Managing people isn’t just about measuring their performance, confirming their compliance with policies, and helping them improve their skills; it also includes ensuring their mental and physical well-being at work and beyond. While work often contributes, a new CDC report suggests more than fifty percent of Americans suffer from mental health disorders and illnesses.
In this scenario, HR becomes responsible for not just avoiding making work or the workplace a mental health trigger for employees but also for creating a workplace environment that ensures employee well-being. It may sound overwhelming, but building a workplace culture with mental health awareness is simple and can be accomplished through the following steps:
Set an Example
Despite widespread mental health awareness today, discussing one’s mental health is still taboo. Employees may also feel shy or embarrassed of sharing their unseen health problems with colleagues and employers for fear of appearing ill-fitted for their position or unreliable. However, HR personnel can set an example of being open and accepting in the workplace.
For example, HR personnel can share their mental health issues or that of a close family member. They can also discuss new activities, such as yoga or painting, to help them calm mentally. Discussions on therapy and medication also promote an atmosphere where employees can be confident to open up about their struggles.
Schedule Mental Health Awareness Training
A company’s employees don’t just contribute to its growth through their learned skills; they also do so with their personalities. Discipline, charisma, communication, creativity, and self-motivation are only some personality traits that make individuals valuable to any organization.
Since hardworking and self-motivated employees are often burdened with more than they can handle, they can opt for absence rather than allow themselves to reach burnout than discussing the matter. Thus, to ensure that the company can benefit from its employees’ positive traits, HR personnel must schedule mental health awareness training.
Training sessions on mental health awareness can guide employees on communicating their problems with their managers or HR personnel. The sessions can also advise admin and HR staff on various ways to ensure employee well-being.
Provide Flexibility
One of the most effective ways to ensure employee well-being is to provide flexibility wherever and whenever possible. With work from home being one of the most sought-after employee benefits, understanding the need for employees to maintain a work-life balance is evident.
Open workspaces, flexible scheduling, and hybrid work culture are other excellent ways to practice mental health awareness. Paid time off is another employee benefit that can help workers take mental health days without feeling ashamed or embarrassed.
Drafting and implementing workplace policies that do not allow stigmatization of mental health issues or the use of terms and names that can be used to describe mental health patients is also essential. Lastly, HR personnel can significantly ensure employee well-being by remembering that managing people begins and ends with supporting them to improve professionally and as individuals.
