The focus of the Griffith research was not on whether mental health is important or what employers, should be doing. It was on what employers have been doing and why they started. Also what factors they felt facilitated their action on mental health and what factors acted as barriers to doing more.

We pursued this line of inquiry because:

Our members have been quite keen to learn more about what others are doing and what employers’ experiences have been when tackling mental health of their workforce.

Secondly, the Productivity Commission identified this as a research gap in consultations we participated in with them in the lead up to their first report last year. They indicated they could find academic papers on what should be happening but not much evidence of what is actually happening in Australian workplaces and why. Griffiths’s review of the literature merely confirmed this.

We selected Griffith business school because the uni has done good work on WHS previously and the business school allowed a focus on the organisational response to mental health, which for the reasons outlined above was the focus of the piece.

Being members of SWA, we are well aware of their work and its focus.