Mental Health Strategies in the Workplace: Building Resilience

Empowering Employees and Teams with Practical Tools for Achieving Mental Balance and Enhancing Productivity

Anxiety, stress and depression are the most common mental health issues.  Reducing stigma and help are key to integration and out of the box thinkers.  This title may be enough to cause negative feelings and make drop out some of our regular readers.

Why is this? Don’t we all deserve to be at ease?

Let us look at it carefully and objectively, with the necessary distance and adequate participation and involvement at the same time. Analyzing the term “mental health” you will realize that it is our mind to cause negative feelings without a proper reason. 

Defining Mental Health in the Workplace 

“Mental health means a person’s condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well-being that enables them to cope with stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community. It is an integral component of health and well-being that underpins our individual and collective abilities to make decisions, build relationships and shape the world we live in. Mental health is a basic human right. And it is crucial to personal, community and socio-economic development.”
(World Health Organization June 2017, www.who.int) 

The term is neutral unless we judge.

The Pandemic’s Impact on Mental Health Strategies in the Workplace 

Since the pandemic we have to acknowledge that mental health is not only personal and individual but subject to external and societal factors we may not be able to influence.

Key Determinants of Mental Health in the Workplace 

The WHO names some key facts as for mental health:

• Affordable, effective and feasible strategies exist to promote, protect and restore mental health
• The need for action on mental health is urgent
• Mental health has intrinsic and instrumental value and is integral to our well-being
• Mental health is determined by a complex interplay of individual, social and structural stresses and vulnerabilities

Several aspects determine and may influence of how mentally healthy we may feel or not feel:

Individual resilience, the ability to cope with the challenges in life. Some people cope better, they are less likely to fall into depression or develop anxiety. They manage to keep negative thoughts or events out of their system. 

The social support plays an important role. Having a network of family, friends and gracious colleagues providing emotional support and practical assistance during difficult times makes the difference. We should have the courage to ask for help and to offer support.

Healthy behaviors like regular physical activity, balanced nutrition, enough sleep and avoiding repeated harmful behaviors (like substance abuse) do have a positive impact on mental health. 

The lack of a safe and supportive environment and basic economic stability (access to healthcare, food, housing and employment) may reinforce or even cause a mental health issue. 

Without going deeper into the topic at this point, positive as negative early childhood experiences can influence the mental health status significantly. 

“Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. It exists on a complex continuum, which is experienced differently from one person to the next, with varying degrees of difficulty and distress and potentially very different social and clinical outcomes.” (WHO)

Implementing Mental Health Strategies in the Workplace 

Within the workplace mental health is a critical aspect of individual well-being and team dynamics.

A decent work is good for mental health, it gives people the opportunity to feel productive and acquire self-esteem, to have a solid financial base, to feel secure, whereas poor working environments, like discrimination, inequality, excessive workloads, low job control and job insecurity can be a risk to mental health. 

With anxiety, depression and stress being the most common mental health issues, the following factors determine individual mental health:

1. Stress management

Individuals need strategies to cope with workplace stress. 

Strategies include time management, learning to prioritize, mindfulness techniques, meditation, and other methods to calm down and manage stress. 

2. Self-care

Self-care means to acknowledge your needs and satisfy them. To sleep when you are tired, to exercise when and how needed – everybody needs exercise and movement, to eat when your are hungry and to take a break when you are tired mentally or physically.

3. Access to Resources 

Access to mental health resources like the above mentioned or a psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor, coach or an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is not always given as expensive and there is a procedure to be followed. Following the procedure psychologists are paid by medical insurance but there are long waiting times to be accepted. Coaches and counselors are not covered but there are common programs and groups for free sometimes. 

4. Reducing stigma

Besides the challenge to recognize and acknowledge a mental problem or concern yourself, there is the hurdle of stigmatization. It is crucial to create an environment where seeking help for mental health issues is not stigmatized but encouraged. Employees should be able to address their concerns openly. Mental health is a topic that should be talked about as it can happen to everybody and is part of the human condition. 

5. Work-Life Balance

Sustaining work-life balance is crucial to mental health. Excessive workloads and long hours frequently can have a negative impact in respect to mental health. 

A mentally healthy team is important for the individual as it is for the performance of the team and thus for the company.

Team-Based Mental Health Strategies in the Workplace 

An employee should be granted a well-functioning team in every respect:

1. Psychological Safety

To work in a team where you feel free and safe to express your thoughts, opinion and even emotions without the fear of being judged should be granted to employees and worked on. According to studies high performance teams are exactly those who guarantee this.

2. Effective communication 

Encouraging open and empathetic communication within teams helps in understanding and supporting colleagues who may be struggling with a personal or non-personal issue. Communication – verbal and non-verbal – should be taught as empathy and further soft-skills should. 

3. Team Building

A ‘real team’ will influence mental health in a positive way. Team-building activities and exercises help build trust and foster team bonding.

4. Recognizing Signs

Team leaders as every single member of the team should be able or trained to recognize signs of mental health issues in team members. The team leader should delicately offer support or refer to resources inside or outside the company when needed or desired. Please check out our Carousel as for mental health issues and warning signs. 

5. Shared Responsibility

Teams should share the workload and support each other during stressful times to reduce the impact on individual mental health. The tasks should be distributed fairly within the team to prevent burnout and excessive stress on specific individuals. If an employee has an issue with mental health he should be supported in every respect.

Apart from intrinsic reasons or family issues there are several sources of mental health issues in the workplace. People suffer from burnout or toxic relations with a leader or colleague. These can lead to anxiety and stress, depression, low self-esteem, isolation and physical health issues if not cured in time and enough. 

It is essential to understand situations and people to prevent mental health issues or to recognize and cure them, to develop empathy. We live in a world of AI, innovations and transformation, losing the sense for the other, the perception of energy, spirituality and emotions, the capability to observe the other. AI will and should not be able to compensate this.

Let’s learn to see the small signs, to prevent and help.

Let’s learn to take care of ourselves and not be swept away by a dictated form of society.

Let’s learn to embrace human sustainability and help each other.

by Gabriele Kamps, PR & Communications Manager at Morgan Philips