Workplace wellness programs to support employees’ mental health and prevent burnout

Employee well-being tops the list of organizations’ goals. While many companies have workplace wellness programs in place, it’s time to reevaluate these programs' effectiveness and look to innovative wellness solutions.

The first step to creating workplace wellness that supports employees' mental health and prevents burnout is identifying the challenges employees are currently facing.

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Challenges employees are facing and effective solutions

Mental Health

Providing effective mental health supports is part of any well-rounded employee wellness program. Making it easily accessible is one of the most critical aspects, and this includes allowing employees to access mental health and wellness supports with anonymity. If they fear their query tracking, they are far less likely to access the resources they need.

Create a mental health resource suite, including resilience tools, mindfulness, burnout prevention, and stress management.

Physical Health

Innovation and productivity rely heavily on employees feeling their best. Promoting a healthy lifestyle to build and sustain employees' physical health can go a long way. By implementing robust and straightforward tools and resources, companies show their employees they care about them and are willing to go the extra mile to uphold them. 

Create a collection of physical health resources for self-care, getting adequate sleep, and exercise. Equip employees with tools such as a burnout assessment, stress indicator, and self-care questionnaire to recognize the signs of burnout and deal with them effectively.

Employee isolation

While the Work From Home (WFH) movement presents many opportunities, it also presents challenges. Foremost is employee isolation and loneliness. Creating community among colleagues while working remotely can significantly affect morale, employee engagement, and company culture.

Offer employees opportunities to interact informally with the only agenda being social interaction. Encourage virtual coffee breaks, lunchtime social conference calls, and mid-day nature walks. Research shows that spending time in nature increases performance on problem-solving tasks requiring creativity.1 Exposure to nature also increases focus and concentration.2

Lack of engagement

In a recent era, employees interacted informally around the water cooler, coffee bar, and lunchroom. With Work From Home environments, remote workers continue to need the connection those encounters provided. Often, spontaneous conversations lead to ideas.  

Create a sense of belonging with collaboration. Innovation rarely occurs in isolation. Offering consistent opportunities for collaboration sparks ingenuity that leads to passion. When equipped and developed well, passionate people create outstanding contributions.

Communicate company vision clearly and often. Boost morale by helping employees see precisely how they are a part of something bigger than themselves that provides meaning for real people. Create crystal clear communications through a variety of methods since people learn differently and require multiple touchpoints.

Stress and burnout

Chronic stress can lead to burnout if not effectively managed. Continually changing technologies, social isolation, and a lack of resources can put enormous pressure on employees. Providing adequate training, personal and corporate development opportunities, and face-time with managers, whether virtually or in-person, can go a long way to alleviate stress.

Create clear guidelines for work boundaries, including levels of responsibility and autonomy. Name exceptions around working hours, project accomplishment, time off, and after-hours reachability. Unless absolutely critical, encourage staff to refrain from checking work emails and turn off audible notifications on their phone, tablet, and computer.  

Six elements of workplace health and well-being programs

Strong Leadership

Healthy organizations are built on strong leaders. Respected leaders exert a powerful influence over their employees at every level. The CEO and C-suite must be on board to effect positive change throughout the organization. Few workers will engage in programs if they do not see significant buy-in from upper leadership through endorsement and personal use.  

Leading by example not only shows support for programs but removes any stigma related to wellness initiatives. Engaging leadership and every company level with clear communication, actionable steps, and easily accessible resources bolster the entire organization.

Corporate Culture

Wellness programs and corporate culture go hand in hand. Culture is created at the top and trickles throughout the organization. The ripple effects of leadership play a role in employee engagement, productivity, and motivation. A strong vision leads to highly motivated people with a sense of purpose and passion that fuels innovation.

Connecting workplace wellness with a company’s mission, vision, and values empower deep integration with strategic objectives. Policy-making and dependable human resources services cultivate loyalty and motivation. Supporting employee well-being directly supports the overall strength and success of the organization.

Effective Management

Building trust between management and those they oversee is the most effective way to develop strong, healthy relationships. Meaningful conversations, showing emotional intelligence through empathy, and active listening reinforce the bonds that create strong companies. 

Using assessments to evaluate staff needs, opening dialogue by asking critical questions, and offering encouragement make employees feel they belong and are valued. Ensuring staff know they are a vital part of the team through trusting relationships and team building creates happy, healthy employees, and healthy company culture.

Strong management results in greater employee passion, increased focus and performance, enhanced vision, and better innovation.

