MENTAL HEALTH IN WORKPLACE

 

Why mental health is important in the workplace?

Key performance indicators such as productivity, creativity, and social engagement can all take a hit if an employee's mental health is suffering. Prioritizing mental health in the workplace can help your workers flourish and reach their full potential, which is what businesses need to thrive and grow.

 

 

 

The link between work and mental health

Work can play a huge role in your overall health and welfare. In addition to the financial benefits, your job can add meaning, structure, and purpose to your life. It can also provide you with a sense of identity, bolster your self-esteem, and offer an important social outlet.

However, working in a negative environment can have the opposite effect and take a heavy toll on your emotional health. Long hours, understaffing, a lack of support, and harassment in the workplace can ramp up your stress levels and contribute to mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. These problems have only been exacerbated by the pandemic and the major shifts in our working habits over the last couple of years. Many of us have spent months adapting to the new stressors of working remotely, for example, only to now have to re-adjust to commuting and working onsite again. It’s left us feeling tense, unhappy, and worried about the future and how we spend our days.

 

 

Just as work can impact your mental health, so too, your mental health can affect your work, impacting your job performance and productivity. In fact, recent estimates suggest mental health issues cost the global economy $1 trillion annually in lost productivity, absenteeism, and staff turnover.

For most of us, a lot about our workplace environment remains outside our control. The culture at work is established by those in senior positions above us and we often feel unable to speak out without fear of judgment or risking our jobs. But whether your mental health issues are caused by your workplace or stem from elsewhere and are affecting your performance at work, there are steps you can take to care for yourself and protect your well-being. With these tips you can learn to talk to your employer about mental health, cope with common challenges at work, increase your resilience, and better strive to fulfill your potential—in the workplace and beyond.

 

 

Workplace risk factors for mental health

Common work-related challenges that can negatively impact your mental health include:

• Long, inflexible hours, short-staffing due to cutbacks or unfilled vacancies, or an ever-increasing workload.
• Working remotely with no clear separation between work and personal time.
• A toxic workplace that fosters bullying, harassment, or abuse.
• Lack of training or guidance for the role you’re expected to fulfill.
• Limited or unclear communication from management about tasks, goals, or decision-making.
• Lack of support, shortage of equipment or other job resources, or unsafe working practices. (htt)

 

How to care for your mental health at work

When you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed by the demands of work, taking time away—using personal or sick days or taking some vacation time—can help you to recharge and avoid burnout. However, if you have a persistent mental health issue, such as depression or anxiety, you’re going to need more than just a few days off.

Caring for your mental health in the workplace isn’t just about dealing with immediate mental health problems, either. It’s also about promoting well-being. Even if you’re not facing a mental health challenge right now, taking steps to care for your emotional health can help you build resilience, improve your work performance, and provide you the tools to better cope with uncertainty and challenges in the future. The following tips can help:

Switch off. Whether you’re working onsite or remotely, it’s important to strike a healthy work-life balance. That means taking regular breaks throughout the day and switching off your screens when the work day is over. Instead of making yourself available 24/7 to respond to work calls, emails, or other messages, it’s important to focus on friends and family and take the time to relax, recharge, and enjoy yourself.

Practice relaxation techniques. Relaxing and recharging requires more than just zoning out on the couch in front of the TV. To reduce the damaging effects of stress and protect your mental health, you need to activate your body’s relaxation response. This can be done by practicing a relaxation technique such as meditation, deep breathing, rhythmic exercise, or yoga.

Take care of yourself. Getting enough quality sleep at night, eating a healthy, nutritious diet, and regularly exercising can make a huge difference to your mental health—at work and beyond. These are also aspects of your life that you have more control over than many things in your workplace. The more effort you put into self-care, the better you’ll feel.

Find meaning and purpose in your work. Even if you don’t love your job, you can still find ways to derive meaning and purpose from the work that you do. Try to focus on how your work helps others, for example, provides an important product or service, or the relationships you enjoy with your coworkers. Looking for opportunities to get more training or take job-related classes can also help you to find more meaning in your work

Try to connect and collaborate. As human beings, we crave connection. Developing mutually supportive relationships with your coworkers, collaborating as a team, and having fun together can help ease stress and bolster your mood at work. If you’re not close to your colleagues, make the effort to pool resources on projects, work closer together, and be more social during breaks and outside the workplace.

Build resiliency. The more resilient you are, the better you’re able to tolerate the feelings of stress, anxiety, and hopelessness that can be generated by problems at work. Building resilience can also help you from setbacks in your career or personal life and help you maintain a positive outlook. Rather than being a macho quality, resilience is

something that requires effort to build and maintain over time.

 

Mental health and working at home

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more of us have found ourselves working from home. While it can be gratifying to be free of the daily commute and its related expenses, there are still plenty of drawbacks to working remotely that can take a toll on your mental health.

Many people feel isolated away from the workplace, disconnected from the support and social aspects of being among colleagues. It can be extremely stressful living and working in the same place every day, especially if it’s a small space, you’re looking after young children, or you have other family members also working from home. Endless back-to-back virtual meetings, longer work hours, and feeling the need to always be “on” can also be a drain on your time, mood, and outlook.

 (INTERNATIONA, n.d.)

Whether you’re working from home full-time or just intermittently, there are steps you can take to ensure you protect your mental health and make it a more productive and enjoyable experience.

Maintain a regular work routine. When you’re working from home, it can be very difficult to establish a boundary between work and home time, so many people find themselves worker much longer hours. To maintain a sense of normalcy, try to keep regular office hours, starting and finishing at the same time every day. Some people find it useful to go for a walk before starting work in the morning and then again after finishing work in the evening. It can help you mentally switch from work to home mode and vice versa.

Schedule breaks and set boundaries. Just because your desk is at home, it doesn’t mean you always have to be available. Set aside time to take a break from your screens and have lunch, for example, and then turn off your phone and computer when you’re done for the day. Try to leave time between virtual meetings so they don’t feel so overwhelming.

Establish a dedicated work space. Even if you don’t have a separate room that you can use for a home office, try to reserve a space that you can use just for work, rather than working at the kitchen table, for example. You’ll find it easier to keep to your routine and separate your work and home life.

Look for opportunities to work outside the home. If you’re missing being around other people, try working at a coffee shop or library, or renting a co-working space.

Schedule face-to-face time with your co-workers. To counter the sense of isolation, arrange regular meetings or social events where you can see your colleagues in-person and catch-up. If you freelance, reach out to other freelancers on social media and arrange face-to-face get-togethers.  (INTERNATIONA, n.d.)

(TUBE, n.d.)

References

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.helpguide.org/articles/work/mental-health-in-the-workplace.htm

INTERNATIONA, H. (n.d.). https://www.helpguide.org/. Retrieved from https://www.helpguide.org/: https://www.helpguide.org/articles/work/mental-health-in-the-workplace.htm

TUBE, Y. (n.d.). www.youtube.com/watch?v=NastuJfCQm8. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=NastuJfCQm8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NastuJfCQm8