Most workplaces already pay for poor mental health at work. The payment shows up in ways leaders rarely label as “mental health.” A project drifts. Quality slips. Conflict spreads. A strong performer goes quiet, then exits. Those moments look like management problems. Yet mental health often sits underneath the surface, shaping attention, energy, and trust.
That tension ran through Opening Minds’ webinar on the ROI of workplace mental health. The main message stayed blunt: ROI starts long before a spreadsheet shows “savings.” Leaders who chase a single metric too early miss the real drivers of cost, risk, and performance.
Your finance team wants a number.
Your team wants proof.
You want a decision you can defend six months from now.
The webinar grounded the conversation with Canada-wide context many executives recognize: hundreds of thousands of people miss work each week due to poor mental health, and mental health issues make up a major share of disability claims. Those are not niche problems. Those are operational realities.
Here’s where leaders get stuck.
Absenteeism, turnover, and disability claims feel measurable, so those metrics become the scoreboard. Yet those metrics lag. They tell you what already happened. They do not tell you what started the slide.
A more useful ROI conversation starts with “leading indicators.” Not fluffy vibes. Observable work signals.
Think about a team where deadlines start slipping by a day, then two. Meetings run longer. People stop disagreeing in the room and start venting after. Managers spend more time chasing updates than coaching work. Nobody files a claim on day one. Still, productivity drops. Customer experience drops. Risk rises.
Those patterns usually show up before your “big three” metrics move.
That timing matters for ROI. If you measure too late, you only see damage. If you measure too early, you label the work “ineffective” and stop before results arrive.
So what should leaders track first?
Start with conditions. The webinar emphasized a simple logic: recognition comes before measurement. If your managers lack a shared language for early signs of distress, the workplace stays reactive. People wait until trouble turns into absence, resignation, or a crisis event.
A shared language changes the game. People name issues earlier. Managers respond faster. Teams stop guessing what to do.
This aligns with global guidance. The World Health Organization’s guidelines on mental health at work highlight organization-level actions and manager training as key levers, not add-ons.
Evidence also supports financial outcomes in the right settings. For example, a JAMA Network Open study reported positive financial ROI tied to a workplace mental health program, alongside strong clinical outcomes.
ROI still matters. Leaders still need numbers. The webinar’s point was about sequence.
Conditions first. Outcomes later.
If you want a practical way to start, use two tracks at once.
Track one: pick a small set of outcome metrics you already trust. For many workplaces, that list includes absenteeism rate, turnover rate, disability claims volume, safety incidents, error rates, or customer escalations. Keep the list short. Three metrics beats ten.
Track two: add one or two “work experience” signals that move faster. Examples include manager confidence responding to distress, team comfort raising concerns early, clarity of role expectations, workload predictability, and meeting load.
This second track answers a hard question: are you building a workplace where people speak up before problems explode?
Move from measurement to action.
Opening Minds offers three training pathways that map cleanly to common workplace needs.
Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) builds practical skills to support someone facing a decline in mental well-being or a mental health or substance use crisis, until professional help becomes available.
The Working Mind focuses on how people think, feel, and act about mental health at work, with a strong emphasis on day-to-day conversations and stigma reduction.
Psychological Health and Safety (PHS) targets systems. Work design. Leadership practices. The environment people work inside, not only the people inside the environment.
A simple rule helps with selection.
- If your workplace sees frequent “in the moment” support needs, start with MHFA.
- If your workplace struggles with silence, stigma, or poor conversations, start with The Working Mind.
- If your workplace needs structural change across policies, roles, and leadership practices, start with PHS.
Now the part leaders skip: pick one operational pain point and tie training to that pain.
Not “improve wellness.”
Something concrete: Reduce preventable rework in a high-pressure team.
Shorten time-to-resolution for conflict between two departments.
Lower error rates during peak season.
Raise manager confidence in early intervention.
Once you pick the pain point, you get a clearer ROI story. Leaders stop arguing about abstract benefits. Teams start solving a real problem with a defined baseline.