5 Reasons Your Business Must Invest in Employee Mental and Emotional Health

Do you want your business and organisation to be successful and achieve their goals faster? Of course you do.

And what is the number one asset that makes a business successful? Its people.

People are your greatest resource, and as you'll see, investing in their mental and emotional wellbeing has a tremendous positive impact on the performance of not only your staff but of your business as a whole.

However, what many businesses fail to realise is the actual impact of the pressures of everyday life and work on their people, and ultimately, their business.

Employees' stress is at an all-time high. In fact, a study done in 2020 in the UK showed that 79% of British adults experienced work-related stress, even before finance, family, and health stress. And that stress leads to poor physical, emotional, and mental health, having a direct impact on performance, productivity and engagement.

Let's break down the five reasons why you should invest in employee mental and emotional health to support business growth!

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The cost of poor mental health

It’s common to think of physical health first when discussing employee wellbeing. It's easy to understand why. Physical health has been the focus for decades, while mental and emotional health is somehow still taboo and misunderstood.

However, in recent years science has proved both the existence and importance of the mind-body connection, and it’s now clear to see that mental and emotional wellbeing is the biggest driver of your employees' health, and that of your business.

The costs to employers of poor mental health in the workplace are substantial. In a 2020 study, Deloitte estimated that poor mental health among employees costs UK employers ￡42bn to ￡45bn each year. This is made up of the costs of sick days of around ￡7bn, with presenteeism costs ranging from about ￡27bn to ￡29bn.

This was an increase of about 6bn and 16% on the findings in their 2017 report, driven primarily by a rise in presenteeism – employees coming to work despite poor health and thus not performing to their full abilities.

This trend was also confirmed in a survey by Vitality, which estimated that the average days lost per employee to total presenteeism (for all health reasons) rose from 23.5 days in 2016 to 31.6 days in 2018, an increase of a third.

I'm sure you agree those are staggering numbers, but you're likely wondering what that looks like in your business or organisation.

What is the actual cost of all this to YOUR business?

In another study, Deloitte found that poor mental and emotional health costs on average 5.8% of an employee's annual earnings.

Now take the average salary in your business or organisation. Or perhaps even just yours...what is 5.8% of your annual salary?

I'd be stating the obvious here when saying that investing in employees' wellbeing would plug significant financial leaks. But there are many other benefits to investing in employee wellness programs and initiatives, from reduced stress and improved staff morale to better productivity.

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Boost employee performance

Employee mental and emotional health is closely related to job satisfaction. And the more satisfied employees are with their jobs, the more likely they are to deliver their best work.

The connection between engagement and wellbeing is critical. Based on Gallup's study, we erroneously think that engagement occurs exclusively at work and wellbeing occurs exclusively outside of work, but that is not the case.

The way people perceive work influences their lives outside of work. Employees who experience high levels of burnout at work report that their job makes it difficult to fulfill their responsibilities at home.

And likewise, overall wellbeing influences life at work.

As we've seen above, presenteeism is a growing issue: employees being present at work but not being able to fully focus on their tasks and perform them to the best of their abilities.

Focus, clarity, and cognitive performance are directly impacted by our stress and anxiety levels.

Our brain functions with an emotional bias. Any time we are triggered into fight/flight/freeze mode in response to challenges and stresses, our higher thinking functions are turned off as we are in survival mode.

There's no time for deep analytical thinking, it's about getting away from danger as quickly as you can or defending yourself and staying alive!

As a result, we struggle to focus, concentrate, engage in problem-solving, and wind up making mistakes. Studies have even shown that over time, when stress and anxiety become chronic, it shrinks the size of a brain structure called the hippocampus, limiting our ability to retain new information and memory.

Managing stress and anxiety, therefore, becomes a must if we are to retain, improve our performance, and feel good about ourselves!

