How Supporting Employee Mental Health Can Increase Productivity
An untreated mental illness and work-related stress negatively affects an employee’s job performance while also weakening their engagement and connection with co-workers. In some cases, these effects can extenuate to an employee’s physical health.
Let’s dive into some insights on how to create a company culture that promotes mental health and is proactive about optimizing employee well-being.
Mental health has a deep impact on employee productivity and well-being; however, if employees aren’t open about their struggles, it can be difficult for employers to show support and intervene when necessary. There are many ways to increase awareness, empathy and open communication about mental health in the workplace. This might mean:
Rolling out training modules, lunch and learns and webinars on simple ways to reduce stress and support mental health.
Resources and tools to help employees assess their mental health and identify next steps if needed.
Providing resources to support nutrition, exercise and other lifestyle considerations that reduce stress and support mental and physical well-being.
Regularly assessing employee workload.
Paying attention to signs like changes in an employee’s personality or decline in their work quality and addressing them proactively, from a nonconfrontational perspective.
Ensure employee benefits and health insurance consider mental health counseling in their scope.
Anonymous tip reporting: allowing employees to report information if they’re concerned about another employee and know that the information will be routed to the appropriate manager to help.
Tactical Strategies for Creating a Stigma-free Environment
All the training and resources in the world won’t be useful for an organization’s culture that holds a stigma about mental health. The good news: Having communication structures in place, available social support, the ability to run programs and policies from a central team and the ability to collect data that can be used to track progress, can help.
Consider these tactical strategies to begin creating a stigma-free work environment:
Start at the top: Train leadership to speak openly about the importance of mental health and to lead by example by encouraging the use of resources.
Host seminars, distribute materials and make resources visible and available to remove barriers to access.
Create dedicated spaces for promoting stress relief and relaxation and encourage employees to use them.
Train managers to recognize the warning signs of a mental illness and to offer helpful resources to employees.
Give employees a voice in making decisions that may impact their mental health or workload.
Encourage peer-to-peer sharing to normalize mental health topics.
Provide free wellness consultations and an employee assistance program (EAP) that extends access to employees’ family members as well.
Create anonymous tip reporting to identify areas of the company’s culture that are negatively impacting employees’ mental health.
Train leadership to speak openly about mental health and to lead by example by encouraging the use of resources.
References:
https://trainingindustry.com/articles/compliance/how-supporting-employee-mental-health-can-increase-productivity/