Also Read
By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. Cookie Policy.
Mental Health Problems At Workplace: Here's What Office Can Do To Help Their Employees
In these difficult times, it is vital that businesses address the issue of mental health head-on, developing a sophisticated mental wellness strategy to fulfil the duty of care responsibilities and help employees with their mental health resilience. Beyond the obvious positives implementing these strategies would have for employees, businesses have a direct interest in investing in creating a mental wellness program; according to data from International SOS' recent Risk Outlook 2022, 1 in 3 risk professionals believe that mental health issues will contribute significantly to declining productivity levels this year. A business that supports employees appropriately will therefore likely be in a better, more productive place than one that does not.
TheHealthSite.com reached out to Dr Samir Dwivedi, Medical Director, India, International SOS, to understand some of the key strategies that businesses should look to implement to promote resilience, helping their employees deal with any potential mental health issues. Check them out here:
This may appear an obvious first move to implement regarding maintaining a robust mental wellness strategy, but it is nonetheless an essential one. It is important for businesses to treat every employee as an individual; different people will be responding to the stress brought on by the pandemic in different ways and it will potentially cause a range of mental health issues for many employees. The first step towards recognising these comes with actively checking in with employees in a one-to-one situation, as this can allow businesses to form a greater understanding of how they're coping through this particularly difficult period. This can also be done by carrying out Mental Health or Resilience Surveys with tools that have scientifically been validated and can uncover individual pain points.
Strategies which look to engage with employees and directly ask them about how they're doing should be accompanied by more subtle routes for people to gain help. Often people may feel intimidated to discuss their mental health with the colleagues and managers they work with on a day-to-day basis, as they may have anxiety about the way they're perceived. To counter this issue, it is important that employees are able to discuss their mental health issues with people within a business away from their direct teams, preferably an HR manager or someone with mental wellness training. Removing the stigma of discussing mental health issues is an important part of creating a culture of health within an organisation. Getting leaders to walk the talk is key.
To be at our most productive, it is important to take regular breaks within the workday. One useful, and easy to implement, the technique is the Pomodoro Technique. This involves using a timer (the 'Pomodoro' original or another timer), to break down work into intervals, separated by short breaks. The steps of the technique are: Decide on the task to be done and set a timer, usually to 25 minutes, and work on the task. When the timer rings, put a checkmark on a piece of paper and take a break. If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a short break of three to five minutes and then reset the timer. After four checkmarks, take a longer break of 15 30 minutes. Then start the technique again, resetting your checkmark count to zero. This has been proven to help improve concentration and avoid procrastination, as well as provide a sense of achievement as tasks are completed.
People are bombarded in their daily, technology-filled, lives with more and more information and it is hard to get away from it. Some of the information about the Coronavirus is poor quality and factually inaccurate feeding feelings of mass hysteria and paranoia. Both a lack of information and poor quality information has been shown to increase irrational thinking. Checking in with employees on a personal level to make sure they are receiving information from legitimate sources is an important task for employers. It can help employees form an understanding of the situation in the world which counters many of the negative conspiratorial narratives we've seen come about as a result of the pandemic.
Ultimately businesses need to be focused on creating the conditions in which individual employee is able to take responsibility for their mental well-being, finding the particular strategies which work for them. This links fundamentally to the workplace culture businesses cultivate; a culture which promotes self-care and provides the tools for this can be invaluable for employees. If people feel like they have the option of going for a lunchtime walk to a local park, getting some much-needed fresh air and exercise, then they are far more likely to do so but the decision to go ahead with this still rests with them. With many employees working from home encouraging personal responsibility regarding mental wellness becomes an even more important task, as organisations in the current set-up simply have a lot less direct oversight of employees.