Pierre Graff's comments echo a number of studies published in recent years. In 2018, the TVA news network unveiled the study La santé mentale des entrepreneurs. It showed that one entrepreneur in two was confronted with mental health issues affecting his or her level of performance at work. In 2020, the Université de Sherbrooke presented an even more disturbing report: 37% of young adults aged between 18 and 24 had anxiety disorders or major depression. Before the pandemic, in 2020, some 500,000 Canadians were absent from work each year due to mental health problems.
What is mental health?
According to the World Health Organization, mental health is a state of well-being in which a person can realize his or her potential, cope with the normal stresses of life, do productive work and contribute to the life of his or her community. In short, this definition also implies that mental health is not just about the individual, but also about the individual's impact on the community.
How can we ensure good employee mental health?
In a recent webinar, Camille Lin, a specialist in the prevention and management of psychosocial risks in the workplace, reminded us that mental health is a dynamic state. We can experience a state of well-being before slipping into a state of psychological distress. Fortunately, the reverse is also possible. The elements that can influence this state are the individual's health, personality, personal history, social environment (friends, family, community) and so on. Subsequently, other components come into play, such as the nature of one's work, the degree of autonomy in one's position, workload, recognition, etc. Work is therefore an integral part of an employee's mental health status.
That said, as Camille Lin points out, while work is not the cause of an employee's good mental health, it is certainly part of the solution. Basically, both the professional and personal spheres play a role in an individual's good (or bad!) mental health.
1. Team cohesion as social support
We must avoid perceiving the workplace as a place where only performance and the achievement of objectives reign supreme. The workplace can also be an important vector of social support, when an employee is going through difficulties, such as illness, death or anything else that impacts in one way or another on personal life and therefore potentially on performance.
2. Observation is key
The signs of ill-being differ from one person to another. For example, one employee may complain of a lack of energy, while another may develop aggressive impulses, severe fatigue or even addictive behavior. In such a situation, it's the manager's responsibility to know how to spot these new signs that don't correspond to the personality of the employee he's used to working with.
How do you intervene? The key is to talk to him or her as soon as you notice a change in behavior. If you wait, time will pass and distress will increase. The results of your intervention will be much more limited, since "deconstructing" the person's distress will be a much more energy-consuming challenge than if you had intervened at the very first signs.
3. Understand psychosocial risks
There are many risk factors that make employees' daily lives difficult, and which can be the source of mental health problems. The intensity and duration of work, emotional demands where the employee feels obliged to hide his or her emotions, insufficient autonomy of an employee which contributes to devaluing him or her, poor social relations such as conflictual relations with colleagues or value conflicts, where the employee is forced to do a task of which he or she disapproves. Here again, it's the manager's responsibility to identify the psychosocial risk factors within the organization, so as to put in place the necessary guidelines to ensure that employees feel at ease... because, let's not forget, well-being is a changing state, which can vary over time. We understand that psychosocial risk factors differ from one organization to another. For example, a company in the service sector may be required to smile constantly in front of customers, and not to display its emotions.
The time to act is now!
The idea is for the executive or manager to understand the risk factors specific to his or her organization, to remain attentive to employees' needs, and to provide everyone with a toolbox to help them. The manager must be aware of the resources available within the company or elsewhere, and must take steps to detect as early as possible cases where an employee's mental health may be at risk. Creating a climate in which employees feel entitled to discuss their issues is already a first step. Subsequently, setting up meetings to discuss these issues, actively listening to an employee's feelings and soliciting feedback are excellent strategies for taking concrete action on a given situation. Let's not forget that mental health is not a stable state, and that we need to take care of it... on a daily basis.
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