Meditation sessions, stress-management workshops, and emotional regulation programs, are proven ways to support mental and emotional health, and when a business invests in this type of initiatives, it provides their staff with tools to be their best selves. And in doing so, boosts their self-esteem and engagement at work, increasing the latter by 10 % according to a Deloitte's report.

Investing in employee mental and emotional health programs can also increase the level of creativity among employees. A creative problem-solving approach is critical in today’s business landscape. Creative problem-solving techniques require us to have all of our neural connections open (having access to our full higher cognitive functions), to be receptive to others' thoughts and ideas, and to be more open-minded to explore different perspectives.

Having the ability to problem-solve and handle stressful situations at work and at home will not only enhance your employees' creativity and multiply your productivity by x 2.5 , but also their job satisfaction, which will in turn encourage them to want to stay and grow with the organisation.

Encourage collaboration

Let's go back to the way our brain and nervous system work. When we feel safe, ie, when we are not experiencing challenges, stress, or anxiety, we are naturally open to our environment and to others.

We are social and communicate more openly.

Research has also shown that people who are mentally and emotionally healthy are more likely to collaborate with one another. When teams are mentally and emotionally healthy, they are also more likely to be creative and productive.

Encouraging collaboration also means that you are building trust among your employees. Research has shown that trust is one of the most important factors in building quality relationships between people at work, so it's critical for leaders who want to build productive teams.

Trust in itself is also an important factor in helping our nervous system know that we are safe- thus eliminating opportunities for our fight/flight/freeze response to be activated.

By providing a variety of mental health services, and tools focused on stress and anxiety management, and creating a safe and open environment, businesses can encourage collaboration and support effective and open communication.

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Better health and reduced safety risks

It is evident nowadays that we cannot separate mental and physical health. We all know how our physical health gets impacted by our state of mind, both negatively and positively!

For example, it is now known that the biggest killer in the Western world is heart disease and that the number one cause of heart disease is stress.

Our bodies were not designed to be triggered into the stress response as often and for as long as we all are now in our modern lives.

This system was designed for short-term, punctual responses. The long-term effects of stress hormones result in cardiovascular, auto-immune, and inflammatory diseases as well as an impaired immune system leading to the proliferation of infections and cancers.

Every year, mental health disorders cost the US economy an estimated $80 billion in lost earnings, medical costs, and disability benefits.

This is a conservative estimate because it doesn’t include the indirect costs of lost productivity, or the impact on family members who are also affected by mental illness.

The World Health Organisation previously estimated that depression would be the second leading cause of death by 2020. It's also the leading cause of disability worldwide for people aged 15–44 years.

On the other hand, good mental and emotional health has also been shown to reduce the risk of absenteeism. In fact, in other research done by Deloitte’s, it's been found that organisations with employee wellness programs in place see a reduction in absenteeism by an average of 20%.

Better mental and emotional health also has a positive impact on reducing health and safety incidents and near-misses at work.

Supporting the workforce to have good mental and emotional health can reduce dramatically these incidents since they are less prone to errors and mistakes.

This in itself can save the organization thousands in insurance premiums each year.

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Conclusion

People are the greatest asset in any business.

Looking after their mental and emotional health is just as important, if not more important, as physical health to ensure the success of your organisation.

Why? Because it will lead to:

? - 14% in STAFF TURNOVER

? - 20% in ABSENTEEISM

? + 10% in employee ENGAGEMENT

? x 2.5 the PERFORMANCE

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It’s not hard to see how investment in employee wellness programs and initiatives can pay significant dividends. It will plug money leaks and exponentially increase profitability?and growth.

And in case you still need convincing, I will leave you with one last piece of data, courtesy of Deloitte again: for every ￡1 a business invests in mental health initiatives, they will see an average of ￡5 returned.

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?? How can I help you support your team’s mental and emotional health?

I offer face-to-face and online workshops and full programs to help your workforce manage stress and anxieties, and to become mentally and emotionally resilient with a science-backed, fit-seamlessly-into-your-life approach.

?? Ask me about what I can do for you and your team in a message!