Understanding how a business can best support its employees’ mental health has evolved drastically in the past decades. Mental health is a growing workplace concern, with the related indirect impact to businesses estimated at £62.5 billion lost to poor productivity and absent employees. Fortunately, many leaders at every rung of the corporate ladder are learning how to create safe, open environments and help employees perform at their best. Many misconceptions about mental health still exist, but as those stigmas begin to fall away, companies are taking advantage of the benefits of supporting holistic employee health. When employees are healthy and engaged, they are more likely to be satisfied and productive at work. By making employee mental health a priority, managers create a supportive environment where people are able to bring their best selves to work. A strong culture and mental health focus also helps decrease employee turnover. This increase in retention saves money in onboarding costs and also adds the benefits of maintaining customer relationships and preserving institutional knowledge so corporate and industry experience is not lost because employees are unhappy with their current jobs. These are essential areas of concern for leadership teams looking to build a strong company culture, improve retention and increase revenue. Here are five ways managers can support mental health and create a safe and transparent culture: 1. Talk About Mental Health Tearing down stigmas is arguably the most important thing any manager can do to promote mental health. Leaders often encourage physical health with their teams, broadly letting people know it’s okay to take care of illnesses and needs as they arise, and they should not be afraid to do the same with mental health. 2. Offer Employee Benefits That Cover Mental Health Services As more companies become attuned to the needs and benefits of employee mental health, more benefit plans are including mental health services as an option for their employees. Managers should promote and discuss these with their team members. 3. Create Opportunities for Employees to De-stress There is a persistent belief that time away from their desk or a work task is time wasted. Studies have found the opposite to be true: relaxing, re-centring and returning to tasks improves productivity. 4. Create a Safe and Welcoming Work Environment Expectations of results are part of any job, but few things will relieve day-to-day stress in employees more than knowing it is okay for them to fail. Managers who welcome the opportunity to help employees learn from failures will encourage people to be open about areas where they feel uncertain, rather than pretending they can do everything. 5. Be an Example of Good Mental Health Leaders often fall into the trap of encouraging one behaviour and modelling something different. This is rarely more obvious than with stress relief and mental health. If a manager doesn’t take advantage of well-being benefits and recreational opportunities, then their teams will not feel empowered to do so, either. If you want further information about how managers can support their staff, or details of our training programmes please contact us on [email protected].
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Peer support is an effective way in which employees can manage their wellbeing and mental health in the workplace. By ‘peer support’ we mean employee’s offering support to one another in a mutual space in the workplace. Peer support enables employees to talk to others who have a shared experience. We can apply our peer support model to workplaces to meet individual organisational (and employee) support needs; our sessions are facilitated by our trained experts with lived experience of mental health. Benefits of our peer support model in the workplace include:
What we offer We have over 15 years’ experience in developing and delivering peer support and are recognised as leaders in this field. We offer a range of training and support to help organisations develop and sustain peer support which include.
If you want further information about implementing a peer support program into your organisation please contact us on [email protected]. In a fast changing and fast-paced global workplace, where maintaining competitive advantage is paramount to success, identifying ways of sustaining employee well-being is of increasing importance to a range of stakeholders, both within the context of work and beyond. Within the workplace, well-being is important not only to individual employees in terms of maintaining their own good health, but also to managers and organisations as there is evidence to suggest that poor well-being at work can have adverse effects on performance and overall productivity. Given the existing evidence linking employee well-being to key organisational outcomes such as performance and productivity, identifying ways to enhance employee well-being is, arguably, a core function of contemporary human resource professionals. Managing change effectively Managing the process of change is critical to the success of any change programme. Well planned change which is communicated effectively and carefully considers the impact on employees, will ensure that organisational effectiveness is maintained as far as possible. Rushed, unplanned change can seriously damage the effectiveness of a department, its activities and reputation. How change is managed can also have a critical impact on the wellbeing of employees. Health and wellbeing at work is strongly linked to having a degree of control over the job and how it is done. Giving employees a voice in how change is managed can help to maintain their sense of wellbeing. Badly managed change can cause long-lasting resentment and ill feeling that can lead to a breakdown of trust which damages employment relations and morale. To manage change effectively it is also important to:
If you would like advice and support on managing organisational change and the affects on staff wellbeing please contact us today at [email protected]. This is an area we have a lot of experience in and can offer you a number of in-house training programmes to ensure the process goes smoothly. Taking a whole organisation approach to embedding wellbeing into an organisational culture is key to achieving maximum impact. Wellbeing should be positioned as a strategic boardroom issue supporting flourishing people, flourishing business and flourishing communities. Every organisation has an opportunity to support and develop a healthy workforce and it doesn’t need to be complicated – our training programmes will help you to understand and act, step by step. They address topics often shied away from in the workplace and can provide the first step for an employer to encourage an open, healthy and supportive workplace.
If you want further information about any of our training programmes please contact us on [email protected]. |
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