Sustainable Approaches To Workplace Mental Health
While much of the news around the pandemic has focused on vaccines and physical health, the impact on our mental lives has been equally important to consider. Many companies still believe that taking action on workplace mental health means allocating extra budget solely towards HR. However in order to generate real and sustainable change, a more holistic approach is required.
Instead, workplace mental health best practices should be integrated into all elements of a company’s operating model, including its organisational culture. Doing so means bringing together workplace mental health research, deep organisational design and change expertise, and a value-first perspective. Taking such action can significantly bolster employee mental health and job satisfaction and has been shown to return full circle by being equally good for business.
Workplace Design
This domain involves addressing core risk factors, such as high levels of role stress or a lack of support or flexibility. Positive action can take many forms. Co-working spaces are one example of an effective approach to the social isolation of working from home, given the interest-based community that they provide.
Organisational Resilience
Organisational resilience comes in many forms. Programmes focused on psychological safety and broad-based mental health awareness have proved to be effective, especially when paired with leader training. Leaders publicly shared their commitment to supporting and improving mental health, often through storytelling.
Effective examples used a range of communication channels, with storytelling paired with tips, details of available resources, and activities. Some adopted a storytelling and check-in cascade, in which leaders shared stories with their direct team members and so on throughout the organisation.
Individual Resilience
Using a range of approaches, CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) aims to change an individual’s specific misconceptions and maladaptive assumptions and to teach new skills for handling stressful situations. This may include resilience training, whereby workbooks are distributed containing a range of resilience challenges.
Mindfulness programmes are also showing some level of success. One organisation started an opt-in programme for employees to regularly share their experiences and participate in evidence-based positive psychology activities.
Help-Seeking
Early help-seeking is more likely in organisations that have a strong awareness of the signs of mental ill-health, appropriate services available, and a culture that encourages asking for help. During the pandemic, some organisations created a multichannel communications series focused on the experiences of working parents, including detailing typical challenges to increase awareness, as well as providing advice and details on support resources.
Many organisations strive to keep the work and the home separate when it comes to mental health, drawing a distinction between what they influence at work and what employees bring with them. Through the pandemic, the line between home and work became more blurred.
With challenges continuing through the pandemic, sustainably improving workplace mental health has never been more important. The good news is that recent research shows how and where action can be taken. Workplaces across all industries can take this knowledge and act now to shine a light on the critical topic of workplace mental health, helping people to thrive outside of the shadows.
References:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sustainable-approaches-workplace-mental-health-x-why/