Throughout the pandemic, it has been extremely difficult for businesses to stay afloat let alone address the challenges of corporate wellness. The 2021 Mind Workplace report from Mental Health America (MHA) states that workplace stress is dramatically impacting the mental health of employees and there is not enough support or research to help them manage their stress. In addition, a recent LA Times article published in March 25 titled, “Workers Look to their Bosses for Mental Health Support. Many Aren’t Getting It,” reports that workers are looking to their bosses for more mental health support. It is not surprising that wellness and mental health are taking a back seat in many organizations with staff looking for support from people that don’t have experience with handling mental health issues. The question is how do companies or individuals educate themselves about potential mental health issues.
On the other hand, visionary businesses have invested in their staff like never before, knowing that fear, anxiety and change are major contributing factors in poor business performance and moral.
At Acquired Data Solutions, adopting wellness for our company has come from my own experiences as a young entrepreneur when I started in business over 20 years ago. I believe there are five steps to focus on in order to keep employees happy.
Step 1: Create Safety
The ability to communicate effectively is ultimately the thing that probably separates people. It's very hard to have clear, effective communication, no matter how hard you work at it. Everything can be misinterpreted, from an action to a phrase to an intention. Bringing awareness to those things, talking openly and giving employees space and time, is the first step to creating safety.
And so, creating that space is something which promotes emotional or psychological safety. Bringing in education tools and training, or speaking about mental wellness, or bringing in mindfulness — doing all of these things — helps your staff know that you really care about them.
Step 2: Create Psychological Constructs
It's up to the leader, or the CEO to create the psychological constructs that make it ok to have feelings.
We all suffer from the same constraints. There's no one I know that doesn't have some sort of resentment, anxiety or something that they're dealing with. As a company, it’s important to acknowledge these feelings and make them ok to talk about.
Step 3: Encourage Staff to reach out
In Bethesda, MD, The Center for Mindful Living provides many programs that we share with our staff. In fact, I encourage staff to go on retreats that is provided by The Center for Mindful Living.
I also suggest staff seek out a mindfulness coach. I communicate to employees to seek help. I think a lot of it starts with a leader talking about it and bringing awareness to corporate wellness. This, in fact, is one of our beliefs, our values. My staff knows that self-compassion is a huge value of mine. And trying to get that message to employees is very, very important.
Step 4: Encourage Virtual Support
What's great currently about some of these organizations we work with is they offer online education and support, so it's made life so much easier. There are so many resources out there that are virtual now, as well as free or inexpensive resources. It is worth spending time searching for organizations in your local area as well as on a national level.
Step 5: Get your business Mental Health Certified
We brought in LEAD (Let's Empower, Advocate, and Do) Inc. to our company. LEAD empowers companies with mental health and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training, coaching, and consulting. LEAD provides training on A.B.C., which stands for Ask, Be aware and Connect.
LEAD’s Corporate Mental Health certification, which we have completed, introduces executives and leadership teams to the risk factors, warning signs, and prevalence of chronic stress and mental illness in the workplace.
Through interactive discussion, role-play activities, and an ABC action plan, LEAD empowers professionals to identify early signs and symptoms of mental illness in their co-workers and effectively respond in both non-crisis and crisis situations. As the CEO, I was extremely grateful to have had this training because we had unexpected deaths in the business during the early months of the pandemic. Without this training, I wouldn’t have had as many skills to utilize during my own wellness and leadership journey.
In business, as we know, it is all about return on investment, so how do you put a price on the costs of addressing mental health? Deloitte in 2017 commented that “For every $100 invested in mental health interventions, a company sees a return of up to $600 in improved health and productivity of employees.” Surely that is enough incentive for organizations to invest in a mental health plan like I did with LEAD.
Conclusion
Over the last year, we have created a value statement. We have values including passion, stretch, grit, loyalty and empowerment, and have communicated how each one of these values fits into oneself. At the end of the day, you can't control anybody else, you can only educate employees about self-awareness and encourage them to be the best that they can.
