How and why was SuperFriend started?

SuperFriend was established in mid-2007 by the industry superannuation funds through the industry funds forum. The collective of the CEOs were talking about the prevalence and the cost, as well as all the lives lost, to suicide and all the mental health issues and they decided that they can collectively reach out to employees in workplaces to do something, and Super Friend came out of that.

How is the group funded?

The foundation currently has 17 industry fund partners and seven group insurers. We’re funded by the group insurers based on the relationship of the group premium paid by the fund, and SuperFriend gets a percentage of that from the group insurers, which is not charged back by the fund, so the member is not paying for that.

This is really a contribution by the insurers - we’re on a three-year agreement with our insurers and we’ve got seven of Australia’s largest group insurers committing to their support of SuperFriend and mental health sufferers in Australia.

Why is this an issue funds should be concerned with?

The reason mental health is such an issue is it’s so prevalent; we have one in five Australians every year who experience mental health issues and it’s quite debilitating for a lot of people.

It can take them out of work, sometimes never to return and in the worst case scenario suicide is obviously a massive concern for our society. We lose more people to suicide than we do to the national road toll in this country.

For any employer who employs any male under the age of 44 or any female under the age of 34, if they’re going to lose a staff member’s life, the number one cause is suicide. It’s a really significant issue and it’s something that’s not particularly talked about and there’s a lot of science that goes into whether we should talk about it or not talk about it.

But it’s really important from SuperFriend’s perspective that if we have an opportunity to work with our funds and their employers and their members, to promote mental health to hopefully prevent mental health issues in the first instance and certainly to prevent suicide. SuperFriend was established as a health promotion charity and we work across the whole spectrum - so everything from suicide prevention all the way through to positive psychology and flourishing and really engaging in life.

Typically, people who are flourishing are far more productive and they take less sick days, so for employers they are also the ideal employee.

What services does SuperFriend provide?

The programs that we run are varied. We undertake research; it’s a very collaborative model. SuperFriend is not as direct as service providers, so we don’t actually have psychologists on the team, for example. We work in partnership with specific providers within the mental health sector, such as Sane Australia and Lifeline Australia.

We’re working to develop targeted initiatives for workplace mental health that will benefit the fund member. 

We have seven modules that have been specifically tailored to the roles of staff across this [super fund and insurance] sector - so claims staff, fund administrator staff, contact centre staff, we’ve got modules there for financial planners, relationship managers etc.

These training modules are about nudging up people’s capacity to make a difference in people’s lives. Part of their role is to help facilitate that within their own workforce, but the other part of the role is to work with them to influence their clients and their employers. So we’re working very closely with the funds, for example.

We’ve just finished an exciting phase over the last two years in piloting a range of brand new never-done-before unique workplace programs and they’ve been piloted around the country, accessed via the relationship we’ve developed with the fund and that which the fund has with an employer.

What role do the insurers play?

Part of it is around educating them and promoting better health and well-being across the industry funds sector, including the insurers.

Obviously insurers deal with the claims when a member actually does get to claim, so we’re doing a lot of work with the insurers around improving the experience of the members. We’ve got a project we’ve been working on to develop better practice guidelines and recommendations for the insurers to adopt some members who are currently experiencing mental illness or are at risk of developing mental illness as a secondary impact of being on claim or being out of work.

A lot of the insurers are investing already in this space. There’s some tremendous work that they’re doing to make a difference to members.

It’s about helping the insurer get a better system and a better service out there for members. Our relationship with insurers is absolutely critical - obviously our funding comes 100 per cent from the relationship that we have with the insurers, but it’s far more about how we can get people back to work and supporting that through education across the insurers as well.

So it’s a bit like a triangulated relationship: We might work with one of the insurers and they might have three funds that are their fund clients and we’ll work with them in somewhat of a triangulated way individually and also as a collective, so some of the initiatives we do are very much whole-of-industry or whole-of-partner initiatives.