How to Write a Workplace Mental Health Policy, With a Template

A workplace mental health policy is a written document that sets out how an organisation will prevent work-related psychological harm, promote wellbeing and support employees with mental health conditions. A good policy names who is responsible, explains how to get help confidentially, lists the adjustments available and commits to a regular review.

This guide gives HR leaders in Asia Pacific a step-by-step method and a section-by-section template you can adapt. It draws on the WHO guidelines on mental health at work (2022), ISO 45003 and national guidance from markets such as Singapore, Malaysia and Australia.

What is a workplace mental health policy?

A workplace mental health policy is the organisation's formal commitment on psychological health, written so that every employee can understand it. It covers three jobs: reducing risks that come from how work is designed, encouraging good mental health, and supporting people who are unwell or returning from leave.

The policy is not the same as an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) or a wellness calendar. Those are services and activities. The policy is the rulebook that explains why they exist, who can use them, how confidentiality works and what managers must do when someone discloses a concern.

In practice, most organisations either publish a standalone policy or add a mental health section to an existing occupational safety and health (OSH) policy. A standalone document tends to be easier for employees to find and for leaders to own.

Why does your organisation need a mental health policy?

The business case starts with scale. WHO and the ILO estimate that 12 billion working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety, costing the global economy nearly US$1 trillion. A written policy is the foundation for any serious response to that cost.

The regulatory case is growing across the region. Three examples show the direction of travel:

• Singapore: the Tripartite Advisory on Mental Well-being at Workplaces from MOM, NTUC and SNEF recommends that employers provide access to counselling such as an EAP, appoint workplace mental well-being champions, train managers to spot distress and set out a flexible work arrangements policy.
• Malaysia: the Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) published Guidelines on Psychosocial Risk Assessment and Management at the Workplace in 2024, under the framework of the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 (OSHA 1994).
• Australia: Safe Work Australia released a model Code of Practice on managing psychosocial hazards at work in 2022, which treats psychological risk with the same seriousness as physical risk.

There is also a trust case. Employees are more likely to ask for help early when they know in writing that a disclosure will be handled confidentially and will not affect their career unfairly.

What do the WHO guidelines on mental health at work recommend?

The WHO guidelines on mental health at work, published on 28 September 2022, give evidence-based recommendations to promote mental health, prevent mental health conditions and help people with conditions take part in and thrive at work. They group interventions into six areas:

1. Organisational interventions that address risks such as heavy workloads and negative behaviours.
2. Manager training, which WHO recommended for the first time, so managers can prevent stressful conditions and respond to distressed workers.
3. Worker training in mental health literacy and awareness.
4. Individual interventions that build skills to manage stress.
5. Return to work support for people coming back after a mental health condition.
6. Gaining employment for people living with severe mental health conditions.

A practical way to use this list is as a coverage test. Once your draft policy is written, check that it says something concrete about each of the first five areas. If it only describes counselling and webinars, it covers individual interventions and little else.

ISO 45003:2021, Psychological health and safety at work, complements the WHO guidance. It explains how to manage psychosocial risk inside an ISO 45001 management system, which is useful if your organisation already runs a certified safety system.

How do you write a workplace mental health policy? A step-by-step method

Most organisations can produce a solid first version in six to eight weeks. The steps below keep the work grounded in your own data rather than a generic document copied from elsewhere.

1. Secure a senior sponsor

Ask a member of the leadership team to own the policy and sign the foreword. Without a named sponsor, policies tend to stall at legal review or sit unread on the intranet.

2. Form a small working group

Bring together HR, OSH, legal, a line manager, an employee representative and, where possible, a mental health professional. Five to seven people is enough. Include someone from each major market if you operate across several countries.

3. Gather baseline evidence

Review absence trends, exit interview themes, grievance patterns and engagement survey comments. A short, anonymised survey on stress, anxiety and psychological safety gives you a starting point to measure against. ThoughtFull's Organisational Mental Wellness Assessment takes under seven minutes and is built on the PHQ-2, GAD-7 and the Edmondson psychological safety scale.

4. Map local requirements

List the laws and guidance that apply in each country where you employ people: OSH legislation, data protection rules, anti-discrimination guidance and any national advisories on mental health. Ask local counsel to confirm the list.

5. Draft using the template below

Write in plain language. Aim for a core policy of three to five pages, with operational detail such as referral flowcharts kept in appendices that can be updated without re-approving the whole policy.

6. Consult employees

Share the draft with employee resource groups, union representatives or a sample of staff. Ask one question above all: would you feel safe using this policy if you were struggling?

7. Approve, launch and train

Get formal sign-off, then launch with a message from the sponsor, manager briefings and a one-page summary for employees. A policy that managers have not been trained on is unlikely to change behaviour.

8. Schedule the first review

Set a review date before you publish. Annual review is a sensible default, with an earlier review after a restructure, a serious incident or a change in law.

Workplace mental health policy template: what sections should it include?

Use the following headed sections as your template. Each one can be a short paragraph or a page, depending on the size and complexity of your organisation.

Section 1: Purpose and commitment

State why the policy exists and what the organisation commits to. Example wording: "We are committed to protecting the psychological health of everyone who works for us, preventing harm caused by how work is organised, and supporting colleagues who experience mental health conditions."

Section 2: Scope

Define who is covered: permanent staff, contract workers, interns and, where relevant, family members who can access the EAP. Note the countries and entities included.

