May is Mental Health Awareness Month and it’s an important time to circle back to how we can improve mental health in the workplace. Mental health and understanding how we can provide support is an ongoing conversation, but there are action items employers can take immediately to improve mental health in the workplace.
Mental health exists on a spectrum — from clinical diagnoses including anxiety and depression to situational stress, burnout, grief, trauma, and neurodivergent experiences, so it’s important to acknowledge that not one size fits all.
We can understand the obvious benefits of improving mental health in our employees’ personal lives, but we also need to understand the benefits of improving it for their workplace lives. Some of these benefits include:
- Increased retention, recruitment and productivity.
- Lowered absenteeism, disability leave and medical costs.
- Reduced employee-related risks and potential liabilities.
Employee leaves of absence for mental health issues are up a whopping 300 percent from 2017 to 2023. Here are a few actions employers can take to foster a supportive workplace culture surrounding mental health:
- Employee Assistance Programs: EAPs are designed to identify and assist employees in resolving personal problems. EAPs offer sessions ranging from wellness programs to counseling to financial wellness, all with the intent of bettering employees’ lives and wellbeing. Benefits offerings are known to improve employee mental health.
- Paid Time Off: Studies have shown a significant association between paid vacation leave and lower rates of depression. Specifically, for every 10 additional days of paid leave, the rates of depression decreased by 29%. Burnout continues to be a threat to workplaces and rethinking PTO policies can help to alleviate that threat.
- Ask your employees what they need: It sounds simple, but the best answer to how you can help your employees will come from your actual employees. This can be through consistent 1×1 meetings to assess workloads and check-ins or using employee surveys to gauge how your employees are doing.
As Mental Health Awareness Month comes to a close, the conversation doesn’t have to. In fact, it shouldn’t. Supporting employee mental health is not a one-time initiative, it’s an ongoing conversation. Whether it’s rethinking and sharing your benefits, encouraging open dialogue, or simply talking with your team, each step creates a more resilient, productive, and compassionate workplace.
Jordan Hammack | Director of HR Services
Jordan provides multiple years of both management and HR experience. Throughout her time in these positions, she found her passion was providing support and resources to employees and management alike. At Lever1, Jordan leads new client implementation and assists new companies in establishing policies and procedures, a company handbook, job descriptions, training and development, and more.