As a manager, you may feel that employees should separate their personal lives from their workplace performance. But in many cases, this is easier said than done. An employee’s mental health can significantly impact their productivity, whether or not their emotional struggles have anything to do with work.
Understanding the link between employee mental health and productivity is important to running a healthy and sustainable business. WorkSafe can help you identify risks of work-related injuries and illnesses to maintain a safe and productive workplace.
How Mental Health Affects Productivity in the Workplace
A review of 38 research studies found clear evidence that poor mental health, mainly depression or anxiety, is associated with lost productivity. An employee’s mental health can affect their workplace performance in several ways.
Poor mental health is often associated with one or several of the following symptoms:
- Low concentration levels: When a person is struggling with their mental health, they may have trouble concentrating on tasks. They may be distracted by their thoughts or challenges going on in their lives, making it difficult to focus on work and finish tasks in the allotted time.
- Declining motivation: Poor mental health can also reduce an employee’s motivation. They may not have the drive they need to complete tasks and be productive at work. While they may desire to complete their tasks, their actual motivation to do so is lacking, impacting their workplace performance.
- Memory loss: In some cases, mental illness can affect a person’s memory. They may not encode information as effectively as they otherwise would, leading them to misremember work information and make errors. They may also make “careless” mistakes and forget tasks that they would otherwise remember as part of their workflow.
- Reduced self-confidence: Mental illness can significantly lower a person’s confidence. They may not feel confident in their ability to complete workplace tasks, leading to reduced effort or even a self-fulfilling prophecy of poor performance.
Two main consequences of these symptoms are absenteeism and presenteeism. Absenteeism refers to when employees miss work. Presenteeism refers to when employees show up to work but are not productive. Both effects present significant challenges for your workplace.
Addressing Workplace Stress and Burnout Through Mental Health Initiatives
Work may just be one of the many factors affecting an employee’s mental health. They may be experiencing struggles in their personal life or have a mental illness diagnosis related to genetics or changes in brain chemistry.
But regardless of the reason behind an employee’s mental health struggles, implementing mental health initiatives in your business can be helpful. In some cases, work-related mental illness can be considered a work injury that leads to grounds for workers’ compensation. Reduced productivity due to mental health struggles can affect your business’s revenue and employee retention.
You can seek to improve employee mental health and productivity through initiatives like:
- Mental health time off. Consider offering employees more paid days off or even “mental health days” that they can use when they are experiencing high levels of stress or struggles with mental illness. Even offering unpaid mental health days could be helpful if your workplace cannot afford more PTO time.
- Better work-life balance initiatives. Avoid contacting employees outside of work and requiring them to work outside of their regular hours as much as possible. Also consider offering work-from-home opportunities whenever possible. Strive to enable employees to keep work at work and avoid mixing their work and personal lives to maintain a better work-life balance.
- Support for employees struggling with mental health. Consider offering therapy or mental health benefits as part of workers’ benefit packages. Your business could even partner with an online counseling program to give employees access to affordable mental health services.
- Create a supportive, de-stigmatized work environment. Employees should feel comfortable discussing mental health matters at work. For example, an employee shouldn’t feel the need to hide that they are using a sick day for their mental health rather than a physical condition. Creating a supportive workplace culture can also help prevent an employee’s mental health from worsening due to workplace matters.
Prevent and Manage Workplace Mental Health Struggles With WorkSafe
Improving mental health support is an important aspect of enhancing mental health and safety in the workplace. You can strive to reduce absenteeism through wellness programs and efforts to promote a better work-life balance.
WorkSafe helps businesses like yours reduce workplace injuries and improve employee well-being. Request a no-obligation call today at 316-262-8800 to learn how you can enhance employee mental health and productivity and enable workers to safely do the jobs they were hired for.