SG Govt Launches iWorkHealth To Help Employers Find Causes of Stress at Work
Updated: Aug 20, 2021
Credit: Freepik Company S.L.
Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has a new way for companies to take care of their employees’ mental health at work.
MOM has recently launched iWorkHealth, an online tool to help organisations and their participating employees to identify what causes them stress during work. It will also help implement appropriate interventions to encourage mental well-being and build mental resilience among an organisation’s employees.
iWorkHealth was developed by the Workplace Safety and Health Council in partnership with the Workplace Safety and Health Institute, Institute of Mental Health, Changi General Hospital and Singapore’s Health Promotion Board. It is the first locally validated tool to identify workplace stressors as other similar tools were developed based on western populations.
Credit: WSH Institute
An organisation will need a CorpPass account to set up an iWorkHealth account. Afterwards, the organisation will need to send a link to a 20-minute survey to its employees and have them answer it. The survey is required to be completed in one sitting and it can only be done online. English is currently the only language supported by iWorkHealth’s survey.
The survey involved doesn’t need a participating employee’s name or identification number to protect their privacy, nor can it be modified to remove or include questions. After all employees have answered the survey, they will receive a personalised report at their email address within the same day. The organisation will receive the overall report on the next working day after either the survey’s closing date or when a company administrator closes the survey.
Companies can either develop their own intervention for workplace stressors or contact workplace health providers for assistance.
An iWorkHealth flowchart for before and after employees accomplish the survey Credit: WSH Institute
According to iWorkHealth’s FAQ page, iWorkHealth is free for all employers and that organisations need a minimum of eight employee respondents to use it to generate the overall report for their organisation. Should the survey have fewer than eight respondents in an organisation or a category, the overall data will not be sent and suppressed instead.
The responses that employers will receive will not contain any identifiers that could help them point out a specific employee. Employers will also be unable to view an individual employee’s response and will only receive an anonymised overall report of the key workplace stressors and the overall state of wellbeing of their employees.
iWorkHealth had a soft-launch on 7 October 2019, during the Ninth Together Against Stigma Global Conference.
Written by John Paul Joaquin