Why mental health should come first as workplace stress and pressures mount

People who are well, do well. But we are doing a lot of doing, and not enough well. We know this because we are seeing increasing numbers of people experiencing chronic stress, burn-out and mental health problems. People are under pressure. Exhaustion from the stress of the pandemic, trauma from natural disasters like floods and bushfires, and stress from economic uncertainty due to increasing inflation are putting pressure on our mental health and well-being.People are not OKThe signs of mental ill health are not easy to see, yet mental illness is more common than many of us realise. In any year, 1 in 5 people in each of our teams at work are not OK. And the statistics also show that half of the people with a mental illness are not receiving professional support. So, there are people struggling at work without support who need our help.Mental health risk at work is realMental health is a growing safety risk in the workplace, with the workplace often being cited as a primary source of stress. And more than 90 per cent of Australia’s mental health compensation claims are linked to work-related stress or mental stress. The three most common causes of mental stress are preventable and relate to a lack of psychological safety at work. They are:Work pressure: 31 per centWork-related harassment and/or bullying: 27 per centExposure to workplace or occupational violence: 14 per centSo as leaders, what we say and do, or don’t say and don’t do, is a key contribution to the mental health and psychological safety of our team members. Put simply, psychological safety is a shared belief held by all members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Providing psychological safety will mean that the people in your team know it is OK not to be OK. They can safely share when they don’t know something, ask questions when they don’t understand, share when they notice something is wrong, and make mistakes and know they won’t be held against them.Mental health skills are no longer a nice-to-have, they are a leadership toolkit necessity.The federal Work Health and Safety Act for Australia was amended in April 2023, and now prescribes that employers manage psychosocial hazards at work. This translates to a legal responsibility for leaders to ensure that we are providing people with a psychologically safe and mentally healthy environment.A mentally healthy environment is one where leaders protect, respond to, and promote mental health for their people. This means providing a healthy environment where we play an active role in managing the work causes of stress and burnout before they get out of hand. And when we see someone struggling with the signs of stress, burn-out or mental health problems, we reach out and make the effort to connect and help. Put your own oxygen mask on firstMental health and wellbeing at work starts with the leader. Many of the leaders I work with can relate to some elements of the following: You are exhausted from the continuous juggle of day-to-day business priorities, delivering urgent work deadlines, and supporting an under-resourced team that is cracking under the unrelenting pressure. You take on more of the team’s workload in an attempt to shield your people from some of the more unrealistic work demands and relieve some of their stress burden. But no matter how hard you work, you don’t feel as though you are getting on top of things and worry that you are burning out. When we are stressed, wired and overtired, we can’t bring our best self to our work or our team. And if we are to support our team in healthy high performance, we need to lead with health and energy management practices for ourselves. These include clear boundaries and breaks, and daily health and self-care routines.Learn psychological safety, mental health and wellbeing skillsMost of us move into leadership and management roles with clarity around the tasks, projects, targets, and results we are expected to deliver. We are given training, development support in one-on-one meetings and work-in-progress meetings, either one-on-one or in teams, and performance expectations come with a range of measures for assessing our levels of performance and success. Less explicit and often more informal, unwritten, and unmeasured is an assumption that we will also manage the wellbeing of our team. And when we don’t manage the interpersonal dynamics well, leave those who are unwell to struggle, allow interpersonal conflict to fester or accept poor performance, we undermine the psychological safety, health and performance of our team.So, we need to invest in the reading, training, and coaching that will enable us to create and support a healthy work environment.Six tips for creating a healthy work environmentCreate a positive and inclusive work environment: Encourage teamwork, idea sharing, the debate of multiple options, positive and constructive feedback, and offers of help.Foster open communication: Create rituals in meetings where people can discuss concerns and challenges and get help. Schedule regular individual check-ins to discuss workload, progress and any wellbeing issues.Encourage breaks and boundaries: Take regular breaks for yourself, encourage the team to take breaks, set reasonable expectations for workload and deadlines, and provide support to prevent regular overwork.Support social and self-care: Prioritise lunch breaks – and not meetings with lunch.  Support time out for exercise, provide individual and team learning opportunities, be flexible with time for personal appointments and organise team social catch-ups. Give recognition and rewards: Express appreciation for individuals and the team on a regular basis. Acknowledge effort, experimentation, learning, helping out and progress. Celebrate effort, innovation and achievements both large and small.Provide support for mental health and wellbeing: Upskill your mental health literacy, build the team’s mental health literacy; try out the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for yourself and share with your team how it helps; engage the team in wellbeing challenges that all can take part in; and support health messages and awareness campaigns.The good news for leaders is that focusing on psychological safety and a mentally healthy working environment also brings a range of performance benefits. Psychological safety encourages open and authentic interpersonal behaviours, increases job engagement and satisfaction, supports coping with pressure and stress on the job, and creates a supportive and inclusive team climate. These are all key elements that contribute to healthy high performance.This story first appeared in the July 2023 issue of Inside FMCG Magazine.