Business owners and corporate exec’s take heed – employees mental health matter too! There’s a brooding sense of uncertainty that has been on everyone’s mind ever since the start of the pandemic. From the rising cases of COVID to the vast number of protests going on all around the world, we can all say that 2020 hasn’t been the best year for most of us!
Naturally, with all these bad things going on all around us, some of us can’t help but feel anxious. With mental health being a significant factor in both productivity and work and overall stability in our everyday lives, we must support each other’s mental health!
Employees Mental Health – Managers can Help, too!
With that in mind, what can managers do to help with their employees’ mental health?
Become A Model For Healthy Behavior
Practice what you preach! Unless you are doing the advice that you’re giving to your employees. Just saying that you support mental health and leaving it at that would feel disingenuous.
Likewise, solely focusing on supporting your employees’ mental health and forgetting to take care of your own is ironic and makes your words feel insincere.
Tell your team that you’re taking breaks in between workloads, tell them that you have therapy treatments, share that you’re going out for a breath of fresh air. Simple things such as showing people that you do what you advocate in can make a difference.
Regularly Check In On Your Employees
This sounds like a no brainer, but a lot of managers tend to ignore this simple gesture. A simple “How are you feeling?” or “How are you?” can help your employees know that you care for them. Especially now that most of us are working from home where human interaction is limited, we as managers must communicate with our employees actively.
Sure, when someone tells you that they’re having a hard time, it almost feels like the world freezes up, and you don’t have anything to say. However, merely being there to listen to what they have to say is enough to give them a sense of comfort.
Showing compassion and letting your employees know that they can approach you anytime is the difference between a good manager and a stellar one!
Be Flexible
Every single one of your employees is a unique individual with different personalities. This individuality means that your approach when checking in on them or trying to communicate with them should be different as well.
Knowing how to act when dealing with stressors and helping cope with said stressors is the key to being flexible. Study your employees and see what approach would be best suited when checking in on them. Some may prefer to be addressed directly, while others may prefer it if you speak to them more gently.
Being Vulnerable
Being a manager makes you look unreachable for your employees. Since you have to act the part of someone responsible, reliable, and strict, people tend to assume that you’re almost invincible.
However, the best thing that you can do to not only make yourself look more approachable but also connect and relate to your employees more is show that you’re also vulnerable. Telling them your lapses, thoughts, mental state, or even past experiences with stressors and other similar things makes you sound more human than your employees think.
Your challenges and how you approach them are what builds you up, and telling your story to your employees might even motivate them!
Communication
Communication is the most crucial part of helping with anyone’s mental health. Communicating with people helps them open up and can take away a lot of emotional baggage. And as the manager, you have to communicate and update your staff with any modified work hours or work norms that they might experience because of the sudden shift to working from home.
Making them aware of the resources available for mental health accessible for your company and enticing them to use those services will help a lot as well!
Make them know that using mental health benefits isn’t something that they should be ashamed of and that it’s only natural. Removing the stigma revolving around the use of mental health benefits is critical if you want to have a healthy work environment.
As a manager, you can do a lot in the front lines when addressing mental health, and you should take that as an advantage to making the workplace a better place!
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