World Mental Health Day 2024: Strategies for Workplace Mental Wellbeing - Sohini Rohra

World Mental Health Day 2024 focuses on the theme "Mental Health at Work," emphasizing the importance of promoting mental well-being in professional settings.

In this article, Mrs Sohini Rohra, Counselling Psychologist and Mental Health Advocate, discusses the critical role of workplace mental health and its direct impact on both employee productivity and overall organizational success.

In today’s fast-paced world, the work environment has developed cut-throat competition. Mental health needs are now no more a luxury but have become an important factor in employee and organizational well-being.

Fostering the mental health of the employees contributes to positive work culture, increasing productivity, and improving organizational success generally.

Understanding Mental Health in the Workplace

Workplace mental health refers to the employee's emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It can influence the way the person thinks, feels, and acts at work. Therefore, it affects the ability to handle stress, support colleagues, and make decisions.

Constant evaluation, unrealistic job demands, unhealthy work relationships and toxic organizational culture can lead to mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and stress.

The side effects of neglected mental health tend to be hazardous to the employee, but it may be disastrous to the organization as well. Organizations affected by poor mental health of the employees face problems like high absenteeism, low productivity, and increased turnover rates.

In that case, effective management of mental health at the workplace builds a healthy work environment.

Importance of Management of Mental Health

1. Employee Welfare: Mental health management can help achieve a supportive work environment. If an employee feels taken care of, then the employee will perform with higher job satisfaction and engagement.

2. Productivity: When employees are positive about their mental health, they will likely tend to be more productive and driven. Mental health management can reduce absenteeism as well as "presenteeism"-being present but not mentally active or with low performance.

3. Enhanced Workplace Functioning: A healthy workplace psyche promotes free communication and teamwork among the staff. Since they would not hesitate to voice their views and opinions, it would lead to creativity of new ideas and effective teamwork.

4. Talent attraction and retention: Companies looking after mental health are attractive for the prospective employee. The reputation of a company with regard to the valuation of employee wellness can boost recruitment efforts and reduce the rate of turnover more effectively.

Strategies of Maintaining Mental Health in the Workplace

1. Mutuality of support: Employees can be encouraged to disclose feelings of mental illness by providing in-house psychological support. An open culture that provides a safe space promotes mental, emotional and physical health.

Conducting regular check-ins with its employees would ensure that a person who comes into the immediate oversight receives support.

2. Access to Mental Health Services: Organizations ought to provide easily accessible mental health services through Employee Assistant Programs, counselling sessions, and workshops on mental health.

These services will facilitate the engagement of the workforce with needed support and tools for managing their mental health.

3. Promote work-life balance: The most important aspects that serve as preventatives to burnout are work-life balance.

Working conditions giving an option of working from home and flexible hours can manage responsibility outside the workplace, therefore an improvement in mental well-being.

4. Coaching of Managers: Coaches and managers can be trained on how to identify the markers of mental problems and start a conversation with an employee on this subject in a delicate manner.

This would create an atmosphere conducive to supporting and their workforce members.

5. Stress Management Program: Organizations can have a stress management program which comes in the form of mindfulness training, workshops for stress relief, and wellness programs.

Such programs are likely to provide employees with coping skills as well as resilience to execute the job. Having in-house breathwork and meditations programs can also be extremely impactful.

6. Periodic assessment and feedback: Routine questionnaires to monitor the mental health and well-being of employees enables the organization to understand this specific aspect of the working environment.

Feedback from the employees can then be used to improve areas that need it and, accordingly, implement the mental health program based on their needs.

Conclusion

Mental health management is no longer a trend, but it's the very thing that makes an organization thrive. Developing an organization's ability to aid the mental wellness of its employees goes toward promoting productivity and success in their workplace.

Investing in mental health not only benefits the employee but also offers returns back to the organization as a whole, meaning healthier employees with a more engaged workforce.

The key success and sustainability for each of these industries in the years to come would depend on the extent to which the organizations put in extra effort for mental health and wellness of the people.