Prioritize Mental Health In Workplace

Mental health encompasses a person's social, psychological, and emotional well-being and considers factors such as stress management, strategic planning, and thought patterns. Mental health may significantly impact anyone's quality of life, and if not addressed, poor mental health can have long-term negative consequences.

Mental health, like physical health, encompasses a wide range of factors. Employees' mental well-being is an important aspect of their lives that must not be overlooked. And just because it is difficult to tell if someone is suffering from depression, anxiety, or even another mental illness at first glance, employers should not assume that all of their employees seem fine.

According to surveys conducted by several organisations, anxiety and depression have increased globally and more than doubled in many countries since March 2020.

Deal with meeting fatigue

The average worker attended 62 meetings per month, accounting for roughly one-fifth of their work hours. Not only are they completing less of their work, but in this day and age of Zoom calls and remote work, this represents an additional energy drain. This results in a lack of motivation, control, and satisfaction with their work accomplishments, indicators and signs of mental health burnout.

One solution for alleviating this mentally demanding meeting exhaustion is to implement no-meeting days. Preferably, offer it on the same day each week so that employees can enjoy it consistently.

Keep meetings to a minimum

While most companies that implement no-meeting days choose a "No-Meeting Monday," as Uber did twice during the summer, it can even be done on any day. Wilderness has "Deep Work Wednesdays (DWW)", and Asana has "No Meeting Wednesdays."

Instead of exhausting video calls interrupting and derailing their workflow, this simple shift in meeting the expectations for all employees for just one day each week allows everyone to retain their focus, concentration, and productivity.

Allow employees to self-direct their mental health

Most businesses recognise that providing some vacation days alone will not alleviate burnout, so they look for other ways to provide constructive emotional well-being assistance to their employees. Virtual health and well-being classes, subscription services to apps for mental well-being like Headspace and Calm, and online psychological counselling from select providers are among the most popular programmes that have met this need.

What's fantastic about these options, at least for employers, is that they "check the box" for mental wellness assistance and can be used by employees from anywhere. With remote work possibly lasting another two years, that's a huge plus.

However, it is not ideal because it is merely a catch-all solution - these do not address the wide range of individual emotional well-being needs that employees have, as everyone's mental health journey is specific and individual.

Give your employees control

Encouraging your workers to self-direct their mental well-being may be the ideal solution, which many companies enable by providing a wellness stipend.

Employees from any location, background or psychological issue can select what psychological assistance individually implies to them, and the company will cover the cost through reimbursement. You, as the employer, decide how much the compensation package is, what it includes, and how frequently the benefit is renewed - on a per-employee basis, you'll often find companies are offering anywhere from $25 to $100 per month or $200 to $1,000 quarterly or yearly.

A healthy lifestyle stipend enables your staff to invest in something more appropriate for their own mental health issues than the consultation app or therapist you chose. This can include, depending entirely on what your company considers an eligible expense:

• Therapy or counselling sessions (not limited to any particular providers)

• Subscription to their preferred fitness app 

• Losing weight membership plan

• Medication on prescription

• Medical monitoring devices

• Vacation costs

• Yoga equipment or classes

• Hiking equipment

• Food delivery

• Cleaning services for the home

• Childcare on standby

Allowing employees to personalise their own mental health assistance with a stipend also aligns with achieving a better and more inclusive employee experience, which is essential for surviving the Great Resignation and evolving into a company that others admire.

Some of today's most successful businesses provide wellness stipends. Basecamp and Salesforce offer their workers $100 per month to encourage their health and well-being, and companies such as Facebook, Zoom, and Webflow also provide wellness reimbursement programmes.

The four-day workweek

While strategies such as giving workers more time off and reducing their total meeting load are excellent ways to support employees' mental health, they are a drop in the bucket compared to the 90,000 hours the average individual will spend in the workplace in their lifetime. They have even less impact when employees return to a work environment that feels like a never-ending cycle of long hours and too much work.

The four-day workweek discusses this issue by making life less about work and promoting work-life balance. It's a concept that was developed long before the disease outbreak, with some countries putting it to the test in 2018.

It is gaining popularity as employee concerns about mental health grow, and remote work incentivises us all to reconsider old workplace traditions.

Reduce the stress

With an extra day off every week, employees now have more time to nurture and care for their personal and family lives, which they previously struggled to fit into their daily activities or neglected entirely.

The four-day workweek is no longer just a test concept; it is now a viable option for companies and countries seeking to significantly improve employee mental health. It's the norm in Iceland, where experiments from 2015 to 2019 were tremendously successful in regard to improving employee well-being and performance. Finland considered switching to a four-day workweek in early 2020, and countries such as Canada, Spain, and Japan have recently expressed interest in the idea. Scotland finally joined the research in early September.

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