Sound mental health aids in company growth. Employees are more attentive, creative, and able to focus and work together toward goals.
Disclaimer: This article is not meant to diagnose or treat serious mental health issues. If you or anyone on your team has symptoms of a mental illness or suicidal thoughts, seek help from a qualified mental health professional.
Changes in Work Culture Start at the Top
It’s necessary to start by thinking about your mental health and how you act. After all, employees’ most common workplace complaints are about their bosses.
Changing your habits may be more challenging than outfitting a fancy break room, but it will positively impact your workers and yourself.
Start with Yourself
Mind Your Attitude
If you expect your employees to control their emotions because they affect everyone around them, you must also do so. Whether you want to or not, you set the tone that constructs or corrodes culture.
Respect Time
If you don’t want employees wasting your time, evaluate if you’re wasting theirs through ineffective communication or processes. If you can buy a machine that saves them time, you’ve shown that their time matters, and you increase their productivity.
Plan Realistically
A failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on their part. For example, don’t always expect your employees to work late because you mismanaged something.
Own Your Mistakes
If you expect apologies from others, be willing to offer them as well. Take ownership of your mistakes and make up with others. Don’t blame your employees or make them clean up your messes.
Set the Tone
Social expectations also apply to you. You don’t get a free pass to have no filter because your employees fear contradicting you. Speak to others with the courtesy you expect for yourself and your customers.
Model Trust
Treat employees like trustworthy adults, not naughty children who need babysitting. Instead of pacing behind their workspace, establish expectations and accountability, then empower them with the flexibility to achieve them. If they routinely miss the mark, provide training and speak with them privately and honestly about their options.
Give Choices
People feel better when they have a measure of control. Who can maintain good mental health when they have no say? Seek employee feedback on their goals, training opportunities, and improvements they need at work. Be honest with what you can and can’t do, then follow through. Otherwise, your employees will feel like you’re paying lip service and feel worse for being ignored.
Listen More
When people say, “We need better communication,” they almost always mean they need a listening ear. Instead of adding more corporate talking points, try asking questions and letting your employees do the talking. Being the quiet one is a powerful tool for communication. People are far more likely to listen to you when they feel heard.
Respect Employees
Treat employees like people, not servants. They agreed to do a certain job for you at certain times, with certain limits. If you routinely ignore those limits, you disrespect them, lose their trust, and introduce doubt as to whether they should be there.
Be a Real Person
Plan fun events where you talk about more than work. Show them you care about them as people, not just labor. But do so during working hours rather than making employees give up personal time. Let them get to know you so they can empathize with you, too. Employees will go above and beyond for someone who’s real with them and shares in their worries.
What You Can Do for Your Employees
Employees like to know that their boss spends time thinking about what would make their lives better. Nothing says, “You don’t matter,” like a broken toilet and rusted coffee maker.
But you can do better than working toilets and baskets of treats in the break room. Here are some things you can offer employees that will make them happier and more loyal!
Flexible Schedules
Some roles can incorporate flexibility more easily than others. But with some planning and creativity, even jobs that require a person to be in a set place at a specific time can have some flexibility. Consider cross-training, shift backups, or adaptable maintenance schedules.
Flexible Environments
Some people thrive when working in groups. Others thrive when working in quieter environments or from home. There is no one answer. Offer a mix and avoid implying that some employees are better than others for having specific preferences.
Worthy Raises
Great companies routinely evaluate employee workplace wages and factor in cost of living adjustments to keep their pay fair. Some employers also offer flat or percentage-based bonuses on sales or company-wide performance.
Give Recognition
Employees like to feel valued as a person. Wages are part of this, but checks alone don’t earn loyalty. Loyalty is earned person-to-person. Unfortunately, people often only hear about their work when there’s something wrong, but positive reinforcement is far more motivating. Recognize and praise the good parts of your employee’s work twice as much as you offer suggestions for improvement.
Hire the Right People
Hiring cheap and inexperienced labor means making other employees deal with the constant turnover and training. This siphons off energy from your entire company. Take your time to find the right person for a job, and when possible, let employees impacted by this role have input, too.
Provide Training
Your best employees want to learn and improve continually. If you don’t offer them learning opportunities, they’ll find it elsewhere. When you do, they’ll view you as a partner in their personal and professional improvement and want to return the goodwill.
Encourage Balance
When you model and encourage the attitude that work is just one part of life and that family, health, fun, and dreams are important, too, your employees are less likely to get burned out and more likely to give their all when at work.
Bonus —
Address Mental Health Individually
Small, genuine gestures that show you understand and care about each team member go a long way in loyalty and productivity. Remember the details – a gluten-free snack for the celiac team member, a better-fitting chair for your petite team member, and noise-canceling headphones for the one with ADHD. Find out what makes each employee’s day better, and do what you can to uplift them!
Your Next Steps
About the Author
Jason Otis is the president of Perk Brands and founder of Built for Home. Perk Brands is a digital marketing agency that partners with home product manufacturers to make their products easy to find and buy. Built for Home is a community of home product manufacturers and a resource for buyers to find products that make their lives better at home.
