Importance of employee’s mental well being

Table of Content

• Work and mental health conditions

• Risks to the mental well-being of employees

• Impact of mental health issues at the Workplace

• Actions to improve the mental well-being of employees at work

• Take-Home Points

• FAQ on Importance of employee’s mental well being

Introduction

More than 50% of the world’s population is at work now. Everyone has the right to work in a healthy and safe environment. Mental health conditions can affect an employee’s confidence and capacity to work productively. Data tells us that yearly around 12 billion working days are lost to mental illnesses like depression and anxiety alone. Such a massive loss of working days can result in decreased productivity, resulting in a loss of nearly US$ 1 trillion to the global economy.

Work-related mental health issues of an employee are manageable. There are multiple ways by which the employer or the organization can protect and promote the employee's mental well-being to make them participate equally and fully at work. A decent work environment supports the employees' mental health by providing a sense of purpose, accomplishment, and confidence.

Work and mental health conditions

Decent work helps good mental health by providing benefits such as a livelihood, a possibility for positive relationships and inclusion in society, and a platform for structured routines. Depression and anxiety are the most common mental health issues that most employees face. When not addressed properly, these mental health issues can affect a person’s ability to appreciate and do their work well. Stress and problems from work and employers can also worsen pre-existing conditions. 

Employers must assess employees' mental health issues and take necessary actions to remove them or reduce them as reasonably practicable.

Risks to the mental well-being of employees

Most employees often work in unsafe working surroundings for long hours. They have little or no access to financial or social protections and face discrimination, all of which can damage mental health.

Risks to mental wellness at the workspace include:

• Long or inflexible working hours

• Extreme workloads

• Understaffing

• Being under-skilled for the job

• Lack of power over job design

• Unsafe physical working conditions

• Limited support from coworkers

• Harassment, bullying, or violence

• Exclusion and discrimination

• Inadequate pay

• Job insecurity

• Unbalanced work and personal life

Risks to mental health exist in all sectors, but some are more likely to be exposed than others. It is because of what, where, and how they work. For example, Health or emergency workers often have jobs with an elevated risk of exposure to unfavorable events, which can negatively affect mental health.

Employees with mental health conditions are more likely to encounter inequality at work. But being unemployed also poses a risk to mental health. Unemployment, recent job loss, and economic and job insecurity are risk factors for suicide attempts.

Impact of mental health issues at the Workplace

Employees' mental health problems impact employers and businesses directly through increased absenteeism, a negative impact on profits and productivity, and increased costs to deal with the issue. In addition, they impact employees' confidence adversely.

Data from various countries worldwide show that mental health problems cause many employees to drop out of work. In the UK, approximately 30 to 40% of the sickness absence is due to some form of mental illness. About 58% of work-related disabilities are related to mental health in the Netherlands. 

Actions to improve the mental well-being of employees at work

Actions that the employers can take aiming to improve the mental wellness of the employees and thereby increase productivity and profit include:

1. Create enabling conditions for change

In practice, creating enabling conditions for change means:

• Incorporating mental health at work into appropriate policies strengthens leadership and commitment to mental health at work.

• Rights to participate in work. For example, by aligning employment regulations and laws with international human rights instruments and executing non-discrimination policies. 

• Meaningful and timely consultations with workers or their representatives give employees a role in decision-making.

• Implant mental health policies into current systems for occupational health and safety. 

• Ensuring all guidance and action on mental wellness at work is based on recent evidence. 

• Establish dedicated budgets to improve mental health at work and make employment and mental health services available to lower-resourced enterprises. 

2. Prevent work-related mental health conditions

Flexible working arrangements or executing frameworks to deal with harassment and violence at work are organizational interventions that prevent work-related mental health conditions.

3. Protect and promote mental health in the workplace

It is about strengthening the capabilities of persons responsible for supervising others, such as a Manager, for identifying and acting on mental health conditions at work. It can be achieved by:

• Manager training for mental health

It helps managers recognize and respond to employees experiencing emotional distress. It helps to build interpersonal skills like active listening and open communication. It enables a better understanding of how job stressors influence mental health and their management.

• Training for workers in mental health awareness

It helps improve mental health knowledge and decrease the stigma against mental health conditions. Interventions for employees help them build skills to manage and reduce mental health problems.

4. Support employees with mental health conditions to participate in and succeed at work

Individuals with mental health conditions have a right to work fully and fairly. The three interventions to support people with mental health conditions  to gain, sustain, and participate in work are:

• Return-to-work programs

It combines work-directed care with ongoing clinical supervision to support workers returning to work after a period of absence associated with mental health conditions while relieving mental health symptoms.

• Reasonable accommodations 

Reasonable accommodations adapt working environments to the capabilities, requirements, and preferences of an employee with a mental health condition. It includes giving individual employees flexible working hours, extra time to complete jobs, modified assignments to decrease stress, time off for health appointments, and periodic supportive meetings with supervisors.

• Supported employment initiatives 

It helps employees with intense mental health conditions get into paid work and support their time at work by providing vocational and mental health support.

Take-Home Points

• Decent work helps good mental health by providing benefits such as a livelihood, a possibility for positive relationships, and a platform for structured routines. But, Mental health conditions can affect an employee’s confidence and capacity to work productively. Thus it affects employers and businesses directly through increased absenteeism, a negative impact on profits and productivity, and increased costs to deal with the issue. In addition, they impact employees' confidence adversely.

• Risks to mental health exist in all sectors, but some are more likely to be exposed than others. Some employees often work in unsafe working surroundings for long hours with little or no access to financial or social protections. Employers must assess employees' mental health issues and take necessary actions to remove them or reduce them as reasonably practicable.

• Employers responsible for employees' safety and health can help improve mental wellness by creating enabling conditions for change, preventing work-related mental health conditions, protecting and promoting mental health at work, and supporting employees with mental health conditions to participate in and succeed at work.