Section 3: Definitions

Define key terms such as mental health, mental health condition, psychosocial hazard and reasonable adjustment. Keep the language non-clinical and non-stigmatising.

Section 4: Roles and responsibilities

Spell out who does what. This is often the most useful section for managers, so be specific (see the roles checklist further down).

Section 5: Preventing psychosocial risk

Describe how the organisation identifies and controls hazards such as excessive workload, unclear roles, poor change management, bullying and harassment, and isolation in remote work. Reference your risk assessment process and how often it runs.

Section 6: Promoting wellbeing

List the programmes available, such as training, workshops and flexible work options, and how employees can join them.

Section 7: Getting support

Explain every route to help: line manager, HR, mental health first responders, the EAP and crisis lines. Include a clear line telling anyone in immediate danger to contact local emergency services.

Section 8: Confidentiality and data protection

Explain what information is kept, who can see it, how long it is held and the limited circumstances in which confidentiality may be broken, such as a serious risk to life.

Section 9: Reasonable adjustments and return to work

Describe how employees can request adjustments and how phased returns are planned.

Section 10: Training

Set minimum training for managers, mental health first responders and all staff.

Section 11: Monitoring and review

Name the measures you will track and the review cycle.

Section 12: Related policies and contacts

Link to anti-harassment, flexible work, leave, data protection and grievance policies, plus contact details for the policy owner.

Who is responsible for what? A roles checklist

Ambiguity about roles is one of the most common reasons policies fail. Use this checklist to confirm that your draft gives each group a clear job.

• Leadership team: approves the policy, funds it, models healthy working habits and reviews results at least once a year.
• HR: owns the policy, manages adjustment requests, coordinates return-to-work plans and reports aggregated trends.
• OSH or safety team: runs psychosocial risk assessments and tracks control measures in the risk register.
• Line managers: hold regular check-ins, notice changes in behaviour, have supportive conversations, refer to help and keep disclosures confidential.
• Mental health first responders or champions: offer a first point of contact and signpost to professional support. They do not diagnose or provide therapy.
• Employees: look after their own wellbeing where they can, treat colleagues respectfully and raise concerns early.
• External providers: deliver EAP counselling, crisis support and training to agreed standards of confidentiality and quality.

Manager capability deserves extra investment because it was singled out in the WHO recommendations. Certified programmes such as Mental Health First Responders at Work give managers and peer supporters a structured way to recognise distress and refer early.

How should the policy handle confidentiality?

Confidentiality is the section employees read most closely. If it is vague, people will not disclose, and the rest of the policy becomes theory.

Good confidentiality wording covers five points. First, health information is shared only with people who need it to provide support or adjustments, and only with the employee's consent. Second, managers record the adjustment agreed, not the diagnosis. Third, EAP use is not reported to the employer at an individual level. Fourth, data is stored securely and in line with local data protection law, such as Malaysia's Personal Data Protection Act 2010 or Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act 2012. Fifth, the policy explains the narrow exceptions, usually a serious and imminent risk to someone's safety.

When you choose an external provider, ask how it separates individual records from employer reporting. ThoughtFull, for example, holds ISO 27001 certification for information security and reports only aggregated, anonymised trends to HR through its Insights Dashboard.

What reasonable adjustments should the policy cover?

Reasonable adjustments are practical changes to work that help an employee with a mental health condition stay at work or return to it. They are usually low-cost and temporary. The policy should give examples so managers know what is possible:

• Changed start and finish times to fit treatment or medication effects.
• Temporary reduction in hours or a phased return after leave.
• Remote or hybrid working on some days.
• Clearer written priorities and shorter, more frequent check-ins.
• A quieter workspace or permission to use noise-cancelling headphones.
• Time off for therapy or medical appointments.
• Temporary reallocation of the most stressful tasks, such as client escalations.

Set out the process too: who the employee asks, how quickly a decision is made, how the adjustment is recorded and when it is reviewed. A simple written adjustment plan, agreed by the employee and manager, prevents misunderstandings later.

How often should you review the policy, and how do you measure it?

Review the policy at least once a year and after any trigger event: a restructure, a merger, a serious incident, a change in law or a sharp shift in survey results. Each review should ask whether the policy is known, used and working.

Useful measures include:

• Awareness: the percentage of employees who know how to get support, from a pulse survey.
• Capability: the share of people managers who have completed mental health training.
• Risk: changes in psychosocial risk assessment scores and actions closed in the risk register.
• Wellbeing: anonymised trends in validated measures such as the WHO-5 or GAD-7.
• Outcomes: absence patterns, return-to-work success and exit interview themes.

Report results to leadership in aggregate only. Never use any measure in a way that could identify an individual.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Copying a policy from another country without checking local law and culture.
• Focusing only on individual resilience while ignoring workload and job design.
• Promising confidentiality without explaining its limits.
• Launching without manager training.
• Writing in clinical or legal language that employees will not read.
• Forgetting multilingual teams. In APAC organisations, translating the summary and support routes into key local languages makes a real difference to uptake.

Pairing the policy with a well-run Employee Assistance Programme gives employees a confidential route to professional help from day one, which turns the support section from a promise into a service.

Next steps for HR leaders

Start with the evidence, write in plain language, give managers a clear role and protect confidentiality. If you want a baseline before you draft, or support services that match the commitments in your policy, book a demo with ThoughtFull to see how a regional provider operating across Asia Pacific can support your teams in their own languages.