Why is Mental Health Important?

As a business, why is mental health important?

Is it more important than getting the products to the clients on time, making the production line more efficient, filling the sales pipeline researching the latest technology or having the slickest and latest viral advertising and PR campaign?

Every business should seek to make money, grow and innovate in order to survive. Unless you’re fully automated it’s very probable that you’ll need people to be involved in your day-to-day activities and transactions.

“Well, I don’t know what all the fuss is about, we didn’t have mental health in my day…”.

Anonymous Baby Boomer.

Just like physical health we all have mental health. Mental health isn’t a diagnosis or a condition; Mental health is a measure of our personal wellbeing. Our mental health fluctuates and cycles between periods of low mood and good positive wellbeing – this is normal. There are no absolutes and the variables are all unique to every individual but when one finds oneself in a period of low mood, we aren’t at our best we’ll struggle to perform optimally or make the best decisions.

“Mental health influences how we think and feel about ourselves and other and how we interpret event. It affects our capacity to learn, to communicate, and to form, sustain and end relationships. It also influences our ability to cope with change, transition and life events: having a baby, moving house, experiencing bereavement.”

Dr L. Friedli.

Therefore, mental health should be high on your agenda if not your top priority. What would your workplace look like if everyone was performing optimally and making the best possible decisions in order to fulfil your overall strategy? Would it make a difference if you had teams that could just simply cope and get on with the important task of achieving the business goals?

“Mental Health is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realises his or her potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community”.

World Health Organization.

As a bare minimum there are legal requirements to consider mental wellbeing much as you must consider physical wellbeing.

“Employers have a legal duty to protect employees from stress at work by doing a risk assessment and acting on it.

If you have fewer than five workers you don't have to write anything down. But it is useful to do this, so you can review it later, for example if something changes. If you have five or more workers, you are required by law to write the risk assessment down.”

Health and Safety Executive.

Looking beyond that bare minimum looking after your teams’ mental health not only will them help achieve your goals in a timelier manner but it will help you retain top talent and drive business efficiencies. It’s probable that you already measure:

Attendance

Conduct

Accidents and near misses

Performance

Having a focus on mental health will drive these metrics in the desired direction – one focus, four easily measurable benefits.

“We don’t have the budget to invest in mental health. None of my people have a mental health condition anyway”.

Anonymous Managing Director.

1 in 4 people in England have been diagnosed with a mental illness and 1 in 5 report experiencing mental health issues without being diagnosed, and about 1 in 6 will experience depression or anxiety at any given time. Even if it is not being talked about it is likely that your workplace will be experiencing a degree of low mental health and not being pro-active about it means that you’ll have to have the budget to pay for sickness absences – what’s the cost of 2 weeks out the business due to stress?

Let’s try to be more positive rather than focussing on the negatives – investing in mental health, when it comes right down to it, is the right thing to do. It will make your workplace a better place to be, a more productive place to be and will directly drive the goals and big picture strategy that that will lead to your business succeeding and flourishing.