How To Support The Mental Health of Your Employees

As an employer, you have a responsibility to keep your staff safe, and this includes ensuring that they uphold good mental health. It should go without saying, but you shouldn’t expect your team to work under cramped conditions, nor should you make them regularly work past their contracted hours. Doing so can cause issues to their mental health, which will, in turn, create problems for your work.

Also read: Want to Save Billions? Stop Ignoring Mental Health

Your team needs to know that you, as the manager, recognize their hard work and appreciate what they do for your company. You should thank your staff when they go above and beyond and perform well, just as you should keep them up-to-date with what’s happening within the company, and that you will not put up with bad behavior and bullying.

Keep Them Informed

Hold regular meetings to keep the entirety of your team informed, and hold health and safety sessions to ensure that the utmost care is taken when carrying out tasks and operating machinery. For certain mental health issues, people may not understand the signs and symptoms they themselves may be experiencing, or they not understand that their co-worker who is seeming down these last few months, is, in fact, clinically depressed.

Support your employees and be approachable – let them know that you will answer their questions and not treat them differently if they’re open and honest with you about suffering from mental health issues. By knowing what to look out for, you may be able to approach any employees who are showing signs of drug abuse or other mental health issues. If you do spot differences in behavior, you need to approach them carefully and offer them support. If someone is experiencing drug abuse and they are a great worker, you can suggest treatment at a detox center in Atlanta, for example. If they need time off work to work through depression, anxiety or an eating disorder, as their employer, you should be able to permit these sabbaticals.

Operate A Zero Tolerance Policy

Under no circumstance should you put up with workplace bullying and intimidation. Such behavior needs to be stamped out as soon as it arises, and you need to let your employees know that you simply will not stand for antisocial behavior of any kind.

Also read: Signs Your Coworker May Need Help with an Addiction

Encourage a safe environment in which prejudice and judgment stay well and truly out of work premises, and consider scheduling open office hours during the week in which staff can approach you with any queries or worries they might be experiencing. You need to tell employees that if they are experiencing workplace bullying, they are to report it to you immediately.

Give Warnings

If you’re concerned about the quality and level of work any member of your team is producing, then you need to give them clear warning so that they’re aware that they need to improve. If you suddenly let a member of your team go without warning, then you can alienate them and cause huge upset and unrest throughout their personal lives and for the rest of your team.

You need to show your staff that you will treat them fairly and considerately should, for whatever reason, you begin to question their place at your company.

Don’t Overwork Them

Of course, you need the most out of your employees, but you must bear in mind that they’re human – you shouldn’t pile excessive amounts of work onto them and expect it to be returned to you in a short space of time. If you’re ever concerned about the wellbeing of any of your staff, then take them aside to ask how they’re coping and if there’s anything you can do to alleviate their stress.

Also read: 5 Signs of Employee Burnout You Might Be Missing and What You Can Do About It

Instead of expecting consistent high-quality work from only a select few members of your team, try and delegate tasks to others and see that your best employees oversee proceedings and how the task is undertaken by the other team members.

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