Mental Health in the Workplace: 5 Tips for Leaders
The average person spends just under a third of their life at work when accounting for commute times. Considering the average person sleeps 7 to 9 hours per night, it’s a significant chunk of your waking life spent at work. It’s no wonder, then, that your job plays a significant role in many people’s mental health.
Having the right manager can ease this stress on a team member’s mental health, helping with progression and workloads so that employees aren’t taking their job home with them.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at how leaders in the workplace can take positive steps towards helping the mental health of their team.
Quick links
– The manager’s role in mental health and workplace culture
– The role of a manager in employee wellbeing
– How to spot early signs of mental health problems
– How to support employee mental health
– Making workplace adjustments
– Training and resources for managers
The manager’s role in mental health and workplace culture
As a manager, your job isn’t just to handle workloads; your role is also pastoral. This can include support during difficult periods in your team member’s life, such as bereavement, managing conflict, and helping employees to progress.
Without these things, working life can become stressful, which can have a knock-on effect on someone’s personal life. Ultimately, unhappy colleagues are unlikely to stay in a job for very long, so looking after the mental health of those colleagues is important.
The role of a manager in employee wellbeing
Managers are usually the first to notice changes in behaviour from members of their team, due to the nature of their regular contact, including 1-2-1s. This makes it crucial for managers to pick up any changes that might indicate a mental health problem.
Managers also play a vital role in shaping the culture of a team. It’s important that managers curate an environment where team members feel comfortable speaking up if they are experiencing mental health issues and also ensure there is an opportunity for employees to speak openly during regular 1-2-1s.
The old saying goes that employees don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers, which should give an indication of how much impact a manager can have on the team.
Common mental health challenges at work
The nature of spending multiple hours per day at work means that it’s a place where mental health challenges are likely to come up. But which challenges can you, as a manager, spot?
Well, firstly, let’s start by clarifying that you should avoid prying questions, and absolutely avoid any attempt to diagnose your team member’s symptoms.
However, if you notice significant and sustained changes in a team member’s levels of perceived stress, anxiety, depression, or burnout, then you should initiate an informal conversation in private to get a better understanding of the issue. A positive working relationship is invaluable at a time like this, encouraging the employee to talk openly.
Before you start the conversation, you might notice a drop in performance, engagement within the office, motivation, and strained workplace relationships, all of which might go unnoticed during busy periods. By fostering a culture of openness within your team, the conversation might be initiated by the team member, taking out a lot of the guesswork.
Creating a positive mental health culture
Mental health is just as important as physical health, but unfortunately, stigma still persists. Ideally, you should encourage open conversations about mental health struggles so that problems can be addressed and alleviated.
Things like regular check-ins, flexible schedules, and specific wellbeing initiatives can all contribute to a positive mental health culture. Particularly with issues like burnout, prevention is usually better than a cure. If a positive mental health culture hasn’t been implemented, employees might bottle these feelings up, making it an uphill battle to solve.
How to spot early signs of mental health problems
Managers aren’t psychics or mind readers, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t spot early signs of mental health issues in the workplace.
Behavioural and performance shifts
Behavioural shifts such as a drop in engagement with colleagues and even little motivation to work can be indicative of an underlying mental health issue.
Naturally, people go through peaks and troughs at work, but if this is a sustained change in behaviour, then it’s worth mentioning to the colleague in question.
As a manager, it might be worth taking a note of dates and symptoms that have been noticed so that you can monitor if the symptoms get better or worse, before you bring them up during a conversation.
How to support employee mental health
Supporting an employee’s mental health is incredibly important because it not only impacts a business’s retention rate and output, but companies are made of people, so looking after them should be a constant consideration.
Foster a supportive and open culture
A supportive and open culture will not only act as a protective shield for employees, but it will also encourage team members to speak up if they’re struggling with their mental health.
As a manager, you should be approachable, host regular check-ins and demonstrate empathy during difficult situations. It isn’t your job to be a mental health professional, but sometimes being an ear for someone can make a world of difference.
Just ensure that the setting is private to talk about mental health issues, while also ensuring that mental health is not a taboo subject in the office, by leading by example.
Guiding employees to professional support
If informal conversations don’t fix the problem, and you are worried about your employees, it might be time to guide them towards professional support.
You don’t need to be a mental health expert, but you should be aware of the avenues that one can take if they’re struggling.
Making workplace adjustments
Once an employee has disclosed their struggles, the next priority is developing the right steps to address them. It’s essential that there are clear policies to help them recover from and cope with mental health-related issues. Typically, these changes are simple and cost-effective, though the right steps tend to be based entirely on the individual.
Examples of adjustments
Here are a few easy-to-implement but effective adjustments:
- Flexible start or finish times
- Reduced or adjusted workload
- Remote or hybrid working options
- Quiet rooms or low-stimulation workspaces
- Time off for therapy or medical appointments
- Sick leave
Training and resources for managers
How to support staff who are experiencing a mental health problem
From mental health charity Mind comes this extensive resource, which also features a hugely detailed section on return-to-work action plans.
The People Managers’ Guide to Mental Health
In collaboration with Mind, this resource from the CIPD features important definitions, prevention and intervention tips, and a host of other useful advice.
Relationships at work: our top tips for managers
From MentalHealth.org.uk is this piece that features a large focus on relationships in the workplace and how mental health affects them.
By using the steps above, your team will benefit from a more inclusive mental health environment. Remember, everyone benefits from breaking the taboo around talking about mental health, so lead by example and show that mental health is taken just as seriously as physical health.
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