The development and evaluation of an online mental health training program for managers

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Our research team has recently been awarded an Australian Mental Health Award by Beyondblue and the Movember Foundation that will fund a program of research aimed at developing and evaluating a range of new e-health interventions for men. The study aims to evaluate a comprehensive online training program for managers in male-dominated industries to determine its effectiveness in modifying manager's behaviour, improving mental health literacy, reducing stigma and enhancing managers’ confidence in discussing mental health matters with their staff. Managers have a key role in the well-being of their staff. They often become involved when a staff member is having difficulties and should always have a role once someone is away on sickness absence. However, managers often report feeling unsure what to do when a staff member is ill, particularly if they are suffering from a mental illness. These problems are amplified in male-dominated industries, where there is culture that makes discussing emotions difficult or impossible. Together with our collaborators, we have recently developed two new types of face-to-face manager training for male-dominate industries; one focused on how depression may present in a male dominated workforce and helps managers develop the skills and confidence to have conversations about emotions with their staff, while the other focuses more on primary prevention via teaching managers how they can modify work-based mental health risk factors, such a job demands, job control and perceived support and promote the positive aspects of work. We propose that a combination of these two approaches would provide a comprehensive manager mental health training that would simultaneously address mental health literacy, stigma reduction and promote primary, secondary and tertiary prevention approaches to mental health in the workplace. This comprehensive online training program for managers will be delivered via a mobile responsive website and has 3 topics each with a set of 10-minute modules to work through. Completion of the program can occur in one go or spread out over a few days or a few weeks. This freedom and flexibility has been incorporated in the design so learning pace is matched to individual styles. Evaluation will be conducted through a randomised controlled trial within industry partner organisations. Waitlist control participants will be offered the training 6 months from the commencement of the study once follow up data is collected from the intervention group.