Why Your Team’s Mental Health is More Important Now Than Ever

Imagine unlocking the full potential of your organization with just one crucial focus: employee mental health. As we navigate the post-pandemic landscape, facing new challenges in the cost of living, employment, and the economy, the well-being of your remote team is more important than ever. By prioritizing mental health, you can drive higher engagement, productivity, and job satisfaction.

The pandemic shook the foundations of our world, yet it also presented a distinctive opportunity for founders, leaders, and managers to create stronger bonds with their teams in preparation for challenging and emotionally charged times.

To unlock your team's full potential while working remotely, it's crucial to prioritize their mental health needs. By answering a few key questions, you can cultivate a supportive work environment that will drive exceptional resilience and outstanding performance in your organization.

How to invest in the right digital tools
How to champion social interaction
How to set healthy boundaries
How to level up on engagement during virtual meetings
How to communicate openly that mental health is important to you

Why mental health is important in the workplace

The mental health of your employees has a huge impact on your company’s bottom line. Making sure that the mental well-being of your employees is taken care of, and helping them stay resilient in the face of emotional distress, has a positive influence on individual motivations and overall productivity.

According to The State of Workforce Mental Health in 2023, 60% of employees said their mental health affected their work. And 48% of employees identified financial stress as the top factor impacting their mental health, surpassing COVID-19.

Caring for your team's mental well-being has taken on new dimensions in the post-pandemic era. As we navigate the lingering psychological effects of social isolation and uncertainties about the future, it's vital to adapt our management strategies for an increasingly changing world.

How can you support mental health in your workplace?

Balancing the needs of your team while maintaining strong communication and connection through digital channels is essential for fostering well-being and resilience in today's hybrid workplace.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that work-related factors can affect mental health, including:

• Inadequate health and safety policies
• Poor communication and management practices
• Limited participation in decision-making or low control over one’s area of work
• Low levels of support for employees
• Inflexible working hours
• Unclear tasks or organizational objectives

Here are 5 things you can do to address these risks and support your team’s mental health and well-being:

1. Invest in the right digital tools

Ensuring that your team has the right tools to communicate, conference, and coordinate is one of the most powerful things you can do to make remote work productive for your team. 

But digital tools have another important role: they help your team overcome fragmentation and stay connected. Teamwork builds morale, so ensure that your team continues to collaborate effectively through the right project management tools, online document managers, virtual conferencing platforms, and instant messaging apps.

2. Champion social interaction 

Remote work can be lonely. And without colleagues to joke with over lunch or go on a coffee run with, your team could be hurting from the effects of isolation. Help them overcome this by scheduling some online social time. 

Share motivational or funny content on the company’s instant messaging apps. Use your online conference tools to conduct teambuilding activities like morning yoga classes, Friday pub-quiz nights, or an at-home HIIT challenge (exercise has the added bonus of alleviating symptoms of depression and anxiety!). Even having a virtual lunch together counts as valuable bonding time. 

But while you encourage your team to make use of the company’s virtual channels for relationship-building, make sure these tools don’t end up getting abused — which brings us to our next point.

3. Set healthy boundaries

You can’t leave the office when your office is your home. This lack of work-life separation can escalate the risk of employee burnout — it’s easy to take for granted that working from home means you are on call 24/7.

So while it’s important to use virtual channels to help your team stay connected, be sure to also set some ground rules so that people don’t end up contacting each other at all hours of the day about work. Make sure weekends stay sacred. Don’t micromanage how long it takes someone to respond to a message or email. Don’t confuse online presence with actual productivity. 

Here are more tips to set healthy boundaries, including: 

• Being results-driven instead of presence-driven
• Implementing clear and enforceable WFH rules
• Adapting your management style to suit the circumstances

4. Level up on engagement during virtual meetings

Face-to-face time is important, but don’t make it a drag, especially during large-scale conferences and meetings where it’s easy for people to get distracted. Make sure that these virtual events are as engaging and interactive as possible to lift the mood and boost morale. 

Try opening with an icebreaker or fun poll like Two Truths One Lie or Never Have I Ever. Schedule a mid-game break and get everyone to do some collective stretching. Show appreciation and celebrate the small wins.

You can even use live polls and surveys for employees to vote on the next steps or give feedback on the company’s direction – it will give them a chance to participate in decision-making and exercise more control over the work they do.  

5. Communicate openly that mental health is important to you

As a founder, leader, or manager, it’s important that you take the lead in promoting mental health in the workplace. You can: 

• Show empathy and communicate your support and availability as a listening ear
• Speak to each member of your team privately about how they’re coping and invite suggestions to improve
• Provide avenues for employees to seek anonymized external counseling if necessary
• Find company insurance plans that provide support for employee mental health issues

Some people are more comfortable asking for help anonymously, so allowing them to submit concerns and struggles using an online Q&A platform can help encourage the more vulnerable members of your team to speak up and seek help. 

How is your team doing today?

While the pandemic has exposed many flaws in the way we’ve done things, it’s also given us the chance to make changes in the right direction — and the companies that are coming out stronger than before are the ones who see problems not as things that have to be fixed, but as opportunities to be embraced.

By taking on this challenge, you can strengthen the bonds within your team and contribute to the overall success and well-being of your employees. This will help shape a brighter future for your business and the people you work with.

Building an inclusive workplace can play a big part in employees' mental health. To learn more on how to create a safe and inclusive workplace for all, download our whitepaper: "Diversity Fails Without Inclusion".