b'PEOPLE| LEGAL SECTOR| 2020SUSTAINABILITY INSIGHTPSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING Challenges and Opportunities Most forecasts for the immediate future indicate that individuals, business, governments and society will experience a continued level of disruption and that the mental health issues that are emerging now may manifest and become more serious and chronic as time passes.Improved health and wellbeing are more likely in environments that are physically and psychologically safe. These feelings of safety are built from experiencing a caring and supportive workplace culture, which in turn relies on a level of connection with your workplace and colleagues which firms will need to more carefully and deliberately develop. There are dangers if firms do not bring a systematic strategic planning approach to programs in such a significantly changed environment including:allocation of resources to ineffective wellbeing programscomplacency from responsible managers who mistakenly believe the issues are being effectively managedaffected staff members sensing that the firms concern is superficial, token or maybe even cynicalpoor mental health outcomesopportunity cost from missing higher impact changes.The COVID challenge is for workplaces is maintain the positive parts of their culture developed in pre COVID era in a time where few of the characteristics of their operations or relationships remain unaffected. There is no proven one-size approach to understanding and effectively responding to the mental health pressures caused by COVID. Improving wellbeing in this environment needs innovative processes, high levels of commitment and some willingness to take measured risks to think and do things differently. All change in organisational culture should be driven from the top through accountability, advocacy and modelling changed behaviours. Effective leadership in this area requires a significant commitment to research and listen, in order to develop a well-grounded approach that staff will find credible. Leaders cannot sustain this position of credibility without investing in a deeper understanding of the true nature of the problem and its causes, and confronting the challenges required to improve the problem. It is an old management adage that what gets measured gets managed. Systematic research and information gathering about the firms mental health is needed, particularly when face to face interactions are more fragmented.It can be difficult to measure an organisations mental health status and to assess the effectiveness and benefits of changes over the longer term.Some relevant metrics of psychological wellbeing that firms should consider involve the collection and expert analysis of sick leave, annual leave, absenteeism, complaints and grievances, incidents and injury records. These are steps in recognising and developing an understanding of the issues. Over time, improvements in understanding develops the firms capacity to identify changes in risk areas and allows them to prioritise, evaluate program impacts and to provide early warning of emerging issues or trends.34'