1 in 4 people each year suffer from mental health issues.
Poor mental health has a negative effect on a person’s wellbeing.
It affects how we are feeling, thinking and behaving, both at work and at home.
Some factors that are outside of the workplace such as the cost of living crisis, Covid-19, and the war in Ukraine as well as issues such as relationship issues and homelife factors can all influence a person’s mental health.
While we may not be able to solve them directly, companies can support their employees who do have non-work issues that affect them. Interventions such as our Proactive Employee Assistance Programme are ideally suited to this.
However, other work-related issues can affect the mental health of your workforce. It is worth considering these factors and weighing up the risk factors.
When we help organisations with their workplace wellbeing strategies, we use a risk matrix to score the probability, the impact, and the size of factors.
What are the risk factors that could lead to poor mental health at work?
Here are some examples. You will also have factors that are specific to your sector, organisation, department, job role or a specific cohort such as a shift pattern or home-workers.
- Lack of variety of work task
- Under-use of skills
- Work overload/under-load
- Time pressure and deadlines
- Shift working- night shifts, pacing, unpredictable and/or long hours (Can lead to depression and alcohol misuse)
- Poor environmental conditions
- Inadequate equipment
- Poor communication
- Lack of support for problem-solving and personal development
- Social or physical isolation
- Poor relationship with managers and/or team leaders
- Job insecurity
- Under or over promotion
- Conflicting demands of work and home