Employers mental health

What exactly is one truly incomparable thing regarding the top Employer's Mental Health Programs Approaches organisations that ensures they overshadow the crowd?

Global rates of depression and anxiety have increased 15 percent to 20 percent during the last decade. Even in some mundane jobs, you can often focus on how your role helps others, for example, or provides a much-needed product or service. Focus on aspects of the job that you do enjoy, even if it’s just chatting with your coworkers at lunch. Changing your attitude towards your job can help you regain a sense of purpose and control. Long-term strategy development and the implementation of and adherence to a mental health policy can help ensure ongoing, consistent support of staff well-being. This can include training a group of volunteers in the workplace to become well-being champions, which gives them the opportunity to contribute to their workplace culture and be part of a meaningful shift in how colleagues support one another. Unless you’ve been living on the set of Mad Men for the past decade, you know that workplace wellness has become a hot topic, and you’ve gained at least a cursory familiarity with some of the major factors that make a workplace a healthy place to be. When excessive admiration (from employees) meets excessive control (from the company), the result can be a cult-like environment in which employees are afraid to speak up. To promote mental well-being at work, employees should encourage employers to offer stress management education and mental health programs that meet their needs and interests. Employees should also understand policies around how to take a mental health break from work in case the need arises.

One-in-four people will experience a mental health problem in any year. A common misconception is that mental health problems are only caused by ‘home’ issues, so some employers can feel that it’s not appropriate, or their responsibility, to intervene and provide support to employees. Senior leaders are understandably under increased pressure to cut costs and optimise return on investment, and may not immediately uderstand the business impact of poor mental health. Be prepared to make the business case and have figures to back this up – come prepared with figures on staff turnover and morale, and bring relevant feedback from exit interviews. Unplanned absence is one of the most common early warning signs of mental ill health. Employees with mental health conditions may have increased rates of unplanned absence. Seek to understand the reasons for the unplanned absence, such as ability to attend, motivation to attend and barriers to attend work. This will help you to work with the employee to support and improve attendance. In recent decades the increasingly global nature of our economies, and the advances in workplace technology, mean that the nature of work is changing rapidly. This affects the content, organisation and intensity of people‘s work, which increasingly requires more skills and competences in terms of innovation, communication and social intelligence. An opinion on workplace wellbeing support is undoubtebly to be had in every workplace in the country.

Minimal Staff Turnover

Mental wellbeing is one of the most valuable business assets. Workplaces that prioritise mental health have better engagement, reduced absenteeism and higher productivity, while people have improved wellbeing, greater morale and higher job satisfaction. Employees with different mental illnesses can benefit from varying treatment approaches. For example, there is evidence that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can successfully treat people with depression. It can also be a cost-effective option. Individuals with mental health problems are amongst the most excluded people when it comes to employment - and it is argued that this leads to further social exclusion which precipitates and exacerbates mental ill-health. Employers are constantly seeking ways to maximise the productivity of their employees, and the enlightened ones understand that the way to do this is not to pile on the pressure, but to engage them and support them to work more effectively. Expect that the situation, your team’s needs, and your own needs will continue to change. Check in regularly — particularly at transition points. You can help problem-solve any issues that come up only if you know what’s happening. Those conversations will also give you an opportunity to reiterate norms and practices that support mental health. Thinking about concepts such as employers duty of care mental health is really helpful in a workplace environment.

Not everyone who experiences mental ill health will exhibit obvious signs. So, it is important for a manager to regularly ask team members 'how they are doing' and create an environment where staff feel able to be open and honest about how they are feeling. To empower employees to improve their health and wellness at work, there needs to be a shift in the way that wellbeing solutions are provided. That means changing how your organization approaches employee wellbeing on every level. Rather than thinking about wellbeing as a beneficial add-on, it’s time to place it front and centre in everything your organization does. The earlier a manager becomes aware that a team member is experiencing mental ill health, the sooner steps can be taken to prevent it becoming more serious and provide support to help them during this period. Line managers who know their staff and regularly hold catch-ups or supervision meetings to monitor work and well-being are well placed to spot any signs of stress or poor mental health at an early stage. Often the key is a change in typical behaviour. A healthy workplace environment will not prevent or reduce all mental health problems. These will still come from life experience and past trauma all play a role in developing mental health problems. But employers can have steps in place to help employees build mental strength so that they can stay as healthy as possible. Don't forget to send out proper internal communications around managing employees with mental health issues in your organisation.

Take Action At An Early Stage

Just over three quarters (78%) of people with a mental health condition require some support during the first six months in work. This falls to 35% after 12 months and 18% after 24 months. Some people will require time unlimited support to sustain work. External triggers may have an effect on an employee’s mental health and well-being, such as experiencing discrimination and/or stigma, social disadvantage, poverty or debt. To create healthy workplaces, we must encourage people to come forward and share their experiences. When employees feel that sharing about mental illnesses won’t damage their career, they will feel comfortable to share the challenges they face with you. Moreover, once they get the support from their leaders, they might also encourage their peers to come forward with the challenges they are facing and seek help. The organisations that are leading the way in understanding, identifying and supporting the need for good mental health in the workplace are investing in developing their managers. MHFA training is one way to educate managers and teams to spot the first signs of mental ill health and give them the knowledge and confidence to help colleagues in distress. Experiences of mental health are so different from person to person, but it affects us all and it’s impacted by many different aspects of our lives, including work. So how can workplaces help? Subjects such as Wellbeing for HR can be tackled by getting the appropriate support in place.

Organisations should encourage staff to talk to their manager if they think they are becoming unwell. Creating a working environment that proactively supports staff who become unwell will make it easier for staff to tell their manager if they are experiencing stress. In an interview for the Washington Post, Stephanie Preston, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan who specializes in empathy, altruism and the way emotions affect behavior, hit the nail on the head when she highlighted some of the extrinsic reasons people may jump on the toxic positivity train at work: “It’s an attractive behavior in people that makes them seem more well adapted and more popular with their peers, so there are a lot of reasons people want to seem or be positive.” With the rise of remote work and the erosion of work-life boundaries, employees need to disconnect. At the preemptive stage, a focus on the organizational culture is essential to promote self-care values and healthy work-life boundaries. Leaders can proactively address these issues in a number of ways. As well as having a huge impact on individual employees, poor mental health has severe repercussions for employers – including increased staff turnover, sickness absence due to debilitating depression, burnout and exhaustion, decreased motivation and lost productivity. Mental illness can have a big impact on the way we work. With one in five Canadians affected by a mental illness, the economic impact in Canada is estimated at $51 billion and mental health claims rank in the top three of long-term disability claims. Statistics like these prove there’s a real need to foster mental health in your workplace, both for your business and the personal well-being of your employees. Even though it may not be easy to become an employee-centric company addressing workplace wellbeing ideas it is of utmost importance in this day and age.

Modify Policies And Practices

Government policy has increasingly called out the responsibility of employers to safeguard the mental health of their employees, but firm incentives have not, as yet, been implemented. A manager who believes a team member may be experiencing mental ill health should take the lead and arrange a meeting as soon as possible to talk to the team member in private. The conversation should be approached in a positive and supportive way. Some questions that employers can ask about their mental health approach include: Does your organisation offer formal wellbeing support? Does your organisation provide stress management training to line managers? Does your organisation provide stress coaching to individuals? One can unearth more information regarding Employer's Mental Health Programs Approaches at this World Health Organisation article.

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