Managing Mental Health in the Workplace SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Managing Mental Health in the Workplace
One in four adults will suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder that impairs their social, interpersonal or occupational functioning, and as a result, mental illness has become a leading global health concern. It is further estimated that the percentage of the population with an undiagnosed mental disorder is almost equivalent to those with diagnosed disorders, and that many of mental illness also have substance abuse problems. Given that these issues are so prevalent in the working population, managing employees with ongoing or episodic mental health conditions is a job demand that most managers are likely to face. The authors examine what is required to equip managers - and ultimately, organizations - to deal with these complex situations. They provide a four-step model that begins with 'Becoming aware of a mental health issue' and ends with 'Reflecting on the experience'
Authors :: Angela Martin, Megan Woods, Sarah Dawkins
Swot Analysis of "Managing Mental Health in the Workplace" written by Angela Martin, Megan Woods, Sarah Dawkins includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Mental Disorder facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Managing Mental Health in the Workplace case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Leadership, Personnel policies, Productivity and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Managing Mental Health in the Workplace casestudy better are - – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing energy prices,
wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Managing Mental Health in the Workplace
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Managing Mental Health in the Workplace case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Mental Disorder, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Mental Disorder operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Managing Mental Health in the Workplace can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Managing Mental Health in the Workplace case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Mental Disorder
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Mental Disorder
Strengths Managing Mental Health in the Workplace | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Mental Disorder in Managing Mental Health in the Workplace Harvard Business Review case study are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Mental Disorder in the sector have low bargaining power. Managing Mental Health in the Workplace has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Mental Disorder to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Diverse revenue streams
– Mental Disorder is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Managing Mental Health in the Workplace case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Digital Transformation in Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Mental Disorder digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Mental Disorder has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Mental Disorder has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– Mental Disorder is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Mental Disorder in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management
– Mental Disorder is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Mental Disorder has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Mental Disorder to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Managing Mental Health in the Workplace Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Organizational Resilience of Mental Disorder
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Mental Disorder does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Mental Disorder has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Managing Mental Health in the Workplace HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Mental Disorder is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Mental Disorder is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Managing Mental Health in the Workplace Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Mental Disorder in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses Managing Mental Health in the Workplace | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Managing Mental Health in the Workplace are -
Need for greater diversity
– Mental Disorder has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Managing Mental Health in the Workplace has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Mental Disorder 's lucrative customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Mental Disorder needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Lack of clear differentiation of Mental Disorder products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Mental Disorder needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Managing Mental Health in the Workplace HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Mental Disorder has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Angela Martin, Megan Woods, Sarah Dawkins suggests that, Mental Disorder is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Mental Disorder has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Mental Disorder even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Managing Mental Health in the Workplace, is just above the industry average. Mental Disorder needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Managing Mental Health in the Workplace, in the dynamic environment Mental Disorder has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Mental Disorder has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Mental Disorder is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Managing Mental Health in the Workplace can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Managing Mental Health in the Workplace, it seems that the employees of Mental Disorder don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Opportunities Managing Mental Health in the Workplace | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Managing Mental Health in the Workplace are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Mental Disorder to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Mental Disorder can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Mental Disorder is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Managing Mental Health in the Workplace case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Mental Disorder has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Managing Mental Health in the Workplace - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Mental Disorder to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Mental Disorder has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Mental Disorder can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Mental Disorder has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Mental Disorder to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Managing Mental Health in the Workplace case study. Mental Disorder can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Mental Disorder can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Mental Disorder operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Mental Disorder can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Mental Disorder can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Mental Disorder can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Mental Disorder in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Buying journey improvements
– Mental Disorder can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Managing Mental Health in the Workplace suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Mental Disorder to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Threats Managing Mental Health in the Workplace External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Managing Mental Health in the Workplace are -
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Mental Disorder in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Mental Disorder is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Mental Disorder needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Mental Disorder can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Mental Disorder business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Mental Disorder can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Mental Disorder demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Mental Disorder with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Mental Disorder can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Managing Mental Health in the Workplace .
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Mental Disorder high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Increasing wage structure of Mental Disorder
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Mental Disorder.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Mental Disorder will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Managing Mental Health in the Workplace Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Managing Mental Health in the Workplace needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Managing Mental Health in the Workplace is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Managing Mental Health in the Workplace is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Managing Mental Health in the Workplace is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Mental Disorder needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
