Employees’ mental health is a vital issue when building a productive workforce in your office or forming a team from scratch to achieve your targets as a team. In this article, we will try to understand the importance of employee mental health and how to create wellness by highlighting the mental health of your co-workers and yourself.
If you are someone who runs a company, you must focus on the mental health of your employees. This is because, at the end of the day, they are the ones that have enabled the success of your firm, which cannot be possible without proper positivity in the work environment. Hence, understanding the pressure level on your employees’ mental health is a pressing matter.
Mental Health Importance
Every workspace has tons of workload and pressure every day. With strict deadlines and never-ending revisions to client calls, it can sometimes get on the nerves of those who are working non-stop. Even if the output is rewarding, achieving the targets can rather hassle some. And such pressure often leads to many mental health issues, such as depression, frustration, and even anxiety.
These issues may start small and become significant over time if ignored or not paid enough attention while it is not too late. Hence, to prevent such incidents from happening, it is of greater importance that we start focusing on our mental health and those with whom we work from the beginning.
How mental health can be affected in a work environment?
For various reasons, mental health in the work environment can impact. Thus, we have demonstrated some possible reasons to create a dent in your affirmative mental health.
- Stress issues related to work
One of the topmost fundamental points that can hamper your mental health or your employees is a high level of work stress. This may include very short deadlines and less flexibility from the people working with you or under you. Experts suggest that providing a good amount of flexibility will put less stress on your employees and enable them to be more creative.
- Traumatic events
At times, certain traumatic events may occur in the workplace, leaving a mark on your employees’ mental health. An example would be the death of an employee who was on the same team as you are leading and could impact your current employees who were familiar with that person.
- Social disadvantage
Furthermore, it is said that the work environment often has social disadvantages based on gender, race, and intellect, which can have a significant impact on your employees’ mental health. This may include harsh comments or indirect comments used by other employees or other behavioral issues and may become a serious issue over time.
- Monotony
In addition to that, another very key sign of a work environment issue can be monotony. Working for one particular job hour after hour can be boring and tiring at times. This may lead to a rather longing feeling for the employees, which may develop into a possible form of depression in the long run. Therefore, it is suggested that other incentives, such as financial or non-financial methods, be used, which can help the employees have a sense of motivation towards working and an increase in mental health wellness as they have more to look forward to.
What to do to have positive mental health at work
- Therapy
Group therapy is quite an effective method for improving mental health at work. This could include having a session with a therapist where employees can sit individually or in a group and discuss how they can support each other. Similarly, they can have their own therapist in the workplace to allow them to talk openly regarding how they feel towards other employees or the office in general. Therapists can help the employees individually through advice and have personal reports that are totally confidential to them to help keep track of the improvement.
Having group sessions with all the members can be difficult as many of them may not want to open up in front of other employees. Still, once in motion, this method is very effective for teams in general. They can work out their weaknesses and share the workload and pressure, which helps everyone.
- Exercise and take breaks
In addition, mental health exercises and physical health exercises can be one way to promote employee mental health wellness. This may involve having yoga rooms, gym areas, or even a mediation zone in the office for the employees to take a break or day off once in a while and help themselves individually to refresh their minds and bodies from too much pressure.
On the other hand, taking regular breaks is very important so that the employees aren’t mentally strained due to the workload. Break intervals can be short, such as fifteen minutes, but must be every two hours maximum, as anything above that may just put a lot of pressure.
To Conclude
While mental health issues are very serious issues in and of themselves, they can be significantly important in the work environment. Hence, understanding the core reason for its importance and implementing workplace policies that si in the mental health of your employees instead of degrading them should be the first priority. As mentioned above, we tried to list out possible solutions that can help improve the wellness of your employees. Still, it may vary from person to person.