Ways to implement Mental Health Programs in the Workplace

Mental Health Programs in the workplace? Pretty uncommon, isn’t it?

While the corporates today have started focusing on employee health, their prime attention is towards the workforce being physically safe and sound. The many corporate wellness programs initiated by employers tend to revolve around issues like walking, healthy eating habits, and whatnot. Amid all these, mental health issues seem to take a backseat for people who do not consider them something as important as physical health.

However, not many would agree, but mental health has an equal role to play when it comes to employee productivity, absenteeism, turnovers, etc. Therefore, offering your employees with mental health services is the need of the hour.

Mental Health Care in the Workplace

As per research, half of the employees are dealing with depression and stress in the current world, which makes it a serious concern. Nevertheless, to combat the issues, there are specific steps corporates need to follow before going forward with mental health programs in the workplace.

1. Awareness

Knowing the intensity of the problem is something necessary for one to overcome it. Usually, people become skeptical when the term mental health comes into the picture. Since it is more of an abstract concept, it often revolved around stigma. And work-life does come with stress, how much we deny it. Employees struggle with work all the time, which causes stress, more on the mind than on the body.

You as an employer can come to their aid during problems as such. Educate employees about the whats, whys, and hows. If there is no mental health awareness at work, how are people supposed to know about it? To address a problem, the people need to be made aware of the same.

Therefore, employers can resort to several employee education tools and also provide resources in the form of mental health programs and workshops. Once they know, they can relate, thereby building a kind of support network amongst themselves.

2. Employee Assistance Programs

Employee Assistance Programs must be mandatory in every organization to assist employees in resolving issues adversely affecting their performance. Through these programs, employers can provide screening and counseling sessions for both mental and physical health to the staff.

Besides, EAP would also make provisions of customized services for the employees based on their needs. These services would be in the form of quick response to difficult and rising stressful situations at work. Also, you need to assure your employees that all their information will be kept confidential and there is nothing to worry about. Basically, they need not fret about its impact falling on their jobs.

3. Physical Activity

Mental health has a lot to do with physical activities directly correlating to heart disease conditions, diabetes, and various others. After all, the brain is a part of the body, and physical health means everything to do with the physique. Pretty obvious, right?

And physical health is inversely related to cost in the sense that your health deteriorates, cost increases. The employee with both mental and physical health disorders is bound to bear more costs than those without such conditions. Corporates always benefit from low medical prices while workers will, of course, benefit from overall good health.

All you have to do is motivate your employees to keep their bodies moving, either in walking, running, or something like a 7-minute workout session on a daily basis. A mild workout as such is capable of preventing mental disorders, including depressive episodes. So, just introduce programs like walkathons and marathons to engage your employees or maybe offer them gym memberships.

4. Employee Surveys

What can be a better way to understand the mental condition of employees than asking them yourself? Carry out surveys for their feedback about the work environment, whether there are work stressors or not. Conflicts with colleagues often lead to stress together with other job concerns such as work pressure and payrolls.

To get rid of similar situations, it is better to know what employees desire, and this is possible only through employee surveys. The issues mentioned in the survey will give you an insight according to which you proceed with workplace changes.

Because, in the end, who would know the situation better than the employees?

5. Workshop for Senior Leadership

Workshops are programs that are very engaging when held in the workplace. Like knowing about some relatable topic, it is always interesting, especially when complemented with free snacks. For employees struggling with stress and trauma, workshops on this issue will make the event worthwhile.

As an employer, you ought to consider inviting an experienced speaker, or a senior people look upto, to the event which can be interactive and motivating enough for your workforce to feel the positive environment. Along with this, pamphlets can be distributed highlighting the prevalence and negligence of mental health.

6. Flexible Work Hours

Work hours are less of a program and more of office culture. Being an employer, if you are giving employees a sense of relief by allowing them to work at their own pace, what else would they need? As it is known, corporates have started taking their workforce health very seriously, and it is evident from the relaxation of work hours along with offering work from home once a week. With this initiative, stress is bound to decrease, and productivity will rise.

If your employees are leaving work at the correct time and not working overtime, stress will get reduced. The mind will be calmed and relieved. So, instead of putting too much burden pointlessly, let them work at ease and be at peace.

Mental Health with Vantage Fit

Being a full-fledged wellness platform, Vantage Fit is equally concerned with both physical and mental wellness. Therefore, this explains the presence of a mood meter in the application.

The mood meter enables the employees to check in their mood status and in accordance to that, the employers can monitor the mental health of their employees.

The assessment of mood for a time frame will help employers know if his employeers are going through a tough phase and falling prey to depression.

Wrap Up

Mental health and physical health are closely related. And while one gets the full attention, the other one should not be neglected as one affects another. So what are you waiting for?

Gear up and make the required provisions for your employees in the form of mental health programs and see how enthusiasm and motivation it builds within them, thereby leading to good performance.

This article is written by Dipshi Bhattacharjee. Besides working as a Content Writer at Vantage Circle, she is an animal lover with a huge fascination for Cinema, Television & Foreign languages. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com