Respected former Australian politician and the chairman of mental health organization Beyondblue, Jeff Kennett, has floated a radical plan for business CEOs to tie their salary or bonuses to the overall mental well-being of their workers.
Kennett, former premier of Victoria and respected Liberal Party member, will on Monday discuss the plan with the Business Council of Australia (BCA), which has asked the Beyondblue chairman to explore how Australian business leaders can help foster mentally healthy workplaces.
He told News Corp on Monday that linking CEO wages or bonuses to the mental health of their employees would not only raise morale, but also productivity.
"What I would like to see in every head of department of a bureaucracy, in every CEO's performance and every direct report's KPIs, is a KPI about the mental health - the well-being of their workforce," Kennett said on Monday.
"When you talk about pay performance, when you talk about bonuses, I want to see a KPI in place that addresses this, because that will focus their mind more than anything else.
"If some of these people think this is all sort of rubbish and over the top, well, tie their bonus to it, tie their salary to it. Let them understand that this is a major contributor to the effectiveness of their administration."
Kennett said businesses should survey their employees annually to track well-being, while he encouraged senior executives to submit annual health assessments to psychologists.
Meanwhile BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott said it was a proposal they would look into, as poor morale and mental health can not only affect employees, but also a business' "bottom line".
"We need to take these things very seriously because these things at a kind of bottom line result in unplanned absenteeism, they cost businesses money," Westacott told News Corp said.
"They're not just feel-good things. These are real economic things. That's why the Business Council is interested and passionate about this."