Need To Focus On Mental Health And Wellness At Work For Corporate Well-Being
As the world moves further into year two of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies around the world have focused on their employees' physical wellbeing. Most of the companies have implemented distributed-workforce models, instituted safety protocols, and offered resources and advice to keep employees and their loved ones safe.
Remote work struggles, isolation, lack of social connection, fear of COVID-19 infection and loss of loved ones have been the greatest stressors of mental health issues among employees.
In this fast moving competitive world, supporting mental health in the workplace is no longer a nice-to-have but a necessity. But before we dive into workplace suggestions to combat these factors, let’s explore the exact meaning of mental wellness.
What is Mental health and why it is important in the workplace?
Mental health refers to a state of “well-being” requires to deal with work-related stressors, and productivity issues to reach full potential. It isn’t just about the absence of a psychological problem or mental illness. Any individual can have a mental wellness issue without having a clinical illness.
Mental health is critically important in the workplace to help workers cope with setbacks, and challenges both at home and work. It is often said that having a positive mental state gives workers the ability to identify, and regulate their emotions. Also, it enables them to empathize with co-workers and improve social as well as cognitive skills.
Improved engagement in workplace
People who are physically fit, tend to be healthier. The same applies to mental health. People who are exposed to chronic stress in their daily work have a significantly higher chance of developing depression or anxiety. When companies invest in the mental wellness of their employees, it makes them mentally resilient to all kinds of stress. This may lead to improve decision making, thinking, relationships at work and workflow.
Build an environment of listening
A great way to help employees reduce work-related stress is to build a culture of listening in the organisation. Listening minimizes distractions and allows people to reflect on their emotions, resulting in better mental wellness.
Introduce mental health assessment tools
Mental wellness assessment tools such as questionnaires can help employers to identify mental health concerns. Companies can explore issues as well as wellness solutions that can benefit employees’ mental health. These tools can include;
1. Mental wellness meter quiz
2. Work-life balance quiz
3. Assessing your mental state questionnaire
4. Mood analysis checklist
5. Online mental wellness check-up
Introduce team building activities to improve mental health
A strong bond between employee and employer plays an important role to improve the mental wellness. To encourage this, the employers must provide team-based projects or make employees participate in various team-building activities to strengthen teamwork and collaboration.
Offer rewards and incentives
Many employees feel overworked, disconnected, and unsatisfied with the rewards their company offers them and may leads to increasing stress and depression.
Offering competitive salaries, performance bonuses, and non-cash incentives are very important if you want to keep your employees happy, engaged, and stress-free. It also works as a motivator, keeps the spirits of an employee high, and positively impacts their mental health.
Early prevention and treatment
With the help of employee mental wellness programs, corporates can help in the early detection, prevention and treatment of mental health disorders among employees. Early intervention is the process of offering specialist intervention and support to employees experiencing or demonstrating early symptoms of mental illness at the workplace.
Early prevention steps can also be taken to ensure that mental health disorders among employees are taken care of in the initial stages. By promoting increasing awareness, providing early interventions, fostering healthy lifestyles and providing effective stress management and mental health programs, employers can respond early to the warning signs of mental wellness.
Final thoughts
A happy workforce is what keeps an organisation on track to success. To improve the mental health of your employees, you need to put effort, acknowledge and appreciate them. In simple words, the more your employees are mentally strong, the higher the pace of your business success will be.
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