As an HR professional or company doctor, you work daily on promoting sustainable employability. In doing so, we often look at physical health, working conditions or development opportunities. In this list, we should not forget an important factor: mental fitness.
Mental fitness is more than the absence of complaints. It is a basic condition for motivation, concentration, resilience and job satisfaction. More and more organisations recognise this importance, but how do you make mental fitness visible and measurable? And how can you integrate it as part of policy?
In this blog you can read how mental fitness can be used as a KPI within sustainable employability, and what role HR and company doctors can play in this.
What is mental fitness?
Mental fitness refers to the ability to deal with mental stress, to be able to continue to function under pressure and to perform meaningful work with sufficient focus, energy and emotional balance.
It is about:
- Being able to handle work stress or changes
- Concentration and clear thinking
- Positive involvement and motivation
- Emotionally stable and socially skilled functioning
Why mental fitness as a KPI?
The importance of mental health is well known, but the challenge often lies in making it concrete and measurable. Using KPIs offers a valuable tool to systematically monitor mental fitness and improve it in a targeted manner. By structurally monitoring mental fitness, you can:
- Identify risks early before absenteeism occurs.
- Implement targeted interventions where they are really needed.
- Recognize trends and patterns per team or department.
- Substantiate policy with data instead of assumptions.
It also helps to normalize mental health as part of good employment.
What can you measure?
There are various ways to make mental fitness measurable, depending on your goal, culture and systems.
Examples of measuring instruments:
- Questionnaires or self-scans
Think of short digital questionnaires about energy, stress, sleep, job satisfaction or mental strain.
Examples: WHO-5, Work Ability Index (WAI) or customized questionnaires. - Scale questions in conversations
For example: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how energetic do you currently feel in your work?” - Link HR data to mental signals
Such as frequent short-term absenteeism, turnover, use of psychological help or results from an employee satisfaction survey (MTO). - Qualitative input from consultations
What is structurally reflected in conversations? Which themes are alive in teams?
What does this mean for HR and company doctors?
For HR professionals:
- Explicitly incorporate mental fitness into employability policy.
- Make it part of the conversation cycle and development conversations.
- Offer preventive support via the Mental Helpdesk of The Mental Move.
For company doctors:
- Use consultation hours to discuss mental fitness, also preventively.
- Think along about signaling and monitoring within the organization.
- Provide input for HR policy based on recurring themes.
- Stimulate self-management and refer specifically to appropriate support, such as The Mental Move.
By making mental fitness visible and monitoring it as a KPI, you give it the place it deserves in the policy. And perhaps even more importantly: you help employees to remain resilient, healthy and enjoy their work: Today and tomorrow.
