Providing frequent opportunities to talk about wellness within your organisation is key to normalising the language around mental health and bringing psychological safety to the forefront of your daily activities.
Understanding the work related factors (root causes of workplace mental injury) can help reduce the reluctance to speak about these things. Having these discussions enables you to clearly demonstrate to all employees that their wellbeing matters and is valued by your organisation.
Normalising these conversations and addressing psychosocial safety in group settings such as team meetings and town-halls is important to reducing stigma, but sometimes these forums may not be appropriate if we want to preserve an individual’s mental health.
Therefore, understanding how and when to talk about mental health also helps us ensure that these conversations don’t become a hazard to psychosocial safety, by making individuals feel singled out or embarrassed.
Although the benefits of discussing wellness are clear, it can be difficult to know how to start having these conversations in a way that is comfortable, useful and genuine, especially if your organisation isn’t used to having them regularly.
It is also important to be aware that in the beginning raising these topics may feel awkward, however this will gradually subside over time as your staff becomes more open and comfortable.
A survey of over 40 thousand British workers showed that when leaders regularly checked in with how their employees were feeling, employees were more likely to feel happy at work and that their workplace supported their mental health.
79% of employees whose leader regularly checked in with them felt that their leader supported their mental health, compared to only 13% of those with leaders who did not (1).
“I start each Senior Leadership Meeting with a Wellness Moment to ‘normalise the language’ and to get the leaders ‘looking for it’. Only then do we move on to the To Do List”
So, even though we know they’re important, beginning to have these conversations can feel awkward. To minimise initial discomfort, consider the following strategies:
Education is the key. Education for all staff about the root causes of workplace mental injury
To ease your team into having these conversations and reduce feelings that a meaningless new process is being abruptly introduced, consider engaging your Wellness Officer to introduce them
Using existing forums and processes for discussing physical safety may provide a familiar and comfortable setting to discuss wellness topics.
For example, if you normally discuss physical safety hazards that have been noticed and addressed you can easily move on to discussing potential psychosocial safety hazards.
Once the topic is broached, embedding these conversations into your regular work routine is the next step:
Conduct these conversations regularly, especially with colleagues who work remotely
Schedule time for wellness discussions into regular meeting agendas (including one-on-ones, performance conversations and mentoring sessions)
Hold these conversations across all settings and levels of the organisation, (at the leadership level, town halls, and team meetings)
Take time to follow up on previous conversations particularly those where mental health or wellbeing issues have been discussed.
Call To Action
These actions are critical to addressing issues relating to psychological safety and mental health, and bringing wellness to the forefront of your organisation…
Embed appropriate conversations about wellness into your regular team meetings.
Use team or one-on-one meetings to recognise and discuss situations or events that may be the cause of group stress or anxiety.
Regularly raise wellness topics in group settings and facilitate conversations about managing wellness in the face of potential stressors, hazards and organisational changes.
Switch to one-on-one conversations when appropriate, in order to preserve the wellbeing of specific individuals.
Where to now?
Sources
Mind index study, pg.15