Ignoring employees' emotional wellbeing is not an option for managers with a productivity focus.
Ignoring employees' emotional wellbeing is not an option for managers with a productivity focus.
Picture this. It’s first thing Monday morning and you’ve just sat down at your desk, game face on and ready for a challenging week ahead.
Next minute, one of your employees phones in with the news they’ve been struck by the ‘flu’ and won’t be able to make it in today. It’s the third day this month this employee has been unable to come in to work and you’re not convinced the dreaded lurgy is truly the culprit.
They’ve also been increasingly disengaged during team meetings. You suspect their workload may have ramped up to the point of being overwhelming as the deadline for a key project approaches.
It’s a scenario experienced by many managers in business today. However, navigating the fastest route to a productive outcome can be a minefield, particularly in terms of the boundaries in an employer-employee relationship.
But as mental health and wellbeing becomes less of a taboo and the labour market becomes more competitive, employers can no longer ignore the importance of asking an employee: “How are you coping?”
The case for change
According to figures from federal government agency Safe Work Australia, actual compensation paid for mental stress claims in Western Australia amounted to $17.2 million in the 2011-12 financial year.
Meanwhile Comcare – the federal government body responsible for reducing workplace injury and disease – has estimated that the total financial cost of mental stress claims nationally is more than $14 billion a year, suggesting the problem is on a far larger scale than indicated by what is paid out in compensation.
Comcare also says claims related to mental stress and emotional wellbeing are thought to be, on average, 4.5 times more expensive than physical injury claims.
Nigel Calver, executive manager of workplace psychology service provider Centrecare Corporate, says the higher cost is attributable to the fact mental health is an intangible injury.
“Mental health issues have a lot longer recovery period and tend to be a lot more complicated because, for instance, a physical injury is diagnosed and treated and there are fairly clear outcomes to it,” Mr Calver says.
With a mental health problem, people can relapse or they can be assessed differently and there are different outcomes.”
Reducing absenteeism caused by poor physical health has long been recognised as a key performance measure by most organisations, but Comcare says organisations are “nullifying” the results of a health and wellbeing program if mental health is ignored.
Mr Calver says many organisations have started to realise this.
“A lot of employers are recognising the need to have measures in place to support people with personal issues, they don’t sort of turn around and say ‘well that’s your own life it’s not my problem’ anymore,” he says.
“They’re taking that responsibility on, and I think that’s tied to the recognition of the difficulty of getting good staff and retaining them, but also realising that supporting an employee in their home life makes them a good employee in the workplace.”
Time to talk
Taking the next step beyond recognising a problem and broaching the topic of mental wellness with an employee is not easy, however.
“A lot of organisations are anxious when they’ve got an employee who’s clearly not themselves, but they don’t know how to approach it,” Mr Calver says.
Perth-based marine infrastructure company Marine & Civil has developed an innovative way of simply opening the door to that difficult conversation.
After a financially challenging period that included voluntary administration, director and chairman John Neylon says he has recognised how monitoring employees’ wellbeing can prevent future mistakes.
“We put people into extremely stressful conditions and expect them to make good decisions without really knowing if they’re sleeping and eating well or exercising – all the things you fundamentally need to do to perform at your best,” Mr Neylon says.
“We had a job that went extremely pear-shaped … and what it highlighted was that there were some bad decisions made during a very stressful period in the business.”
After seeing how the Fremantle Football Club closely monitored the wellbeing of its players, Mr Neylon decided a similar approach would be valuable for his company.
Over the past 18 months he’s introduced a daily check-in system requiring employees to rate themselves on a range of indicators – such as physical wellbeing factors, including hydration and fatigue, through to emotional indicators around stress levels and workload.
The results are sent through to a consulting business, with any anomalies or areas of concern reported to Mr Neylon.
“I’m pretty certain that had we had the information that we have now it would have been ringing alarm bells for us (during that difficult period),” Mr Neylon says.
“What that does is it generates a conversation that we have with the participant and opens the doors for discussion to ask if they’re coping.”
Mr Neylon says he has approached a number of staff as a result of feedback from the check-in system and has had only positive responses, with outcomes that include suggesting staff take some time off.
Measuring the effectiveness of the program is problematic, Mr Neylon says, as it’s difficult to quantify improved productivity brought by reduced absenteeism and better interpersonal engagement within an organisation.
“If you ask any business owner how you measure human capital, that in itself is impossible; but you know human capital is your biggest asset and it’s not on your balance sheet … and you just know if it’s working or not.”
Tackling the problem
Psychologist and management coach at Total Leader and Coach Solutions (TLC), Alistair Box, says employers need to know how to effectively deal with managing the situation once a problem has been recognised and confirmed.
