According to the World Health Organization, 15% of the working population lives with some sort of mental health issue. Yet people still look at mental health with stigma. Mental can drastically employee’s confidence and productivity.
Everyone has a right to a healthy work environment and HR should use practices that build the same. In addition to that human resources need to ensure that everyone in the company understands the importance of mental health. In this blog, we will discuss some latest HR practices to support mental health in the workplace.
What is Mental Health?
So, what do we mean when we say mental health? In simple words, mental health can be defined as the emotional and psychological well-being that helps people cope with their day-to-day life challenges.
We need to pay attention to mental well-being at the workplace because work is a huge part of employee life and has a significant impact on their emotional states. Here are some ways that HR can support mental health in the workplace.
1. Spread Awareness
Awareness about mental health is essential to build perspective so they can act accordingly instead of treating such issues with stigma. Similarly, awareness helps people to recognise issues like stress and anxiety so they can ask for the help they need. That also encourages open communication in the workplace and people naturally start to align their actions accordingly.
2. Form Support Groups
When it comes to emotional and psychological health social support is crucial. People need a safe place to discuss the challenges they are facing and know that other people are in their support. Support groups can be a medium to provide employees with the same.
3. Build Healthy Culture
It’s important to build a culture that makes employees feel seen and supported at work. Ask your team and managers to regularly check their teammates. Everyone doesn’t feel comfortable sharing their issues but their team member should know that it’s essential to let their struggling colleague know that they can ask for help.
4. Stay Open to Communication
Build a culture where an employee can voice their opinions about unrealistic targets or other workplace issues. Taking appropriate action to resolve the challenges lets your employees know that their requests and opinions won’t be dismissed. That also encourages employees to openly talk about issues such as stress and anxiety they feel due to work.
5. Provide Flexibility
HR needs to understand that everyone works differently. May it period when they feel the most productive or the process of work they follow. When a company provides a certain level of autonomy to employees on where and when they work as long as they follow the deadlines their productivity improves drastically.
The power to schedule their work reduces stress as they don’t have to struggle with work during their unproductive hours and also get more time with their loved ones which is essential for work-life balance.
6. Provide Training
Removing work-related stress entirely in a short period of time may not be possible as that needs some major shifts in company culture as well as employees’ perspectives. To start towards the goal you can provide your employees on how they can manage their work better and minimize stress. There can be various workshops focused on wholesome well-being such as yoga and meditation.
In addition to that, you can train your managers and team leaders on aspects that will help employees’ mental health as listed below.
● Realistic goal setting
● Improving communication
● Allowing autonomy
● Conflict resolution
● Encourage employees to express their issues and opinions.
7. Build Supportive Policies
If you want to bring a major change in the organization it needs to start with company policies. Human resources should design policies that align with providing employees with a healthy work environment.
It should start with ideal work hours, such as flexibility as well as discouraging working for longer hours than expected. HR can also provide a medium where employees can express their concerns unanimously and make people feel safe in the workplace.
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