World mental health day has dawned on us once again and this year, things have never been bleaker for most of us. COVID might be in the rear-view mirror (for the most part) but with the war in Ukraine only getting more dangerous and catalysing even more tension and despair across the globe, mental health has never been a more relevant topic.
This much is reinforced by a new study by PUSH Mind and Body, which polled over a thousand C-suite leaders, managers and junior employees at businesses across the country. It found that 78% of teams team has faced stress or burnout in recent years and a 43% rise in anxiety among employees.
Perhaps more worryingly, he majority of UK employees (62%) either “don’t trust their manager” or only trust them “somewhat” and more than half of all managers don’t trust their employees to work well from home. With that kind of mutual distrust at play, who can blame workers for feelings mentally drained?
Communication breakdown
By Thomas Hammerton
This mental health day, employers should be focusing on building and strengthening relationships with their teams. The PUSH report also found that 89% of employees feel their managers only care about themselves and “don’t make any effort” with their team. So be the change you want to see in the workplace.
56% of employees now claim that self-care is more important to them than work, a figure that has more than doubled since the 2020 pandemic. This seems to align with a period of great change, where many of us were forced into hybrid working without really being given time to acclimate.
To that end, 76% of UK employees say hybrid working would work better if companies offered “advice on how to switch off” (29%), burnout support (27%) and “strategies on how to deal with loneliness” (20%). 87% of UK employees also say hybrid working would work better if companies offered “better communication” (36%), “clearer boundary setting” (28%) and “stronger relationship building” (23%).
These are not unreasonable demands and, given the genuinely more progressive stance of the creative sectors, we should surely be the ones leading the charge?
Make the change
By Catherine Wood
Employee wellbeing and mental health have worsened since the pandemic. That much is abundantly clear. Trust is breaking down between employees and managers and nobody seems to feel that employers and c-suite executives are doing enough to safeguard mental health and provide teams with the support needed.
The answer lies in having a genuine and empathetic understanding of how the people in a business are feeling and using this insight to create and maintain a working culture and environment that makes employees feel safe.
If you want to change the way people are feeling, create a space where they feel able to talk openly and encourage this behaviour to take place regularly. Safe spaces are not about creating a physical space, but rather a culture where employees can show up authentically and speak in psychologically safe environments - promoting positive mental health for all.
In essence, we just need to learnt o trust each other a little more. That takes time, granted, but today of all days, with the eyes of the world on our collective mental health, why not start small and sow the seeds of change while the sun’s still shining?
