Ensuring Mentally Healthy Work

Perhaps now more than ever, the state of employees' mental health at work is - or should be - a key focus for businesses and organisations.

According to Statistics New Zealand, Kiwis' overall well-being declined between 2018-2021, while data from the Ministry of Health shows the percentage of adults with high or very high levels of psychological distress has been steadily rising since 2011/12.

At work, the picture is very similar, with the 2021 Workplace Wellness Report showing an increase in stress and anxiety levels among workers, with employees at larger businesses presenting with higher stress levels.

Of course, these effects come at a cost; the same report shows that absenteeism costs the New Zealand economy around $1.85 billion while a 2018 report from the OECD estimated that poor mental health comes at a cost of 4-5% of the GDP of Aotearoa every year.

To help combat this, in recent years, WorkSafe New Zealand and the New Zealand Government Health and Safety Lead (GHSL) have placed increased emphasis on mentally healthy work. This focus has aimed to educate businesses, leaders, managers, and workers and help organisations meet legislative obligations under the Health and Safety at Work Act (2015).

What is mentally healthy work?

Mentally healthy work starts from the perspective that our mental health exists on a continuum and is influenced by a range of internal and external factors.

Mentally healthy work is work where the risks to workers' mental health are eliminated or minimised, and their wellbeing is prioritised...[and] it does not cause psychological harm and may improve overall wellbeing.

This definition of mentally healthy work rests on the evidence-informed belief that businesses need to help their employees thrive at work.

Influences on mental health at work

Workers' mental health at work can be affected by a range of psychosocial hazards and risks. These can include:

• Work or task-based hazards such as high workload, long hours, a lack of role clarity, isolation, an unsafe work environment, or insecure employment.
• Social hazards such as a poor work culture, a lack of support, exposure to mental harm associated with violence or aggression, interpersonal conflict at work, poor leadership, and bullying, harassment, or discrimination.
• Organisational hazards such as low psychological safety, unfair treatment of workers, an imbalance between effort and reward, or poor engagement around change management.
• Individual hazards such as low autonomy or control, little or no opportunities for development, poor work-life balance, a lack of sense of meaning or purpose at work, or a lack of access to accommodations to support individual needs.

Alongside this wide range of hazards, it's important to consider mental health from a holistic perspective.

In Aotearoa, Mason Durie's Te Whare Tapa Whā model is frequently used as a way of conceptualising health and well-being as a whole comprised of four key domains. In this model, when one or more of these domains is unbalanced, our well-being is negatively affected.

Providing mentally healthy work

Ensuring we can thrive at work requires a multi-faceted approach that addresses the various psychosocial hazards and risks we may face, while supporting the key domains that contribute to our health and well-being.

The GHSL suggest this requires interventions at three levels:

1. Prevention - directly addressing factors that may cause mental harm.
2. Promotion - helping build workers' resilience and providing tools and resources to support employees.
3. Support - employing reactionary measures to help workers experiencing mental ill-health.

Historically, in Aotearoa, businesses have done a good job of providing interventions that operate at the support level (e.g., access to Employee Assistance Programs or return-to-work policies).

However, there are several key actions businesses can take to help their employees thrive while taking account of the work done, the work environment, and the workers themselves.

Re-design your work culture

A positive workplace culture can serve as a protective factor for workers' mental health and well-being, while also influencing engagement practices, productivity, and staff turnover.

While it can be a slow process, re-designing work culture must first start with conversations with your staff to understand the current environment and continue from there, collaborating to map out values, attitudes, and behaviours that will support both business objectives and workers' health and well-being.

Businesses need to work on ensuring senior and middle management supports this change and role-model the desired behaviours and attitudes.

A positive work culture is one characterised by an enthusiastic, energetic, and engaged environment, in which staff feel: valued and supported, that their work is meaningful, a sense of belonging, and that they can be themselves.

Promote diversity and inclusion

Promoting and supporting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at every level of an organisation will have benefits for workers, teams, and the wider business. Conversely, where D&I is not promoted, these can suffer, with high levels of mental distress, absenteeism, presenteeism, turnover, and lower productivity, engagement, and satisfaction.

Developing D&I-specific policies and strategies, re-shaping recruitment practices, giving leaders appropriate tools and resources, providing training to staff, and maintaining multi-directional engagement are all ways you can promote and support D&I in your business.

Provide reward and recognition

Ensuring staff are rewarded and recognised for their work is a key protective factor that has a number of benefits including, but not limited to, raising morale and job satisfaction, improving employees' sense of belonging, improving productivity, and reducing absenteeism and presenteeism.

There are many opportunities for formal and informal approaches, including a formal policy that is developed from the bottom-up, giving workers opportunities to apply their skills and knowledge, providing multiple development avenues, 'traditional' rewards (e.g., bonuses or long service leave), celebrations in the office (e.g., morning teas to celebrate workers' contributions), and everyday recognition tools (e.g., verbal or written 'shout outs' in meetings or group messages, or e-cards/certificates).

