Organisations must place a high priority for the mental health of their employee's since it is a crucial part of their health and can affect the achievements within the company.
Mental health impact on companies
Poor mental health can result in higher absence rates, lower production levels and higher healthcare expenditures; these all have negative financial consequences for the business.
Mental health has always been an issue for most people, since covid-19 there has been a 25% increase in mental health, specifically with anxiety and depression. Covid-19 was a hard time for many people, some people alone and not much to do may have felt overwhelmed and triggered more mental health issues, whilst the only help for their suffering was online and not much could have been done. Whilst people started to go back to work, they may have enjoyed being with other co-workers, but still suffered from the mental issues so their performance at work may not have been their best work.
There are strategies that companies can apply to help ensure that their employees get the best health care, as companies want results to be positive and if employees have other things on their mind, it can affect their production of work which long term affects the company's financial gain.
Strategies for large companies
Firstly, companies should have mental health programs that offer their employees the tools and assistance that they will need to ensure they can manage their mental health. These programs could cover topics including stress reduction methods, counselling, and mental health education. All these factors are extremely important as they affect their employees and how they work efficiently, for companies to bring extra help for their employees will give the employees reassurance that they matter; this is because the company isn't just seeing their achievements dropping and replacing their employees, their taking an extra step to see if they can be helped rather than dropped.
Secondly, encouraging employee's engagement can create a positive work environment that employee's will want and need to achieve their best. With the companies encouraging employees engagement it can create a sense of community between the employee's making the environment more trustworthy and comfortable. Companies can achieve this through doing team-building exercises, employee reward plans, and social gatherings that helps a healthy work-life balance, this method will bring less stress for their employees and may make employees feel more comfortable to communicate about their issues rather than keeping it hidden.
Thirdly, it is known that employees who feel as though they can't communicate with their managers have been 23% more likely than others to experience mental health issues. This proves it is important that employees with a leading role should know their responsibility to have time for their employees and listen to problems whilst trying to understand rather than dismiss their ideas. As a leading role such as manager communication between people who they are responsible for is key, as in a business all employees need to feel comfortable to suggest or disagree with ideas as that's what can make or break a true business; everyone's voice should be heard.
Lastly, another way companies can help their employees is by reducing stigma around mental health and increase awareness so employees feel pleased that it's not just them but can see others suffer too and can communicate more freely. By companies promoting awareness for mental health, it can develop a supporting culture, they can do so by having access to mental health resources and services, as well as the management training programmes can make them more aware of signs to look out for so they can spot it within their employees and help further.
To sum up, I believe that companies have a duty to try protecting the mental health of their employees. Through doing this companies will get a good reputation around their company due to the employees feeling safe and understood rather than being fired for not achieving what they should be it shows that it is ok for employees to feel overwhelmed and not to be perfect all the time. Through the company making effort to support mental health it can increase their productivity as their workplace will be a positive place to work with so will feel more verbal about problems where people can give advice so that the workload isn't stressful but can be more enjoyable.