“First of all I need to be proactive and engage that person in a discussion. A lot of people avoid having those personal discussions because they think they’re going to get emotional or angry,” he says.
“If it’s a personal issue the manager then needs to know how to refer that person to the employee assistance program, or they need to know how to talk to that person about workload and burnout and how to deal with that.”
Centrecare Corporate’s Mr Calver believes employers need to stress that it’s not necessary to ask precisely what the problem is, but accept that employees are entitled to take days off for stress reasons, and encourage them to do so.
“The worst thing is when someone rings up and they’re so fed up with work and they just can’t face the office so they say ‘oh I’ve got a stomach ache’,” Mr Calver says.
“Both know that they’re not telling the truth but there’s no point where you can address that in open conversation.
“You can be sick but you can also be sick of work; tell us when you’re sick of work so then we’ve got a point where we can address that.”
Mr Box says its important there’s an increased emphasis on proactive recognition of health and wellbeing issues and implementation of prevention strategies.
“Companies understand that a lot of issues arise out of stress and fatigue and depression, and they’ve recognised that it’s not just simply a case of ‘this person is taking drugs or this person is drinking too much’ but that there’s often an underlying problem,” he says.
“Whilst they may have produced a positive alcohol reading in the workplace, that was more as a symptom rather than a cause.”
Mr Box says providing free counselling to employees and their families is often at the crux of an employee assistance program aiming to build mental resilience, but employers often have a skewed perception of the cost.
“Organisations have this misguided assumption that if they offer counselling, there will be a queue around the block,” he says.
“The reality is that it’s quite the opposite and you really have to encourage people to be proactive and ask for support.
“For a well-run program, which is one that everyone knows about, typically only between 4 and 7 per cent of staff will access it.”
Meanwhile there’s been a significant growth in a range of services tipped to reduce employee stress and help them manage their workloads.
Corporate massage, for one, has become commonplace while workplace yoga is growing in popularity.
Even more alternative services such as laughter yoga and meditation are becoming more accepted as plausible strategies for stress reduction, according to Mischa Weissenberg from Holistic Services Group (HSG).
“Particular services that we offer are becoming less alternative and more mainstream,” Mr Weissenberg says.
“It’s certainly been the emotional, spiritual and mental health aspects that have grown the most; I think everyone’s understood for a long time that healthy and active workers bring more energy into work, but there’s a greater awareness now over the stress-related issues that are facing workplaces and there’s been more of a cry from workplaces to be involved in this.”
Of course, alternative preventative measures won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and Mr Weissenberg says HSG’s wellbeing specialists have to go into workplaces ready to deal with ridicule or resistance from employees.
“We know that we need to be ready to face scepticism if we’re bringing a nutrition seminar into a more conservative workplace; they may be very dismissive of some of our services, such as laughter yoga,” he says.
“We try and focus on the reward aspect; this is really where it should be brought into the workplace during work hours, with a focus on the fact that the company is seen to be looking after their staff, rather than trying to force people into something which they may not want.”
Mr Weissenberg says that’s where an active and forward-thinking chief executive is instrumental in driving change and leading awareness around mental wellbeing – from the top down.
Dominic Di Marco from Perth Frozen Foods is an example; he’s introduced transcendental meditation as a way of improving individual employee performance and the business overall.
Mr Di Marco says learning to practise TM was initially a personal vocation, but once his work colleagues saw how he’d become calmer and more able to deal with a stressful work life, they wanted to know more.
He’s contracted a consulting company to measure the impact the regular practice of TM is having on his business’s productivity, but says changes are already evident.
“There’s a lot of stress that comes from managing a lot of people (for example), and so watching a particular person become a lot calmer and be able to have clarity and understanding … was fantastic on my part,” Mr Di Marco says.
In Perth, Natalie Brown has begun teaching TM to a range of business leaders; she says the response has been very positive, with several organisations introducing the technique to their entire workforce.
The benefits of practising TM can be even more pronounced in the work environment, especially in high-stress environments, she says.
“The corporate world is quite a stressful environment for most people with early starts and long hours … there’s a lot of teamwork necessary and creative thinking and if you’re stressed and tired then you can’t act at your highest performance,” Ms Brown says.
Crossing boundaries
Suggesting an employee partake in stress-reducing strategies such as meditation is likely to be beyond what many managers consider their remit, however.
But the breaking down of work-life barriers means the line between work-initiated and home-initiated issues is becoming blurred.
At the end of the day, Mr Di Marco says, it doesn’t matter – if an issue that originated at home is affecting a person’s work, it needs to be addressed by the employer.
“As a director of a company I see it as my responsibility to look out for opportunities that allow my people to develop and grow into healthy and happy people.”
