By positively managing and supporting employees’ mental wellbeing, employers can ensure that staff perform to their potential. Achieving a mentally fit work culture gives the business the best possible chance to achieve peak performance.
What is a mentally fit work culture?
A mentally fit culture means an environment where employees are not only looked after physically, but are also cared for financially and emotionally.
This means that they’re given a wage that represents the work they do, and also that they feel valued, safe and happy within the workplace.
If an employee feels good in these respects, they are more likely to perform at a higher level, be more innovative and have more resilience when the working day becomes stressful — ultimately the employee has greater chance of performing at a higher level for the organisation.
What happens when mental fitness is poor?
Ignoring the mental health of employees can come at a high price. The consequences can include:
Lower productivity – Workers who are mentally unfit may continue to work for fear of facing prejudice if they disclose a mental health problem. This means they will likely be distracted from their job and perform poorly during office hours.
Lost workdays – Bullying, burnout and mental health are all within the top 5 reasons for absenteeism in Australia. According to a study by the State of Workplace Mental Health in Australia, it is estimated that untreated mental health conditions cost Australian workplaces approximately $10.9 billion per year.
Higher recruitment costs – Valued employees are lost when employers do not invest in mental health. Staff turnover as a result of employees leaving their jobs due to mental health issues costs millions of dollars every year.
Increased workplace conflict – Stress and mental health problems can lead to costly and time-consuming work conflict. Furthermore, without caring leadership, bullying can become more prominent too.
How do we create a mentally fit work culture?
1. Trust
Seal Team Six is known as the most prestigious unit of the USA’s armed forces — the best of the best of the best. But how do you think the members of this team are chosen?
Rather than recruit the people that are the best on the battlefield, the panel that select Seal Team Six members also examines ‘trustworthiness’. So much so that they prioritise selection of a candidate who scores high on a ‘trustworthy’ scale but is a medium ‘performer’, over someone who is a top ‘performer’ but scores medium-to-low on the ‘trustworthy’ scale.
One of the reasons why Seal Team Six select more trustworthy candidates is because, to develop trust within an entire team, you not only need trustworthy individuals, but trustworthy leaders.
Trust involves an emotional response where employees know that their leaders are ‘on their side’ and will treat them fairly, with respect, and where setbacks will not be necessarily met with negative consequences. Once a leader is respected and trusted, they are more likely to inspire and motivate other employees around them.
Trust in leaders creates a ripple effect at every level that motivates employees to put forward the effort needed to make an organisation successful.
It’s important to understand that trust is not built overnight. It’s built on hard work and it must be earned. The following qualities can help create a sense of trust amongst a team.
- Honesty and support
- The ability to listen and show understanding
- Consistency
- Modelling behaviour
- Accountability
Working on these qualities and building trust is worth the effort because, once trust is lost, it can be very difficult to recover.
2. Gratitude
As well as promoting trust, encouraging gratitude is imperative in creating a mentally fit work culture.
According to Sodexo’s 2017 Global Workplace Trends, only 59% of Australian workers felt that their contribution to their workplace was valued. When employees feel unvalued, there is a cost. Australian HR think tank Reventure estimates that up to 92% of workers who feel undervalued have disengaged from their work and the impact of this disengagement costs the Australian economy between $42 – $52.8 billion.
Practising gratitude at work drives real results. A recent study by email scheduling app Boomerang found that the best way to drive higher response rates to your emails lies in expressing gratitude in your sign off. Emails that were signed off “Thanks in advance”, “Thanks”, “Thank you”, “Cheers” or “Kind regards” received the highest response rates — as high as 66%!
You could also apply this practice of gratitude to other interactions at work. For example, verbally expressing gratitude for a job well done to a colleague. Employers can express gratitude by showing flexibility around hybrid working or holiday leave, and by creating spaces for staff recognition and by driving gratitude and recognition programs company-wide.
3. A safe and healthy workplace
If there are higher levels of trust and gratitude in the workplace, then it’s generally going to be a happier, nicer and less-toxic environment.
Under these conditions, employees are more likely to feel safe to raise their opinions and are less likely to experience bullying, harassment or discrimination. Ultimately, employees feel accepted and respected in a psychologically safe workplace.
Safe and healthy workplaces are also ones that encourage collaboration and have established methods for conflict prevention and resolution. In fact, according to the founder of the Mediation Training Institute in the U.S., Daniel Dana, 60-80% of all difficulties in organisations come from strained relationships (between staff), not from a lack of skill or motivation.
Managing conflicts and tensions between team members takes a lot of time and the longer it takes to get back to a more peaceful working environment, the greater the negative impacts on the team dynamics and organisational wellbeing. Unresolved conflict can also impact staff productivity and engagement at work.
Research has shown that those companies who actively promote a healthy workplace and consequently experience low levels of conflict share the following characteristics:
— Team members often enjoy emotional and personal conversations
— Employees talk to each other as individuals rather than just colleagues
— Every employee is kept in the loop and team conversations place a greater focus on how members of the group are feeling
— Conversations are monitored to ensure all team members participate equally to avoid a single person or a few people dominating the discussion
— Employees say that they feel included and that they are seen, heard and validated
Cultivating mental fitness in the workplace takes time and proactive measures. One of the best ways to start is by offering accessible tools and resources for employees. And because the practice of mental fitness will look different for each person, having options for your workforce is important. At Converge we have a range of services and programs specifically tailored to help promote a mentally fit work culture in your organisation.