Beyond World Mental Health Day
Employers’ duty in the workplace.
Today is World Mental Health Day. It is a great initiative to spread the word out there and raise awareness. It is a good conversation opener. However, awareness is just the start.
A responsibility
Poor mental health is still symptomatic across the workplace. Pressures associated with workload, work-life balance, office politics and poor ergonomics are a few examples of how a person can get stressed and how their mental health can suffer because of work. Employers have a responsibility to care for the wellbeing of their employees. A clear plan and support in place should not just be an add-on, an extra or a “perk” but truly incorporated in organisational strategy.
Beyond wellbeing “perks”
Despite a recent and overt interest from companies in wellbeing and mental health in the workplace, employers can sometimes feel overwhelmed about where to start and where to go to deal with this sensitive issue. Plaster-type solutions such as providing healthy snacks and a ping pong table are a nice perk but won’t profoundly solve problems or positively revolutionise work environments.
What’s needed is a comprehensive, deep-dive analysis into what employees are thinking and feeling. How do they feel day-to-day in their workplace? What do they like? What changes would they want? However, companies won’t get answers by just asking.
Towards sustainable and positive changes
To truly understand the root of the problems and make sustainable changes, the solution is to go way deeper into organisational analysis. To do this, you’ll need to tap into non-conscious drivers and observe beyond what appears on surface level. But how do you do this?
Well, when you need your car fixed, you go to a mechanics. When you need to understand human behaviour, you go to a psychologist. However, many companies still rely on non-experts to build strategies to address deeply complex and sensitive issues such as mental health in the workplace. This is not only irresponsible but also dangerous. It’s time to bring science into the discussion.
Beyond awareness: time for a shift
Today is a good day to start to have discussions in your team and see how you could start to make positive changes in your workplace. We’d be happy to join your conversations, tweet us @InnBubb.
We have helped numerous companies to understand the root cause of their issues thanks to our psychological expertise and bespoke tools. If you’re currently thinking of helping your employees to achieve better wellbeing or want to promote good mental health in your workplace but are not sure where to start, talk to us!