One in five Australians has recently taken time off work because of stress, anxiety, or depression. The pressures, expectations, and deadlines of a workplace take a toll on mental health but like any other muscle, you can also strengthen the brain with effort.
Employers can promote mental fitness in the workplace by taking proactive action, both for people’s well-being and their business.
Mental fitness helps people handle the stress and uncertainties of work, including situations such as the pandemic. Burnout and exhaustion make handling tasks and responsibilities difficult. Employees procrastinate, take more time, and make increasing cognitive failures due to difficulty concentrating and making rational judgments.
This lowered productivity translates into absenteeism, high healthcare costs, and decreased enthusiasm among everyone else. It also places a higher burden on other team members to pick up the slack, escalating interpersonal conflicts, poor performance, and general dissatisfaction. Moreover, burnout decreases the likelihood of any innovation, wasting employee potential.
All these factors collectively reduce the business revenue by a significant amount.
Employers can do a lot to establish an environment that inculcates mental fitness, minimising burnout.
Any unnecessary stress can be avoided by ensuring clear workflow, sound decisions, and collaborative culture. Effective leaders lead from the front and if there are any issues, they promote interaction and support among employees.
Employees must also have clarity about their role, purpose, and contributions to the company because burnout is less about overwork and more about not knowing why you do what you do. Author Simon Sinek explored the idea of ‘knowing your why’, and hence you should inform everyone of the reasoning behind your decisions.
Whitespace is time to step away and mentally declutter before approaching work again with a fresh mindset. Non-stop meetings, a calendar full of deadlines, and interruptions can hamper productivity and innovation, which is why something as simple as a coffee break, a stroll, space between meetings, or a brief power nap can work wonders.
This flexibility gives employees time to brainstorm new ideas, reflect on themselves, and build mental fitness in the workplace.
Creating a culture that makes work everything is disastrous for mental fitness in the workplace. This includes praising employees who arrive early or work late, expecting answers to emails at home, and frowning upon vacations. You must emphasize the need to unplug from work through vacations, availing of paid time off, spending time with loved ones, and finding new hobbies.
A healthy work-life improves mental well-being, engagement, and overall productivity in all facets of life.
Mental health is not black and white. Between perfect mental health and mental illness are many different levels of health and ensuring mental fitness in the workplace makes employees ever-ready to handle any tasks or problems.
Primely’s workplace workshops and one-on-one sessions optimise your sales performance by introducing your team to healthy well-being habits and positive psychology practices to transform their routine.