Address stigma, bullying, harassment, and discrimination

Offensive behaviours in the workplace are one of the key risks to our mental health - not just at work, but outside of work too. When workers are exposed to one or more of these behaviours, it can have disastrous results for their mental health and well-being, with these effects having wide-ranging consequences for their lives.

Businesses need to take a 'zero tolerance' approach to these types of behaviours, supported by:

• a robust Code of Conduct that sets clear expectations
• ensuring recruitment practices do not discriminate against anyone
• retaining workers with lived experience of mental illness
• providing a supportive environment with processes and tools that allow leaders to check in on employees and respond to their needs
• fostering psychological safety; and
• using training and engagement to raise awareness and understanding.

Foster psychological safety

Low psychological safety is often cited as a 'cause of causes' for work stress, so providing a positive psychosocial safety climate in which psychological safety is fostered and protected is key to mentally healthy work.

Fostering psychological safety - and, by extension, a mentally healthy working environment - means developing trust across an organisation; for employees to speak up about issues, ask questions, suggest improvements, or call out poor behaviour, they need to trust there won't be a negative consequence in response to engaging in those behaviours.

In addition, senior leaders need to be seen to prioritise psychological health and well-being and to demonstrate commitment to addressing concerns regarding the same.

To build psychological safety, businesses need to engage in actions including:

• normalising vulnerability and creating a sense of belonging where employees feel supported and accepted
• promoting honesty and transparency at all levels of the organisation
• replacing blame with curiosity
• encouraging and rewarding open communication, active listening, open feedback, questioning, and knowledge-sharing
• explaining why employees' voices are important
• ensuring leaders actively invite and are open to feedback, volunteer information, apologise when needed, and show humility; and
• providing multiple channels for feedback and engagement, including methods for anonymous feedback.

Provide effective leadership

Decades of research consistently underscore the importance of leaders and managers in supporting (or undermining) workers' mental health and well-being.

While not directly responsible for their employees' mental health, leaders and managers have a key influence on what we experience at work and the conditions that affect our well-being.

Leaders need to understand the psychosocial risks to their workers while providing explicit support for interventions that seek to protect, promote, and support employees' mental health. Importantly, people in these roles need to invest time and energy in understanding their workers.

It's not all down to individual leaders or managers though: businesses need to give them the tools, resources, and support to ensure they are able to support their employees effectively.

Raise awareness

Building staff members' awareness and understanding on mental health, psychosocial risks, mental illness, and mentally healthy work is a key control measure to mitigate the risks to workers' mental health.

Sharing resources, using existing communication channels (for example, workplace intranets), providing access to mobile apps (for example, Headspace), running workshops, and providing and/or accessing formal training to leaders and other key staff (for example, Health and Safety Representatives) are all approaches used to raise awareness and understanding in the workplace.

These approaches can be supported by the introduction of mental health 'champions' who can support leaders, promote mentally healthy work, and help raise awareness and understanding.

Such interventions can have a number of benefits for individual employees, including improving healthy lifestyle habits (for example, healthy nutrition and exercise choices), serving a protective role for mental health, and strengthening workers' resilience.

Build and strengthen social connections

Developing relationships with those we work with is, for many (but not all), a normal part of working and is seen as a hallmark of a healthy working environment. Businesses characterised as a mentally healthy place to work actively support and enable its workers to build - not just professional but, also - social relationships.

As those we work with (and under) can often 'make or break' a workplace, it is important businesses do what they can to foster positive workplace relations and equip workers with the skills to mitigate and respond positively to interpersonal conflict. Concurrently, providing opportunities for relationship building and social interaction - while appreciating not everyone will want to engage with such activities - is important in supporting mental health.

Additional supports

Research into how best to support mental health at work in Aotearoa is still in its infancy. However, in addition to the elements listed above, there are other supports businesses can introduce.

• Strengthen good work design by: giving workers autonomy and control over how they work and avoiding micro-managing, providing equitable access to multiple training and development opportunities, allowing and encouraging flexible work arrangements, and providing individual accommodations to those who need them.
• Improve the work environment by carefully considering the design and effects of the environment on workers. This includes noise/acoustics, lighting, air quality, temperature, access to nature, greenery in the workplace, colour selection, and design and layout.
• Provide access to support services such as free counselling and supervision.

Further reading

The suggestions above are - by no means - an exhaustive list of how businesses can support workers' mental health via mentally healthy work.

There are a number of other sources you can access, including:

• Mentally Healthy Work Hub – Government Health and Safety Lead
• Mental Health – WorkSafe
• Workplace Well-being – Mental Health Foundation
• Mental Health at Work – World Health Organisation
• Mental Health at Work – MBIE
• Spotlight on Mentally Healthy Work
• Guide to Mental Health and Well-being at Work