Building mentally healthy workplaces: developing the SUPPORT framework for values-driven leadership & business practices

Workplace mental health and wellbeing are essential for fostering a productive, engaged, and resilient workforce. While core business values are central to the WHO Healthy Workplace Model (WHO, 2010), research on their role in workplace mental health remains limited. The SUPPORT Business Values Framework addresses this gap by identifying core values and guiding principles to support a strategic, values-driven approach to workplace wellbeing.

Using a mixed-methods design, 35 organisations from the UK and Ireland participated in employee-wide surveys assessing psychosocial safety climate (PSC; Dollard & Bakker, 2010), wellbeing, and productivity. High-PSC organisations were identified using standardised PSC-4 benchmarks (Berthelsen et al., 2020) and formed the basis for best practice case studies. Semi-structured interviews with leaders and employees (n=26) were analysed using inductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), revealing seven key values underpinning the SUPPORT Framework: Safety, Understanding, People-focused, Protect & Promote Workplace Health, Openness & approachability, Rest, balance & recovery, and Transparency & trust. The framework defines each of these values and their associated guiding principles. To refine the framework and explore its practical application, follow-up interviews with case study participants (n=6) and a focus group with business leaders (n=10) were conducted. Additionally, semi-structured interviews with an international panel of workplace health experts (n=10) provided empirical validation and implementation.

This paper presents the empirically derived SUPPORT Framework and offers reflections on fostering values-driven leadership to enhance workplace mental health through strategic application of the framework.