The Covid 19 pandemic has had an immense impact on Australian workplaces. The ongoing uncertainty and disruption to ‘normal life’ has shifted the way people think of and engage with their work. The continual strain caused by the pandemic has seen an astronomical increase of poor mental health, so there has never been a more important time for workplaces to focus on workers wellbeing. In the pre-pandemic work environment, salaries and benefits were considered adequate compensation for time and labour, but the pandemic has shifted this. Now, workers are far more willing to take charge of their mental health and seek jobs that they find fulfilling and enriching, with many renegotiating their expectations of what they receive in compensation for their labour. This is a pivotal time for the Australian workspace; in this changing environment, employers have the opportunity to redefine their workplace and focus on providing a supportive space for their employees that promotes mental health and wellbeing.
According to the University of Melbourne’s Center for Wellbeing, businesses who actively support their employee’s mental health and wellbeing are better for workers: employees are healthier, happier, and more productive. For every dollar spent on mental health, workplaces receive a return of $2.30 to as high as $14.50. The following three tips enable workplaces to promote a psychologically healthy environment and encourage the wellbeing of their workers.
1. Support Job Crafting.
Job Crafting is the personalisation of a job to suit a person’s strengths, values, and interests. These strategies can include changing aspects of how a person performs their work, building new connections and interpersonal relationships with colleagues, and reframing how one thinks about work and its value. Job Crafting is something workers often automatically do to make their load more manageable. Actively supporting job crafting can benefit both the worker and the wider organisation as open and encouraging conversations can lead to employees implementing job crafting strategies that are beneficial for the workplace. Job crafting can be embedded into work processes (like performance reviews) in order to normalise and promote engagement. This can be as simple as integrating questions that focus on the workers goals and strengths, such as what would you like to do more/less of? How could we better utilise your strengths? Are there any projects that you would like to engage with?
2. Create a psychologically healthy workplace
Psychologically healthy workplaces promote a culture of learning, innovation, healthy risk taking, and collaboration. Workers in a psychologically healthy workplace are more likely to reach out and ask for help, take initiative, and speak up. So how can a workplace increase psychological safety? It’s important to allow a culture of fallibility. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and mistakes are often how people learn and grow. The examples leaders make set the tone for the working environment, so it’s important to acknowledge mistakes or current struggles that you may be facing. By humanising your own learning process, you show workers that struggles are a normal part of working life, making them more likely to reach out and ask for help when they need it. Welcome criticism. This empowers people to express themselves and creates a culture of mutual respect and trust. Embedding these strategies in routine, such as weekly team wellbeing meetings, makes them more accessible and normalises an openly communicative workplace culture.
3. Promote Healthy Passion
Passion is what drives a workforce. Healthy passion, that is aligned with a person’s values and inner goals, can lead to increased productivity, and promote a sense of fulfillment and purpose from work. This can increase wellbeing at work. Obsessive passion, however, is all consuming and can lead to increased stress and burnout. Being able to recognise when a worker may be experiencing obsessive passion and employ strategies that enable them to break their obsessive passion is important in ensuring their health and wellbeing. Does a worker struggle to switch themselves off from work? Do they often bring their work home with them or work late into the night? Have they been looking tired? Has their productivity and quality of work decreased, despite their extra working hours? They may be experiencing obsessive passion.
Job crafting is an effective way to try to break this obsessive cycle. Have an open conversation with them about their wellbeing and discuss strategies to be implemented in order to support their psychological health. This could be implementing a walking lunch, encouraging them to take up an after-work activity such as an exercise class to ensure they are not working unnecessary hours or shifting their responsibilities to a new task.
Building a supportive work environment ensures the wellbeing and psychological health of your workers.
