Managers, supervisors and team leaders play a key role in the mental health and wellbeing of employees. Research has demonstrated a strong positive association between higher levels of manager support and lower levels of psychological distress in employees. But managers often report uncertainty of how to best support their staff. This has prompted the development and evaluation of manager mental health training designed to promote managers confidence and skills in how to a) best respond to and support employees who are unwell for mental health reasons, and b) implement strategies to remove or minimise psychosocial hazards present in the environment. Evaluations of manager mental health training among frontline workers conducted in Australia by the Workplace Mental Health Research Team at Black Dog Institute, UNSW has demonstrated the value of training managers through skills-based learning in how to initiate and have conversations with staff about their mental health, and how providing managers with tools and strategies to address mental health matters in the workplace can benefit staff. This presentation will discuss the evidence supporting this workplace intervention to help foster staff wellbeing and the key requirements organisations must consider when implementing such training. It will also discuss how the evidence generated by this research has had impact at scale both nationally and internationally.

Presentation Key Learnings:
1. Research has demonstrated the key role leaders have in the mental health and wellbeing of their staff

2. Manager behaviour is modifiable and with the correct intervention can help foster staff wellbeing

3. Evidence-based mental health training that upskills manager with recommended workplace strategies can enhance managers confidence and increase their application of recommended managerial behaviours to support worker mental health.