being survey to gather feedback from more than 3,000 of its employees who were migrant workers, including its suppliers and contractors. 

The survey, created together with a clinical psychologist, was crafted in the native languages of all of its employees to be both accessible and “sensitive to their cultural needs”.

Mr Cheang Chee Kit, PSA’s head of health, safety and security for Southeast Asia, told TODAY: “We wanted to prioritise the sensitivity of our people and a psychologically safe environment to share honestly, especially those who are struggling.”

The data and feedback gathered indicated that the employees wanted “community-based support”. This was why the company increased its peer support and para-counselling resources, and ran more recreational activities to allow for “real people-to-people connections”, Mr Cheang added. 

For its efforts, PSA received the Wellbeing Innovation Award on Thursday (Mar 14) at this year’s WorkWell Leaders Awards – an annual awards gala in its second edition that aims to recognise the best-practice standards in addressing systemic change for mental health at the workplace.

The awards’ judging panel, which comprised senior leaders from corporations and experts in the field of organisational well-being and mental health, assessed PSA’s initiative as the most unique programme to address employee mental health and well-being among two other shortlistees.

The judges said that PSA’s use of data to safeguard the well-being of migrant workers was the "first of its kind", and that it allowed access to support "at the right time in the right places". 

In a pre-recorded video address for the awards ceremony, Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam urged corporate leaders to "make your company a role model, a beacon of a culture of empathy, a culture that provides proactive support to those with different shades of anxiety or depression".

“Make it an enjoyable place for everyone to work,” he added.

The event, held at Conrad Singapore Orchard hotel, also saw five other awards given out to:

• The National University of Singapore (NUS), which won the Environmental, Social and Governance Wellbeing Strategy Award
• Otis International Asia Pacific, a global elevator and escalator manufacturer, which won the Healthy Workplace Culture Award
• Dr Prem Kumar Nair, group chief executive officer of integrated healthcare provider IHH Healthcare, who took the Wellbeing CEO Award
• Mr Clarence Ti, deputy president (administration) of NUS, who took the CEO's Wellbeing Partner Award
• Otis International Asia Pacific, which won the Wellbeing Organisation of the Year Award

NEW NATIONAL BENCHMARK

WorkWell Leaders, the Singapore-based charity that organised the event, announced that it would establish a new national "benchmark" for workplace mental health and well-being, to which organisations may aspire. 

This standard would be based on the results of an upcoming study assessing the impact that both individual interventions and organisation-wide initiatives can have on employee well-being and business outcomes.

Ms Anthea Ong, founder and chairperson of WorkWell Leaders, told TODAY that individual interventions to assist employees with their personal problems are important for workplace well-being, but it is equally important to have an “organisation-wide transformation of culture”.

This includes positive leader behaviours, autonomy in workload and work design, as well as instilling a sense of belonging to the company.

Ms Ong, who was a Nominated Member of Parliament from 2018 to 2020 and had been an advocate for policy changes in mental health in that time, said that the benchmark would also serve as a tool to allow boards and management to be “better informed about the kinds of strategies and investments that they need for long-term value creation”.

This new benchmark and study is expected to be completed late this year.

This article was originally published in TODAY.