Tips To Managing Mental Health in the Workplace

In the last 10 years, many workplaces have acknowledged the link between mental health and wellbeing alongside good employee performance. Ergo, many businesses have made the smart decision to invest in their staff's wellbeing, as doing so is an investment in their productivity and employee retention.

However, figures have shown that at the time of writing, only a quarter of the UK's largest companies have improved their workplace's mental health policies. This is not good for staff or companies, as they will likely fall behind in their growth and appeal to new employees.

If you are a manager going into 2025, you want to help your employees better manage their mental health, then read on here, and you will be shown some top tips to implement.

Individualise Staffs Wellbeing and Support

As any psychologist will tell you, no two people are the same when it comes to their mental health, and, as such, when you are looking for help managing staff who have mental health concerns, it should be noted that the key is to individualise their needs. Working with a large and diverse workforce may present unique challenges for bosses and managers, and, when it comes to mental health, engaging in a one-size-fits-all approach is often ineffective and ultimately poor.

You need to work to understand your employees and, if possible, work with occupational health to customize the support you can offer. You aim to build trust and keep the employees happy, so try to ensure that all of their issues can be effectively managed and addressed. For instance, if you have a staff member who is a carer in their personal life, and they need flexible working hours to prevent burnout and stress, this is worth offering. Or, if a staff member has recently lost a family member, it may be worth offering them bereavement leave as well as counseling or therapy when they come back to the workplace.

Try To Approach Each Case Holistically

Remember the psychologist that was mentioned earlier?

It has been found time and time again by psychologists and psychiatrists that physical and mental health are linked, and if this is ignored, it can limit how good any mental health strategy is. If, as an organization, you view employee wellbeing holistically, you can empower your employees to become more resilient in different areas of their lives. So, it can be worth offering staff gym memberships and healthy snacks in any cafeteria, as this will help keep their physical health in good condition and help them with their mental health, too.

Recognize and Honour Boundaries

Since 2020, there has been a shift in most workplaces towards remote or hybrid working. This is great for helping workers balance their work-life balance, but it can make it harder for managers to oversee what is going on, creating anxiety on their end. However, to help manage and maintain good overall employee mental health, you need to recognize that hybrid or remote working is different from in-person working and that, in most cases, checking in once a day is fine. On the other hand, if your staff are somewhat isolated by remote working, it can be worth offering in-person events for your team to attend so they can feel more included in the workplace setting.

Retrain Managers

It is often the case that staff members may feel that they are unable to talk to managers about how they are feeling, especially if they believe that the managers are not empathic or caring.

So, as an owner or manager yourself, you need to ensure that your senior staff are approachable. This can involve retraining managers in line with mental health and current governmental policy, as well as updating them on safeguarding training for vulnerable members of staff. This will help your teams feel more able to express their mental health needs and will ensure that your managers are equipped to handle such issues as and when they arise.

Create an Open Culture

Studies have found that as many as 57% of all employees in the UK feel unsafe talking about their mental health with their employers. As an employer or manager, this can have a financial impact if staff take prolonged leave due to mental health, and it can also create issues with retention.

Therefore, it's worth trying to create an open culture in your workspace, which allows staff to talk freely about their mental health. One way to showcase this is to put pamphlets or posters around your place of work or make it the focus of your workplace meetings once a month.