Work performance and effectiveness are closely linked to the emotional welfare of your staff, so it’s crucial to take steps to create a stress-free work environment.
Going further, promoting healthy practices and management.
Today, this is not the reality, with an estimated $1 trillion in annual productivity losses worldwide in companies across all fields due to the poor mental health of their workforces. In addition, more than 12 trillion working days are lost.
Not anymore. Today, we’ll explain what it means for your teams to enjoy optimal emotional balance in 2023 and share 5 mental health tips that will lead your organization to better worker performance, satisfaction, and retention. Discover the benefits of pursuing mental health education with certificates through our curated resources.
Ready to dive in at the deep end with us? Let’s get started!
What mental health means today
Many companies choose to implement simple relaxation strategies to make their workforce more productive. This is not enough because the focus is not on the well-being of the individual, but on viewing them as a machine that needs to be unburdened in order to function better.
Employees notice this and develop a distrust of leaders and their decisions.
Optimal Mental Health speaks to the presence of an individual state of physical, mental, and social balance. The focus is on individuality. This means that every employee knows what they need to be and do better, and that is where your company should start.
Why should any company care?
- 4 out of 5 employees say that the environment at work affects their overall emotional state
- Employee satisfaction is directly linked to their productivity and the length of time they stay in the long run
To make sure your employees feel safe and in a place where they can play to their strengths, let’s start with 5 practical and easy-to-implement mental health tips.
5 key tips for creating stress-free work spaces
1. Mental health monitoring and coaching for team leaders
While personal change comes from the inside out, organizational change comes from the top down.
You need to take the pressure off employees by focusing on those who have a direct impact on the spirit of the teams they lead. Developing as a team leader means motivating people, and they know them better than anyone in the workplace.
To implement policies that reach the entire workforce, start with leaders. Here’s what it’s all about:
- Targeted training
- Frequent communication
- Modern psychometric tests: have specific, detailed profiles of each and to know what strengths to work on
- Fostering resilience in the face of challenging situations with employees
Initiate changes from leadership and you’ll see how they get the skills they need to channel the stress of team members. From emotional compensation for employees, now let’s move on to improving physical spaces.
2. Parking and space management
A well-organized office space in an accessible and natural atmosphere will improve the mental health of employees. Even the parking. Providing an app that allows employees to reserve their parking space before arriving at the office will help reduce stress before the work day even begins.
This allows the company to:
- Ensure availability and avoid delays or absences across the workforce
- Show your teams that you care about their well-being even before they enter the building
Some changes are easy to see. When your employees see a significant shift in their leaders and the physical space in general through parking lot management, they will trust that concrete policies are in place and engagement with the organization will skyrocket.
3. Regular employee engagement surveys
They provide a valuable tool for understanding your employees’ level of satisfaction and engagement with their jobs and the organization. By using them regularly, you will be able to:
- Identify stressors: your employees may feel overwhelmed by an excessive workload, feel they don’t have the resources they need, or have difficulty communicating and working together. With clarity, you can address these issues and reduce their impact on the work environment
- Encourage participation: when they feel heard and valued, they are more likely to be engaged in their work and the organization as a whole. By giving your employees the opportunity to express themselves in an engagement survey, you show that you truly value their input
This is a task for a top notch human resources manager, to gather accurate information in order to correctly identify opportunities for growth and improvement.
By knowing their opinions about how they feel and their prospects for growth, you can take actionable steps to provide them with opportunities for development and personal enrichment. This is one of the most effective mental health tips in the long run.
4. Talent and personal development
Offer courses and workshops to help employees develop skills to better manage stress and pressure. For example:
- Training of choice: this encourages the development of individual strengths, with employees suggesting and deciding which courses to take
- Meditation or relaxation techniques: these can be applied to specific tasks or at specific times of the day to work on coping skills
It’s important that you understand the need for employees to enhance their work career.
These are steps you can take to make your business more sustainable. As your people evolve, so will your business.
5. Hybrid office, quiet rooms and digital switch-off
To promote a stress-free workplace, it’s often necessary to draw much clearer and firmer workspace boundaries. This means creating moments in the workday when people can unplug from their desk, even during regular business hours. You can do this by:
- No meeting days: this not only allows them to focus on their regular tasks, but also reduces the pressure to deliver results
- Flex days: these are a great alternative, allowing employees to take a day off (or at their discretion) every once in a while, whenever they want, with no strings attached
- Space conditioning: include game rooms, massage rooms, no electronics, and other options to liven up the day
- Offering flexible schedules and/or the option for telecommuting: to help staff juggle their professional and other obligations
Employees unknowingly blur the lines between their personal and professional lives, so help them separate them.
Stress reduction, acceptance of individuality
Whatever the perspective, putting people at the center of everything leads to better working conditions and a clear increase in productivity. Only by listening to them and giving them the best environment is it possible to create a truly stress-free workplace. When reviewing our mental health tips, don’t forget to:
- Support team leaders: and they’ll be responsible for transferring their own well-being to team members
- Improve parking and space conditions: and offer concrete and visible changes that will enrich daily management even before it begins
- Conduct regular engagement surveys: provide the right space to express needs, problems, or even key contributions
- Offer courses and professional training spaces: to be chosen by the teams and that contribute to enriching strengths or working on coping strategies
- Provide disengagement spaces: outside and inside the office. By setting clear boundaries around working hours and making conditions more flexible, you’ll give everyone’s motivation the oxygen it needs
As we mentioned earlier, change in an organization must come from the top down, always with the people in mind. If you make changes thinking only about increasing productivity, your employees will resent them.
If you do it thinking about them, they’ll thank you generously in return through the numbers you need.
That’s thinking about mental health.
