Mental Health and Your Staff – Key Considerations

Running a business is a difficult and multifaceted thing, for entrepreneurs of every strip and business owners of all seniority levels. The difficult inherent to managing a business is set to increase, too, with a tough year ahead financially speaking. As interest rates remain high and spending slumps, there will be a lot of remedial actions necessary to keep even the healthiest businesses afloat.

While many businesses look outward for solutions, it is far more important for business leaders to look inward – and particularly at their staff. For one, the same economic issues besieging industries are also besieging households, creating additional stress for your workers that could dramatically decrease morale. For another, worker happiness is directly correlated with productivity, and essential for any business hoping to remain viable in the long term.

As such, addressing worker happiness and comfort is one of the more important internal measures you can take as a business leader. Supporting poor mental health is one major way in which you can do this – but what is there to consider in offering the right forms of support to your staff?

The Breadth of Mental Health

Mental health is an extremely broad subject, and something which can impact each of us in different ways. Indeed, all of us have been impacted by some form of mental health issue at one point or another, whether personally or in engaging with a loved one. Bereavement is common cause for mental instability, as is workplace stress. Indeed, stress is a predominant cause for mental illness at present, with 74% of people in the UK having reported feeling overwhelmed with stress. What can your business provide to assuage this?

Private Counselling

One of the more immediate ways in which you can helpfully service your staff is through offering access to private counselling sessions as an employee benefit. NHS mental health services are oversubscribed and underserved, making it difficult for people to access the help they may need; paying for access to a private option could be transformative.

Legal Assistance

Another lesser-sung form of support you can provide as a business relates to legal concerns. Mental health issues can present as a result of medical events, such as accidents leading to severe injury. In the event that a staff member experiences a life-changing injury resulting in amputation, there may be many deleterious consequences beyond the purely physical – all of which can contribute to worsening mental condition. Providing help for such staff to file civil amputation claims against the appropriate parties can help alleviate stress relating to the situation, and hasten their recovery time in the process.

Flexible Working

Simple and even subtle changes to the structure of your employees’ working day can also be a major boon for mental health. Giving them the opportunity to choose whether or not to work from home, no questions asked, can alleviate various invisible stresses – as can allowing them to choose their starting and finishing hours each week.