THE largest companies in the world have a “moral and an economic imperative” to look after the mental well-being of their employees, CCLA Investment Management have said.

CCLA, which manages responsible investments for charities, religious organisations (including the Church of England), and the public sector, launched its Corporate Mental Health Benchmark — Global 100 on World Mental Health Day, on Monday. The benchmark will be used on behalf of investors to assess how the 100 largest publicly listed companies in the world are managing mental health in the workplace — and to hold chief executives to account on employee well-being targets.

A benchmark for the 100 largest UK companies was launched by CCLA in May.

Initial findings from the world benchmark suggest a disconnect between corporate recognition of workplace mental health as an important business issue (found in 90 companies) and formalised public commitments and disclosure (found in 49 companies), CCLA reports. Just 19 of these companies had assigned day-to-day operational responsibility for implementing their mental-health policies.

Most companies (82) had a “clear position” on the relationship between good mental health and fair pay and financial well-being, but just 28 had published a formal policy on this. CCLA also found that leadership on these issues was lacking at chief-executive level.

The Stewardship Lead for CCLA, Amy Browne, said: “There is clear evidence to show that improving the mental health of an organisation saves money and that the financial ramifications of failing to improve corporate mental health are profound.”

She cited a study by Deloitte which found that mental ill-health in the workplace cost employers an average of $1900 per private-sector employee annually. “If we consider that the 100 companies in the CCLA Corporate Mental Health Benchmark Global 100 employ almost 19 million people worldwide, between them, that translates to $36 billion lost, each year, to mental ill-health,” she said.

“There may be no shortage of mental health initiatives in the international workplace, but when it comes to integrating mental health into formal management systems and processes, most global companies have much further to go.”

Promoting and investing in the mental health of employees was both a “moral and an economic imperative”, which would also build a “more productive, more resilient, and more profitable” workforce, she said.