Mental health support is essential, especially in the workplace. When you make mental health support a priority, you support your employees in feeling happy, healthy, and motivated to do their best work. Continue reading for ways to support your employee’s mental health at work.
How Mental Health Struggles Can Affect Work Performance
Mental health disorders can impact energy and concentration. They can also affect a person's ability to effectively interact with others. When someone is experiencing depression, anxiety, or another mental health condition, they may struggle to engage with their work and responsibilities, perform their assigned tasks, maintain productivity or effectively communicate with co-workers.
Mental health conditions can affect employee performance in various ways. These are a few examples:
- Anxiety: An employee who experiences anxiety may struggle to multitask or focus on projects because they feel overwhelmed with anxious thoughts.
- Depression: When an employee experiences depression, they may struggle to maintain productivity because of low motivation.
- Paranoia or low self-esteem: Paranoia or low self-esteem can make it difficult for an employee to receive constructive feedback. This can affect their confidence and ability to learn from mistakes, which may hinder productivity levels. It may also affect an employee's ability to meet deadlines or try new ideas
Benefits of Supporting Employee Well-Being
Your workforce is responsible for a significant amount of your business's success and you are in their care for the majority of their day throughout the week, so it's important to support their collective mental well-being. When you take care of your employees' mental health, you benefit the individuals who work for you and your business.
Working to support and improve employee mental health and well-being has the following benefits:
- Higher productivity: Treating employees' mental health conditions can increase your workforce's productivity. Approximately 86% of employees who experience depression feel that their work performance improves when they receive treatment.
- Increased presenteeism: Addressing mental health conditions and supporting employee mental health can improve your workforce's motivation. This will also increase their willingness to show up for work more often than employees who feel burnt out or overwhelmed.
- Improved retention rates: Employees are more likely to stay with a company that cares for their well-being. Many companies often lose employees because of mental health challenges or an overly-stressful work environment.
- Lower health care costs: Mental health conditions can increase the chances of employees developing physical conditions such as cardiovascular disease. Caring for employees' mental health can prevent physical conditions and reduce health care costs.
5 Ways to Support Your People and Their Mental Health
Your employees work hard for you and do their best work when they feel their best, so it's important to support both their physical and mental health. If you're wondering how to support employee mental health, you'll be happy to learn that there are many ways to do so.
You can support your employees and their mental health in the following ways:
1. Include Mental Health Coverage in Your Health Care Plan
Healthcare plans often benefit employees by covering the costs of doctor visits, medications, and medical treatments. However, you can improve your employees' health coverage by adding mental health coverage to your health insurance plans. This means your workforce would have coverage for mental health services like therapy or counseling.
You can also implement an employee assistance program (EAP) into your employment package. An EAP is a service that helps employees overcome non-work-related challenges such as stress or financial struggles. Some EAPs offer mental health services such as counseling.
2. Model Healthy Behaviors and a Healthy Work-Life Balance
You can motivate your employees to prioritize self care and mental well-being by prioritizing it yourself. Model healthy behaviors to inspire your workforce and show them how to maintain positive habits.
Take a break to walk each day, and share what you're doing with your employees. You can even invite employees to join you now and then. You can also create office challenges centered around self-care — maybe you could reward employees who take one mental health day a month.
When you model healthy habits, your employees will feel inspired and understand that it's acceptable for them to do the same.
3. Check-In on Your Team Regularly
People can easily hide mental health struggles by pretending they feel fine and continuing their normal routines. This is why it's important to check on your employees regularly.
Many people may feel reluctant to share their mental health challenges with others because they feel embarrassed or like their struggles aren't important. However, people are more likely to share what they're going through when a concerned individual genuinely wants to know how they're doing.
Ask your employees what type of support they'd find helpful and take time to listen to their answers. When you regularly check on your employees' mental health and want to help, they'll feel more comfortable sharing their struggles with you. This will allow you to offer the right helpful resources when necessary.
4. Promote Inclusivity and Team-Building
Build a positive and welcoming work environment by prioritizing inclusivity and team building. When employees form healthy relationships and work positively with each other, they're more likely to feel a sense of belonging at work. Aim to promote justice and equality so that all employees know they're respected and valued.
Mental health challenges can make it difficult for employees to interact with others and communicate effectively, but team-building activities can help employees improve communication skills and feel more comfortable collaborating with others.
5. Invest in Training
Invest in training for your company's leaders and your workforce. Use training resources to learn about mental health conditions so that you and other leaders within your company can identify potential mental health struggles and proactively address them with understanding and support.
Mental health training can also help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health conditions. This will help employees feel more comfortable speaking up when they need support and help each person in your workforce be more understanding and supportive of each other.
You can also invest in training for your employees to help them manage their mental health and develop healthy habits and positive coping techniques. Employees can use these resources to take a mental break and relax during the day, or they can utilize some fitness training and reduce stress with exercise.
Providing your employees with effective tools can help them manage their mental health and learn how to reduce stress.
Provide Your Workforce With Bundle's Processional Well-Being Resources
Bundle's skill development solutions incorporate professional wellbeing strategies into all offerings. These live and interactive sessions provide employees with a safe space to recharge, develop their skills, practice mindfulness and other self-care techniques.
Connect with a Bundle Human to learn how we can help you and your workforce prioritize mental health.
