A few years ago, corporates failed to consider mental health a business issue. However, after the global health crisis, mental health has a significant place in the overall corporate agenda. Stress in the workplace increased dramatically in the last few years. Approximately 67% of employees report that they experience more stress post-pandemic. An additional 40% of workers report that their jobs are highly stressful, while a quarter of employees identify their job as the primary stressor.
Since job stress is a strong predictor of health complaints than personal, financial, or family problems, organizations must consider the statistics seriously. Besides affecting the employees’ health, stressful jobs cause elevated healthcare costs, lost productivity, and unwanted employee turnover.
Temporary conditions, like new management, systems conversions, open enrollments, and busy seasons cause stress and burnout in employees. Although these are common in almost every organization, a highly stressful work environment is a chronic problem. It might cause lasting fiscal and personnel problems within your organization.
Effective Ways to Promote Psychological Safety in Your Workplace
Adopting the following strategies and tips helps promote positive mental health at work.
1: Let your employees talk
Allowing employees to talk openly about psychological health is an excellent way to improve their psychological conditions. Identify the issue and allow it to be an acceptable topic of conversation. Removing the taboo and acknowledging work-related stress can create progress within your organization, helping employees realize that they aren’t alone.
2: Creating workplace guidelines for health and safety
Leaders must create a healthy workplace environment by establishing, implementing, and enforcing clear health and safety policies and practices. Your company’s health and safety guidelines help develop processes for addressing prevention, early identification, support, and rehabilitation for distress, burnout, substance abuse, and other psychological health concerns.
3: Encourage positive habits
Educating on how to practice effective stress management is an effective way to prioritize your employees’ well-being. If your employees are experiencing sleep issues, introduce them to mindfulness and motivation. You can consult with a mindfulness coach to host a seminar. It will help your employees complete their sleep cycle and combat heightened stress levels.
Are you looking to reduce your employees’ stress levels to a minimum? Minimize their concerns regarding their performance by recognizing them. Besides promoting a positive mindset in the organization, it increases productivity.
4: Recommend separating from work
As leaders, we must ensure that our employees utilize their lunch breaks, leave on time, and enjoy their holidays. Working long hours without breaks is the primary cause of stress and exhaustion. Taking breaks refreshes their minds, replenishes their employees’ psychological health resources, and encourages creativity. When on holiday, encourage them to switch off their email notifications, promoting proper relaxation.
Feeling tensed about missing work while relaxing defeats the purpose of a holiday. If it’s an urgent email, you can help your employees by leaving out an office message with guidelines about what to do will help combat the issue. It helps your employees enjoy their well-deserved breaks, making them ready for the next working day post-holidays.
5: Employee assistance program
Counselling and support offered by these programs is an excellent step your company can take towards greater corporate well-being. With the shifting of psychological health in the workplace, approximately 97% of large companies are now offering EPAs. The programs focus on chronic stress, anxiety, burnout, depression, and other psychological conditions.
Conclusion
With the changing scenarios at work, HR professionals must keep these expectations in mind while hiring, retaining, and focusing on employees to foster psychological health. If you are looking to maximize employee experience, Talent Intellect is the ideal organization. It merged as Asia-Pacific’s leading organization in leadership coaching and mentoring. It focuses on holistic digital transformation for wholesome talent development, helping businesses flourish despite uncertainties.
