Morneau Shepell, Canada’s largest administrator of retirement and benefits plans and the country’s largest provider of integrated absence management solutions, has identified employee engagement and leadership as the most significant challenges to workforce productivity in 2015.

Morneau Shepell’s 60-Second Survey for December was completed by 442 Canadian human resources professionals. It found that 43 per cent of respondents cited employee engagement as the major impediment to higher productivity and about one in five (22 per cent) named leadership as a significant challenge to productivity.

Nathan Gibson, manager of corporate communications with Morneau Shepell, told COHSN that the survey did not provide a specific definition of employee engagement or leadership, as those were left to the interpretation of the respondent. “The challenge that employers face is in knowing how to address these issues effectively in order to increase productivity,” added Stephen Lintrap, executive vice-president with Morneau Shepell, in a press release on Jan. 5.

According to Gibson, the survey also found that mental health was rated “significantly more often than physical health as a challenge to workplace productivity and as a priority for 2015.” In addition, the best indicator of an organization’s 2015 priority was 2014’s biggest challenge. For example, if the organization indicated that engagement was a major challenge, the majority of those respondents identified engagement as their 2015 priority. “In other words, organizational decision makers are focusing their attention on the issues that challenge them the most,” Gibson said.

Lintrap said that the key to maximizing employee engagement and productivity was to start with a solid foundation. “Ensuring that your workplace is healthy before embarking on other initiatives to drive engagement and increase productivity is essential,” he said in the release. “Otherwise, you run the risk of having employees who are highly productive for a while, but eventually burn out. This leads to job dissatisfaction, increased turnover and disability.”

He also noted the importance of mental health in the workplace, noting that almost five times as many survey respondents planned to focus on workplace mental health over physical health in 2015. “Employees aren’t going to be interested in helping the organization achieve goals if they’re too stressed or depressed to come to work,” he said.

Lintrap recommended that organizations reduce the stigma of mental illness by building awareness and educating leaders, managers and co-workers around mental health triggers and treatment. Second, they should ensure that support services, such as employee and family assistance programs that integrate with other benefit plans, are in place to help employees with personal and professional stress, as well as mental health conditions. “Once you have a healthy workplace, then you’ve created the foundation necessary for higher employee engagement and increased productivity,” he said.