Reaching 1.7 million on World Mental Health Day

The Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health (GBC) is one of the first global business-led initiatives of its kind designed to advocate for – and accelerate – positive change for mental health in the workplace.

Now, more than ever, poor mental health is on the rise. Young people in particular are struggling, with a staggering 48% of Gen Z and 44% of Millennials reporting that they feel stressed most or all of the time. This not only impacts the communities in which we live, but the places that we work. These rising numbers, coupled with the costs associated with lost productivity, highlight the need for urgent action by business leaders.

Despite important progress in some countries, there remains a lack of evidence, best practice, and tools, to effectively implement global approaches to workplace mental health. This challenge is exacerbated by the cultural complexities and stigma associated with mental health across the world.

Together with academic experts, multilateral institutions, and not-for-profit organisations, GBC wants to create a world where all workplace leaders recognise, have the right tools, and commit to take tangible and evidence-based action on mental health and wellbeing in the workplace, enabling their workplace to thrive.

This initiative seeks to advance progress across the globe by committing senior leaders to a Pledge to create mentally healthy workplaces in every territory they work in, as well as by sharing insights and best practice across workplaces to accelerate positive action on workplace mental health, wherever an organisation is on their journey.

GBC approached Empower to run their World Mental Health Day Campaign.

The theme of World Mental Health Day (WMHD) was ‘Make mental health and wellbeing for all a global priority’. GBC wanted to use this as an opportunity to encourage leaders around the world to play their part and sign the Leadership Pledge, making the mental health of all their employees globally a priority for their business.

On WMHD, they hosted an event ‘How can we make #MentalHealth a global priority for business?’ where senior business leaders spoke about the importance of taking positive action on workplace mental health.

Their key objectives were:

• Drive event registrations and attendees
• Increase signatories of the Leadership Pledge, and
• Continue brand awareness of The Global Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health

This campaign proposed a unique challenge, and opportunity for us to engage and work with a variety of stakeholders external to the client team.

We identified the following three core stakeholder groups:

• Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health (GBC)
• Organisational Partners of GBC, such as MindForward Alliance and City Mental Health Alliance
• Founding Partners of GBC

These groups informed our approach to the campaign, and we tailored touchpoints of our social media strategy to each, bearing in mind their proximity to the campaign, their organisational objectives, and the levels of support and guidance they required.

With all of this in mind, Empower put together a 360, full service strategy which consisted of an integrated digital comms strategy for LinkedIn and Twitter, paid social media, content creation, email marketing, community management, and partner engagement.

In practice, this included preparing three different iterations of social media packs bespoke to each stakeholder. The packs included platform differentiated copy and accompanying visual assets, along with a suggested content posting calendar. In these packs, we captured the nuance of each stakeholder’s positioning in relation to GBC’s World Mental Health Day Campaign.

The Empower team’s flexible and friendly approach meant that, on the client’s request, we were able to integrate ourselves into the team and take the lead on stakeholder engagement with confidence. We led on a series of Working Group Calls with these stakeholder groups to deliver the social packs and impart best practice social media know-how.

In total, we ran four Working Group Calls, two with Organisational Partners, and two with Founding Partners, to ensure a thorough, coordinated rollout of the digital activations. We also attended regular weekly calls directly with the client to align on campaign progress.

To tee-up the campaign, we prepared a performance report, in which we analysed  actual performance vs KPIs, Twitter and LinkedIn results, and paid media performance. We also delivered insights and recommendations throughout to help inform future campaigns.