How to Support and Improve Mental Health in the Workplace?

Having awareness of your team’s mental health state is crucial for a successful and productive working environment. Doing so helps you identify potential challenges proactively and provide needed support when it is needed.

Prioritizing mental health well-being makes employees feel valued and understood, in return this can help the team become more engaged, collaborative and improve performance.

Why do people get stressed at work?

People get stressed at work not just because of the job itself but could also be for many different reasons.  Knowing the most common causes of workplace stress is the first step in building a healthier and more supportive work environment. Here is a list of some of the most common ones.

There’s too much work.

It’s hard to handle three jobs at once. When the workload gets too heavy and deadlines are always unreasonable, even the brightest employee can crash out.

They don’t get recognized. 

When work is not recognized, employees may feel unappreciated. When a person feels like their hard work doesn’t matter, they have a tendency to leave. Giving even simple recognition can go a long way in keeping people from quitting.

The workplace environment is toxic. 

A workplace with a toxic atmosphere kills everyone’s morale. If there are rumors of any drama or favoritism, put an end to it immediately.

Work-life balance is hard to achieve. 

If your team is expected to always be available, reply to messages/emails beyond 6 pm, they’re going to slowly hate their jobs.

Not knowing if your job is safe. 

When everybody’s constantly worried about getting laid off, it’s hard to focus on your job. Always share what is going on to create a sense of job safety within the workplace. When leaders are transparent about how things are going, it takes away a lot of that daily stress so that people can actually do their work. .

There’s no opportunity for growth. 

When someone feels totally stuck in their role, they have a tendency to quiet quit. People don’t see the point in working harder and stop putting any extra effort and just do the bare minimum. If there is no opportunity for promotion, people will lose their motivation.

5 simple ways to support your team’s mental health

Supporting your team’s mental health doesn’t always mean big changes in the workplace. Sometimes a little goes a long way and small but meaningful actions from you (leaders and managers) can make a big difference in how employees feel at work.  Here are five simple ways to foster a healthier, more supportive workplace for your team.

Provide training to your leaders on how to determine when someone has been impacted by a high level of stress.

It is essential that leaders receive training in mental health so they understand that individuals can experience various types of stress, emotional distress, and exhaustion, regardless of whether or not they share those feelings.

Therefore, training your leaders to recognize the early signs of stress by looking at changes in employee behaviour, productivity, involvement, and communication is of utmost importance. Mental health training provides your leaders with the tools they need to develop an empathetic approach to having difficult conversations and how to avoid being uncomfortable when talking to their direct reports.

If they can learn to do the above, they will be able to intervene and help their employees before they develop more severe issues

Provide a better health insurance and benefits

If you haven’t yet, consider reviewing your employee benefits. Also consider adding mental health therapies and counselling to the package.

Giving your employees access to these resources, will not only help them manage stress levels and maintain a positive well-being, but also improve employee satisfaction and retention to the company.

Regularly check in with your team

Make it a regular practice to check in with your team consistently throughout the week. It may take the form of simple, informal conversation. These types of habits can also provide valuable insights about the employee’s current workload or the challenges that have occurred over the past week.

A casual, friendly greeting of “hey, how’s it going?”, for example, is often a little less formal than simply having a scheduled meeting. You might be amazed at how many times you can have a conversation with someone over this method.

Another option for doing regular check-ins with your employees could be to provide them with an anonymous suggestion box/survey – a safe and secure method to share feedback or appeal without worry about judgement.

Organize regular sessions or talks to discuss mental health 

A key way to support employee wellbeing is by organizing regular mental health workshops, talks or awareness events which will assist in helping your employees improve the way they cope with stress and other common mental health issues.

Having qualified speakers and/or mental health professionals come into the organization can encourage staff to have open conversation with their colleagues.

A significant part of this is ensuring that employees feel comfortable discussing the issues that impact their health or cause them stress; either as a result of their work or their home life.

Encourage employees to take a break from work.

Let them know it will help rejuvenate their energy. Give them the option of using their vacation days if they are stressed out or have burnout. Lead by example by not contacting employees when they are out of the office.

This will make employees feel like they can take a break without feeling guilty about it or letting someone down. By practicing healthy boundaries, leaders set a positive experience for employees to return to work ready to perform at top levels.

Wrap Up 

Your organization is able to improve mental health without having an overly complicated model. By fairly compensating employees for their work, treating them with respect, acknowledging their contributions, and providing a working environment that encourages the right to have their voice heard will improve employee well being.

When employees feel appreciated and supported at work, they will be more engaged, enthusiastic, and provide increased productivity for your company; this will aid not only their mental health, but also the overall physical health of the organization.

Therefore, if you invest in and care about your team members, you will help them become better equipped to help you achieve success.

Also read: How ‘Employee Retention’ helps every businesses and companies?