May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Hope Recovery and Healing shares 7 factors affecting employee mental health and what employers can do about it.
Maybe you’ve been noticing some co-workers acting differently, or maybe even you haven’t felt like yourself in awhile. As an employer, it may be useful to know the potential impact to work productivity from untreated mental health issues–even more helpful, some ideas of what you can do to help boost or preserve employee wellbeing.
What’s the impact?
After scouring dozens of scholarly articles, we compiled a list of the top 7 reasons for employee turnover–around the world. As you read the list, it might be surprising how many can be directly impacted by or tied to mental health.
- Stress
- Relationship problems with superiors
- Work-family conflict/imbalance
- Relationship problems with colleagues
- Performance pressure
- Lack of recognition or promotion opportunities
- Bureaucratic constraints
Global data suggest 30-50% of work-related illness is tied to mental health problems. Employers may feel the effects through increased absenteeism, decreased productivity and profits, increase in costs to deal with issues, and an adverse effect on employee morale (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
What can we do?
Employee mental health programs can improve morale and save companies significant amounts of money. Elements of workplace mental health programs may vary, but here are a few suggestions any employer can implement:
- Ensure employees have opportunities for regular one-on-ones with their managers to talk about any problems they’re having
- Arrange for mental health awareness training
- Praise employees and recognize their character rather just than their output or productivity
- Post guides on how to cope with stress or anxiety in the workplace
- Have mental health ‘mentors’ staff can talk to before issues become severe
- Offer yoga or breathing practices on-site or via zoom specific days of the week
- Connect employees to free support resources, such as NAMI (www.namiut.org) and SAMHSA (www.samhsa.gov), both of which have free support groups & meetings.
- Offer a counseling benefit or EAP; Hope Recovery and Healing (www.hoperecoveryandhealing.com) partners with employers to offer education, support groups, and individual and group therapy (including intensive outpatient treatment) at a discounted rate.
As an employer and a member of the community, your personal awareness and understanding of mental health issues makes a difference.
Article provided by Hope Recovery and Healing.
