Addressing Mental Health Challenges: H.O.P.E.’s Encore Performance

Encore Electric is a Denver, Colorado-based industrial electrical contractor with over 1,200 employees at sites across several states in the West. When Cathy Emerson, Encore’s benefits manager, noticed a trending increase in Encore employees requesting mental health help during the pandemic, she began to rethink the resilience strategies the company already had in place.

“I’d been noticing and wondering what to do about the increase in mental health issues and requests for help,” Emerson says. “I'm sure with COVID, everybody had noticed this, but we were seeing it even though employees were still working from home. We knew we really needed to act on it.”

discovering the ‘perfect fit’

Soon after, Emerson attended the Workplace Wellbeing Summit sponsored by the Colorado Office of Suicide Prevention. “That’s when we learned our organization was a perfect fit for H.O.P.E.,” Emerson says.

As we saw in a previous blog post, H.O.P.E. (Helping Our People Elevate through tough times), is implemented over a 12-month culture-changing period with quarterly training and ongoing coaching on how to implement the nine evidence-based best practices developed from research literature and lived experience that form the National Guidelines for Workplace Suicide Prevention

Similar to how LEED Certification promotes environmental health in organizations, H.O.P.E. Certification provides a path to psychological health and safety in the workplace. It begins with leadership buy-in and then gets at the root of whatever is eroding workplace resilience.

Because the program is customized according to the participating organization’s strengths and weaknesses, it addresses the root causes of mental health challenges within that specific workforce in that specific workplace and builds upon what is already beneficial. In addition, there is third-party verification of completion and external verification to ensure guidelines are met.

One key reason Encore was poised to succeed with H.O.P.E. was that Emerson had already helped roll out to all Encore employees the VitalCog in Construction training program for workplace suicide prevention. VitalCog in Construction was a training I originally conceptualized in 2007 with Dr. Rick Ginsberg (then called “Working Minds) and subsequently transferred ownership to the University of Colorado’s Johnson Depression Center in 2017. In 2022, the generic workplace program was modified to address the specific needs of the construction workforce through a grant from the LendLease Foundation. The aim is to empower workplaces to proactively address emerging suicidal despair. 

Depression among workers in the U.S. is estimated to cause 200 million lost workdays each year at a cost to employers of between $17 and $44 billion. In 2023, VitalCog in Construction underwent a social return on investment study and found that for every dollar invested, $8.70 would be returned to society.

demand for H.O.P.E. at Encore

“Participating in the H.O.P.E. certification process amplified our workplace resilience efforts in ways we hadn't anticipated,” Emerson says. “We hadn’t expected such a high demand for peer support, for example.”

Emerson says that monthly peer support meetings held online have been well-attended, with a high level of engagement from attendees. The meetings are organized around specific wellness topics and are promoted in the company newsletter sent to all employees. Topics such as PTSD and stress management are popular, according to Emerson. The meetings were an idea generated in the H.O.P.E. certification process.

“We're a construction company with employees spread across Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado, so these meetings have become a valuable outlet for employees, providing not only support but also connection,” says Emerson. “We've seen continued interest, with new participants joining each month.”

This point was driven home when one month due to her travel schedule, Emerson was unable to facilitate the regularly scheduled meeting. “I was out on the road, visiting every job site to deliver mental health resources, including financial and physical wellness services, and also our EAP services, so I couldn’t hold the meeting. But, we received feedback from employees indicating how much they value these sessions, and that they were not happy there hadn’t been a meeting.”

no downside to H.O.P.E.

Emerson says these virtual peer group discussions have helped foster candid conversations that otherwise were unlikely to happen, and have strengthened relationships and enhanced job satisfaction. “We haven't seen any downside to these initiatives. Instead, we've seen employees feeling valued, knowing their employer genuinely cares about their well-being, and we're committed to providing the necessary support,” Emerson says.

Another result of the peer support meetings at Encore is an uptick in the utilization of the EAP program, with employees taking advantage of the 12 free counseling sessions per person, per issue, the company provides. Emerson notes that Encore leadership is pleased with this trend, seeing it as a return on the investment in their employees' mental health and overall productivity.

Best of all, according to Emerson, Encore’s retention rate has also increased. “This indicates that our workplace resilience efforts are working in our favor,” says Emerson.

By becoming H.O.P.E. certified, Encore Electric has not only improved the well-being of its employees but also strengthened its workplace culture. By being responsive to employee feedback and making adjustments when necessary, the company was able to outpace the industry in terms of retention and employee satisfaction.