Improving workplace mental health

The theme of World Mental Health Day 2024 is "Mental Health at Work". In this article, we will look at some practical strategies that can help organisations improve workplace mental health.

Choose to embrace wellbeing

The first step is to get management on board with any plan to improve wellbeing.

Many managers see this as the opposite of a business's needs. Strategies may ask for workloads to be reduced, additional time to be made for training and more money to be spent on inclusive policies and environments. This sounds like it affects profit margins and so can be unpopular.

But poor workplace mental health affects profit, too. Biron, Burke, & Cooper (2014) found that work-related health issues and the associated productivity loss cost us around 4-5% of GDP.

Improving wellbeing reduces absenteeism, reduces turnover, makes employees more productive and allows you to recruit a wider range of diverse talent. All of that is good for profit, as well as employee wellbeing.

Have a mental health strategy

Once management is on board it is time to make improvements. This is best done in a planned, evidence-based way.

This involves educating managers on what strategies are proven to work, carefully selecting which ones to implement, and measuring their impact using validated measures of workplace wellbeing, such as the Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS).

Create a participative culture

How do you know what could be improved?

A great way is to ask your employees and involve them in the decision-making. Shop floor workers often have an excellent understanding of the issues they face day-to-day. After all, they are the ones living it!

Best of all, seeking the opinions of your employees and including them in the decision-making is in itself a proven way to improve wellbeing. People love being valued and included.

Allowing employees to make decisions increases the level of control they feel. The most stressful jobs are those that have high demands and low levels of control. Lower demands and higher levels of control decrease levels of stress.

Be willing to adapt

There is a huge range of talent out there. To fully utilise it, we need to be flexible and create environments where people can thrive.

For example, many neurodiverse individuals are incredibly creative but may struggle if they are forced to work in busy noisy open-plan offices. If we want to tap into that creativity, we need to be willing to be flexible around creating quieter environments or using hybrid working.

Another example is working parents. They can bring a huge range of experience and wisdom to an organisation. But only if we are willing to offer some flexibility around working hours and school collection times.

Having a one-size-fits-all approach means that it is not going to fit many people and we will miss out on this diversity of talent.

Build an empathic organisation

Jobs are often stressful but nothing compounds this more than a manager, or management team, that does not listen and does not show empathy for their subordinate's concerns.

Employees face many workplace challenges including high workloads, tight deadlines, managing work-life balance, interpersonal conflicts and job insecurity just to name a few. Having a manager they can talk to and feel supported is crucial.

This involves training managers in empathy, emotional intelligence, cultural competencies and specific issues such as LGBTQ+ and neurodiversity. All of these skills can be taught with the correct training and provide employees with the support they need.

Conclusion

There is a huge range of things we can do to improve workplace mental health, which is good for employees and good for an organisation's profits, too. If you would like to learn more about workplace wellbeing, you may want to take our Occupational Psychology course.