In the workplace, mental wellbeing is an integral part of productivity and an area that can have massive positive knock-on effects to your business. The way the employees behave, feel, and think can sizably affect everything from communication to efficiency to their ability to maintain a safe and healthy workplace.
Mental wellness takes into account everything we feel about ourselves, control, belonging, and our sense of purpose. We depend on strong mental wellness to be creative, perform our work, and work effectively, which makes the management of mental wellbeing a necessary business sense.
For business leaders, helping employees improve their overall mental wellbeing could be one of the most vital steps you can take to improve not only for individual wellbeing but also for the health of the entire firm.
Why mental well-being is vital for your business?
Research indicates that organizations that invest in building and maintaining good mental health in the workplace report higher sales, productivity, and customer satisfaction. Essentially, such businesses create a good business image and reputation, making it easier to recruit and retain the best workers.
Increasingly, it has become evident that employee mental wellbeing has a direct connection with creativity in the workplace, which, in turn, is shown to translate into organizational growth and prosperity.
Modern workplaces are now heavily interested in infusing both mental wellness and creativity into their office culture since this is also shown to drive not only productivity but also happier employees and innovation.
Good mental wellbeing among the employees is also shown to go hand in hand with good management of the workplace. There is strong evidence that such a workplace fosters creativity, meaning that the management of employees becomes easier for business managers.
On the contrary, poor management of mental wellbeing can not only be detrimental for both job satisfaction and productivity, but it can also have substantial financial implications. The financial repercussions that sprout from absenteeism, presenteeism, and employee turnover are shown to exacerbate with poor management of mental wellbeing.
Businesses that are able to promote mental wellness, and thus, improve job satisfaction are likely to reduce absenteeism, presenteeism, which is often a manifestation of job insecurity and reduce turnover. Statistics indicate that it can cost a business twice as much to hire someone than it does to retain them.
This boils down to creating a Zen atmosphere to help in business development, foster creativity, and enable efficient execution of ideas. Employees in such an environment can control themselves, feel the freedom to take on responsibilities while creating peaceful heaven in the workplace. They will be fully aware and alive each moment, with a single-pointed awareness.
How to promote mental well-being in the workplace?
Sometimes amplified stress in the workplace is caused by temporary situations such as busy seasons, system conversions, open enrollment, or new management. But, if poor management of mental wellbeing is chronic and intertwined within the company’s system, it can cause permanent fiscal and human resource management problems. Here are several ways through which your organization can improve mental wellbeing.
Show you care
Promoting the mental wellbeing of the employees should start by showing them that you care. When employers treat their employees as human beings with feelings and not just workers to generate profits, it can make a significant difference in the workplace.
This should entail listening to them address work issues, which means giving them a voice. By promoting an ‘open-door-policy,’ you make it certain to your staff member that they can come to talk to you anytime.
This way, the issues relating to both the employees and the workplace can easily be identified and resolved, rather than promoting a culture that allows issues to aggravate. As a business leader or manager, reach out to the employees consistently and with sincerity.
Promote a healthy work environment
The workplace environment may have a significant impact not only on employees’ creativity and productivity, but also on mental wellness, job turnover, and profitability. There are a number of ways through which a positive work environment in their organization. These may include, have an open-door policy, changing top-down policy, and keeping staff members informed on developments, policies, departmental changes, and business goals.
A healthy work environment is known to improve the relationship between managers and co-workers while also promoting collaboration and effective communication. Moreover, such a working setting is shown to boost productivity, creativity, while reducing costs related to medical claims, workers’ compensation, absenteeism, and turnover.
Allow employees room for creativity
As mentioned prior, promoting mental wellbeing is about showing employees that they are valued in the organization. Fostering creativity is one way of changing the top-down management design towards promoting the employees’ voice. By design, creativity inspires collaboration, which can, in turn, lead to increased productivity and operational efficiency.
If your workforce is to excel in problem-solving in the workplace, it is vital that you encourage an environment that allows it to be both innovative and creative. Specialists indicate that allowing employees to partake in creative ventures can lead to a variety of benefits, including sharpening their minds, combating depression, relieving stress and anxiety, improving moods, and enhancing their job satisfaction.
Promote wellness across different dimensions
Although most business leaders associate wellbeing with just mental and physical wellness, there are, in fact, a variety of other dimensions that work together to provide wellness in the workplace holistically.
Some of these dimensions include intellectual wellness, occupational wellness, social wellness, environmental wellness, spiritual wellness, and emotional wellness. It is through understanding such wellness dimensions that businesses can be able to promote mental wellbeing efficiently.
For instance, occupational wellness is about maximizing workplace happiness to the employees. This can be done by providing addressing occupational health across various extents, such as promoting preventive health or conducting health risk assessments.
Once this is addressed holistically, the goal towards achieving positive mental wellbeing in the workplace becomes achievable. It should be acknowledged that human health, especially mental wellbeing, should be the foundation that supports the organizational design since businesses thrive on the abilities, creativities, and innovation of their workforce.
