Does Mental Health Matter in the Workplace?
What is Mental Health?
Mental health encompasses our emotional, psychological and social well-being.
It directly impacts how we think, feel and behave.
It impacts how we handle stress, deal with problems, make decisions and relate to other people. It affects our creativity, innovation, confidence, risk-taking behaviour and productivity.
Do these abilities and behaviours matter in the workplace?
Mental Health and The Working Environment
Stress, demands, deadlines and challenges are part of working life.
However, the interaction of environment, work demands, managerial practises, workplace culture, job fit, resources and available support can either create a workplace where people engage and are positively productive OR where people struggle with stress, anxiety, depression, lack of motivation, disengagement and burnout.
According to a recent WHO (World Health Organisation) study, an estimated US$1 trillion is lost each year in the global economy because of anxiety and depression-related disorders.
- Poor communication and management practises
- Lack of appropriate autonomy, lack of engagement in decision making, low control over one’s area of work, responsibility without sufficient authority.
- Low levels of support from managers and/or colleagues; lack of team cohesion
- Lack of resources
- Inflexible working hours or arrangements
- Unclear tasks or organisational objectives
- Unrelenting workload
- Expectation to work or be available during ‘personal’ time
- Job content being excessively challenging or unfulfilling
- Feeling unseen and unvalued
Effects of Stress and Anxiety in the Workplace:
Physically it can manifest as fatigue, low energy, headaches and/or digestive problems, frequently getting sick, high blood pressure or even heart attack or stroke.
Emotionally, it can result in feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, sadness, lack of motivation, impatience, irritability, resentment and feeling overwhelmed.
Psychologically, this can cause low self-esteem, detachment, a desire to isolate from colleagues – disconnection, and avoidance of perceived threats – people or tasks.
Cognitively, stress and anxiety tend to shut down creativity, innovation, and problem-solving abilities. People may become increasingly risk-averse or impulsive. They may struggle to think logically and analytically.
Signs of a negative work environment include frequent absenteeism, lack of engagement, motivation and enthusiasm, high staff turnover and poor productivity.
Burnout, now classified as an occupational disease, is strongly associated with excessive stress and emotional exhaustion.
Chronically difficult work environments can exacerbate or even result in mental health problems such as addiction, substance abuse, anxiety and depression disorders.
The Benefits of Good Mental Health in the Workplace
People who feel valued and included, who feel appropriately supported, who have a sense of direction, focus and autonomy and who are satisfied with their working content, demands and environments tend to demonstrate the following behaviours, emotions, and thinking skills:
Behaviours: Engaged, goal-directed, able to work well (or at least cooperatively) with others, productive, willing to go the extra mile.
Emotions: positive, interested, motivated.
Thinking skills: creative, innovative thinking, open to learning, rational, logical
What set of behaviour is going to impact the bottom line more positively?
Research tells us that people in high-performing organisations experience more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions.
How can we Create Work Environments that Support Mental Health?
- Be aware of the impact of the workplace environment on people.
- Understand what can be done to promote better mental health for employees.
- Become aware of what other organisations have done to create a positive workplace culture and engage staff.
- Put action plans in place to reduce your risk factors.
- Develop good interpersonal and leadership skills within the organisation.
- Involve staff in decision making that impacts them and their scope of responsibility.
- Identify what makes different people feel valued – this makes a huge difference!
- Enable staff to have a healthy work-life balance.
- Create support structures.
- Enable people to grow by implementing meaningful, strategic, training and development pathways.
Do Emotions Impact Workplace Behaviour and Success?
(Source: GENOS International)
How can We Help You?
We can help you with creating a workplace environment that promotes mental health (and thereby productivity, engagement and success) by clarifying current and preferred state, enhancing interpersonal and team dynamics, selecting the right people for positions, providing a support structure and providing or enabling training where required.
- We provide the internationally renowned GENOS EMOTIONAL CULTURE INDEX (ECI). This is used to measure 3 dimensions of emotions at work:
- Current state: how your people feel currently – stressed/ anxious/ exhausted/ disorganised/ mistreated vs appreciated/ informed/ empowered/ productive/ valued.
- Expected state: how often and reasonable your people feel it’s fair to experience these feelings at work.
- Ideal state: how often your people would ideally like to experience these states to be most productive.
When you know how your people are feeling you can better plan where to
focus your energy to optimise engagement, productivity, retention and resilience
- We offer the applied GENOS EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE assessment, training and coaching programmes to enhance the intrapersonal, personal, interpersonal and leadership competencies of staff across all occupational levels. The model and programmes are specifically designed for application in the workplace.
- The PXT SELECT Assessment provides psychometric data to assist employers to recruit, promote and train the best people for new or available positions, including senior leaders.
- We provide LEADERSHIP development.
- We provide group and 1-1 Coaching.
- We provide the internationally renowned GENOS EMOTIONAL CULTURE INDEX (ECI). This is used to measure 3 dimensions of emotions at work:
For more information contact Tracey at: tracey@collabcounselling.co.za
