Everyone has a role to play in creating a mentally healthy workplace.
Working in a healthy safe workplace can help prevent mental ill-health. It gives us a feeling of purpose and a sense of worth, where we meet new people, stay socially connected and are challenged to do great things.
The mental wellbeing of your people at work is good business for everyone. Whether you provide services, manufacture products, are big or small, there are some common factors in mentally supportive workplaces.
There are a range of actions your workplace can do to promote positive mental health:
• Prioritising mental health education - providing access to tools and resources that enable both workers and leadership to learn the skills to stay mentally healthy and support the staff around them.
• Promotion of support services – providing staff access to your EAP or other available support services to help support the mental health of them and or their family.
• Job design - providing clear job descriptions matching skills and abilities.
• Monitor workloads - provide realistic and flexible work schedules, reasonable adjustments to role type or tasks and rostering to prevent fatigue.
• Safe working conditions – find out what factors are affecting the mental health and wellbeing of your team and adjust work to be safe both physically and mentally.
• Trust and open communication – promote open conversation, honesty and respect and give employees a sense of shared purpose and input into the organisational goals.
Most of us spend about one third of our life at work. It is a big part of our daily lives and can have a considerable effect on our mental health in both a positive and negative way. If your organisation isn’t implementing the above strategies to provide a mentally healthy and supportive workplace, you can get in touch with our team for professional support.
