5 Ways to Support Employee Mental Health

Prioritising employee mental health has become essential in today’s workplace. Even before the pandemic, nearly 15% of workers experienced mental health issues, with 13% of sickness and absences linked to these conditions, according to the Mental Health Foundation.

The pandemic further exacerbated this, as extended periods of remote work increased feelings of isolation and emotional exhaustion. For example, 20% of employees working 41-60 hours from home reported isolation, while 39% felt emotionally drained—rates significantly higher than those in office settings. Prioritising mental health is no longer optional – it’s a business imperative.

Benefits of mental health support

The benefits of a good mental health support system for employees are myriad and powerful. The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health has found that better mental health support in the workplace could save UK businesses up to £8 billion per year. Knapp and Parsonage’s economic case for mental health promotion in the workplace found that companies that offer treatment and care management for employees at risk of or suffering from depression could generate massive profits – four times bigger than the investment.

The implication is clear: employers have an ethical obligation to offer mental health support to their employees during this fraught period as we once again seem to emerge from the COVID crisis, and would also be wise to do so; the monetary benefits to the company could be massive.

Here are five ways that you, as a manager, can transform your business into a haven for mental health support and wellbeing, whether in the office or working remotely.

Understand the impact of mental health on your employees.

It is massively important for business leaders to be able to recognise emotional distress in their employees so that, according to clinical neuropsychologist James Schultz, PhD, “It’s important for managers to be trained to recognise the signs of emotional distress so they can react in a supportive rather than a punitive way,”. Understanding employee mental health is key to providing a good level of support and reaping the rewards of doing so.

Some steps that a manager could take include mandatory mental health training for company leaders, training managers on the signs of emotional distress, or incorporating regular surveys such as the Work Limitations Questionnaire.

Practice what you preach.

The current working culture and climate, still incorporating significant amounts of working from home, can generate feelings of guilt and unhealthy competitiveness as employees compare who worked from home to the latest or who had the longest Zoom meeting. This culture of overworking exacerbates mental health issues, leaving employees feeling numb, burnt out and unproductive.

Managers have a huge role to play in setting the tone for the company to follow. They should model healthy behaviours, creating an environment where team members feel they can prioritise self-care and set reasonable boundaries. Managers should share wellbeing activities that they themselves are undertaking: a walk, a therapy session, even a staycation. Normalise a healthy workplace environment, and the positive effects on employee mental health will be tangible.

Encourage a culture of interpersonal support through check-ins. 

The ‘new normal’ of hybrid working means that we will undoubtedly see a large portion of the workforce still opting to sometimes work from home – certainly at markedly higher levels than pre-pandemic. Working from home poses significant mental health challenges. While employees can work in comfortable and familiar surroundings, the blurring of work and leisure time has led to feelings of rootlessness and overwork, and the Mental Health Foundation has found that during lockdowns, nearly a quarter of adults in the UK expressed that they felt lonely.

Creating a culture of interpersonal support characterised by frequent check-ins with employees—whether in the office or working remotely—is an important managerial step you could take to create a workplace that supports employee mental health. Going beyond a simple ‘how are you?’ and offering tailored support systems to individual employees could be an incredibly powerful tool in shaping your workplace culture for the better.

Be flexible

Flexibility is key in the modern workplace. Modern office design that supports different working modes and offers flexibility is quickly becoming the norm, and changes resulting from the pandemic have only stressed the need for workplaces to remain flexible.

Managers must expect and accept situations to constantly change. Encouraging and maintaining a level of open communication will allow for this outlook to be sustainable. Managers mustn’t assume the needs of their team; rather, they must take a customised approach to fill different needs at different times. In the hybrid workplace, flexibility is paramount.

Open lines of communication.

Managers can drastically reduce stress on their teams by keeping them well-informed at all times on business changes or organisational updates. Setting honest expectations about workloads and priorities can also be highly important. We are still in a period of significant uncertainty, and often, clarity and transparency goes a long way toward putting people at ease.

A supportive workplace culture

In these difficult and uncertain times, we have all experienced, to varying degrees, significant strain on our mental health. This in turn has deleterious effects on our productivity in the workplace. A business that can offer good levels of mental health support, that can establish wellbeing norms from the managerial level down, that can offer interpersonal support, and that can offer clarity and transparency in an obfuscated moment, will fulfil its ethical duty to its employees and reap the rewards that a positive, motivated workforce has to offer.

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