How to create a mentally healthy workplace
A mentally healthy workplace doesn’t happen because you have an employee assistance program, run the occasional wellbeing workshop or put some fruit in the lunchroom.
It’s created through the everyday experience of work: how workloads are managed, how leaders communicate, whether employees feel comfortable speaking up and how seriously an organisation takes psychological health and safety.
Mental health conditions accounted for 10.5% of serious workers’ compensation claims in Australia in 2022–23, with 14,600 serious claims recorded. That’s almost double the number recorded a decade earlier. The median time lost for these claims was 37 working weeks, more than five times the median across all serious claims.
For senior leaders, creating a mentally healthy workplace is about running a safe, productive and sustainable organisation.
“Under work health and safety (WHS) laws, business owners must give workers a mentally healthy workplace. This means businesses of all sizes (including sole traders) need to manage risks from psychological hazards in the workplace.”
“A mentally healthy workplace is a workplace that protects, responds to, and promotes positive mental health for everyone.
A mentally healthy workplace places the same importance on both mental and physical health and safety in the workplace. It has a positive workplace culture where people feel supported and able to do their best work, regardless of whether or not they have a mental health condition.”
That means having manageable workloads, clear expectations, supportive leadership, respectful workplace relationships and appropriate levels of control over how work is performed. It also means employees feel able to raise concerns, ask for help and access support when they need it.
The World Health Organization identifies excessive workloads, understaffing, long or inflexible hours, low job control, limited support, violence, harassment, bullying and unclear roles among the workplace factors that can pose risks to mental health.
So, how can leaders prevent that from becoming their workplace?
Common psychosocial hazards can include:
- excessive or unrealistic workloads
- long hours and inadequate recovery time
- understaffing
- poor communication
- bullying and harassment
- workplace violence and aggression
- inadequate support from managers
- unclear roles and expectations
- low job control
- poor workplace relationships
- remote or isolated work
- exposure to traumatic events.
“Workers exposed to psychosocial hazards are at greater risk of work-related psychological injury and poorer mental health outcomes.”
These aren’t issues that can always be solved by telling employees to manage their stress better. Often, they require changes to the way work is designed or managed.
Here are some ways that leaders, business owners or managers can help reinforce a mentally healthy workplace.
Ask your workers
Senior leaders don’t necessarily see what happens in every team, shift, worksite or department. Which is why employee consultation is so important.
There are plenty of ways to find out what’s really happening, including employee surveys, focus groups, one-on-one conversations, psychosocial risk assessments, exit interviews and regular consultation with workers.
Organisational data can tell a story too. Look at absenteeism, turnover, overtime, workers’ compensation claims, incidents, near misses and employee feedback.
Get workloads and staffing right
If people consistently don’t have enough time or resources to do their jobs, another wellbeing initiative probably isn’t going to solve the problem.
Take a look at what’s actually happening on the ground.
Are people regularly staying late? Are shifts adequately staffed? Are employees skipping lunch to keep up? Are your highest performers continually being given more because they’re the people who ‘get things done’?
High workloads, excessive work pace, understaffing and long or inflexible hours are all recognised psychosocial risks.
There’s also what the Australian HR Institute calls the silent workload: extra shifts, ad-hoc tasks, covering vacancies, helping new employees and other responsibilities that may not appear on someone’s formal workload but still consume their capacity.
A mentally healthy workplace needs enough people, time and resources for workers to reasonably perform what’s being asked of them.
Make recovery part of the culture
Policies might say employees are entitled to breaks and annual leave. Yet workplace culture determines whether they actually feel comfortable taking them.
If senior leaders routinely work through lunch, send emails late at night, contact people while they’re on leave and praise employees for working excessive hours, people notice and it sets the tone for how the rest of the team operates.
Encourage proper lunch breaks, annual leave, reasonable working hours and genuine time away from work.
This is particularly important in workplaces involving shift work, long hours or safety-critical tasks, where fatigue can become a workplace safety issue as well as a wellbeing issue. Check your industry entitled breaks here.
Consider alcohol and other drug risks too
The World Health Organization notes that excessive job strain and negative working environments may contribute to physical and mental health problems as well as increased substance use.
That doesn’t mean workplace stress automatically leads to drug or alcohol use, or that an employer can prevent every instance of substance misuse. But organisations can influence some of the conditions surrounding employee wellbeing.
For organisations with workplace drug and alcohol programs, testing can help manage risk, but prevention, education and employee support matter too.
Measure whether you’re actually improving
Senior leaders need to know whether their strategies are actually working or whether it’s just more ‘busy work.’
The following are trends and data points that can be monitored which can be helpful in working out what is working:
- absenteeism
- employee turnover
- overtime
- psychological injury claims
- workers’ compensation
- psychosocial hazard reports
- incidents and near misses
- employee engagement and feedback and
- employee assistant program utilisation.
Most importantly, act on what employees and the data are telling you rather than waiting until it’s too late. Asking people about their workplace experience and then doing nothing about the results can undermine trust rather than build it.
Creating a mentally healthy workplace doesn’t mean eliminating every source of stress or making sure everyone feels happy all the time. It’s about designing work well, managing psychosocial hazards, listening to employees, providing appropriate support and creating an environment where people can work safely and sustainably.