Workplace Wellness Programs

A plan is only effective if employees find the programs are meaningful and provide personally relevant professional development. Learn the challenges and needs of employees via assessments and surveys, asking critical questions, and collecting data. Once you have a sense of employees’ definite needs, create employer-sponsored programs based on objects based on recognized challenges.

Focus on leadership first, and train managers in communication and implementation. Garnering leaders’ buy-in creates authentic endorsement throughout the organization, which leads to greater acceptance and widespread application. Provide comprehensive benefit offerings and flex-time if possible. 

Employee Training

Effective employee training involves providing a series of opportunities in which personnel can engage. Strategic implementation based upon closing performance gaps and personnel challenges will bring the organization and worker the most reward.  

Offer organization in the form of company-wide professional development days, lunch and learns, and team-building seminars. Support employees with pre-recorded webinars employees can watch at their most convent time and follow up with a team discussion. Provide easily accessible resources for employees to learn self-care, healthy lifestyle, stress management techniques such as mindfulness, mental health, and resilience training. Implement wellness in every sphere of personal and professional life with emotional intelligence training, boundary-making, and tools for managing emotions.

Be sure to provide custom options as needed, such as individualized or small group executive coaching to overcome obstacles. 

Outcome Evaluation

Utilizing assessments is an effective way of evaluating the outcomes of an employee wellness program. Implementing assessment tools throughout the wellness program's lifespan at critical points offers leadership an ongoing evaluative tool. 

Natural touchpoints include new staff onboarding, quarterly supervisory check-ins, bi-annual professional development workshops, and annual evaluations. A healthy review provides objective measurements for measuring results, creating case studies, and generating strategic objectives.

Why preventing burnout is important

The consequences of not having a comprehensive employee wellness program and healthy organizational culture far outweigh the costs of employer-sponsored well-being programs.

The following lists outline the impact of stress and burnout on an organization and individual employees when adequate resourcing through comprehensive workplace wellness programs are not in place.

Organizations

• Reduced job performance, employee engagement, and morale. 3

• Reduced energy and concentration. 4

• Conflict with co-workers and customers. 5

• Decreased passion for innovation. 6

• Increased use of sick days and leaves of absence. 7

• Resignations. 8

Individuals

• Physical health: exhaustion, decreased immunity, heart disease. 9

• Mental health: anxiety and depression. 10

• Social health: conflict with friends and family. 11

• Emotional health: exhaustion and a sense of failure. 12

• Financial health: a sense of loss and decreased self-esteem. 13

Benefits of robust workplace wellness programs

• Greater productivity.

• Less stress. Pressures become manageable.

• More energy, concentration, and focus.

• Less conflict with co-workers and customers.

• Reduced health-care costs, absenteeism, sick days, and leaves of absence.

• Greater employee engagement and morale.

• Higher sense of purpose and passion leading to greater innovation.

• Greater loyalty and retention.

• Top performers mentor others to become their best.

• Organizations can focus on their mission rather than dealing with recurring recruitment and human resource challenges.

  
  

A comparison of burnout to wellness

An effective employee well-being program saves organizations money while supporting the wellbeing of employees. By investing in a quality, high-performing workplace wellness course of action, both the organization and employees thrive. 

About the Author

Bonita Eby is a Burnout Prevention & Organizational Culture Consultant, Executive Coach, and owner of Breakthrough Personal & Professional Development Inc., specializing in burnout prevention and wellness for organizations and individuals. Bonita is on a mission to end burnout. Get your free Burnout Assessment today.

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References

1.  R. A. Atchley, D. L. Strayer, and P. Atchley, “Creativity in the Wild: Improving Creative Reasoning Through Immersion in Natural Settings,” PLoS One 7, no 12 (December 2012):e51474.

2.  Perlmutter, D., Dr., Perlmutter, A., Dr., & Loberg, K. (2020). Brain wash: Detox your mind for clearer thinking, deeper relationships, and lasting happiness. New York, NY: Little, Brown Spark. Pg 102.

3.  Wright, T. A., & Cropanzano, R. (1998). Emotional exhaustion as a predictor of job performance and voluntary turnover. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(3), 486–493. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9648526/

4.  Agneta Sandström et al., “Impaired Cognitive Performance in Patients with Chronic Burnout Syndrome,” Biological Psychology (Elsevier, November 17, 2004), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301051104001553?via=ihub.

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7.  Schaufeli, W.B., Bakker, A.B. and Van Rhenen, W. (2009), How changes in job demands and resources predict burnout, work engagement, and sickness absenteeism. J. Organiz. Behav., 30: 893-917. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.595

8.  Fried, M. (1982). Endemic stress: The psychology of resignation and the politics of scarcity. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 52(1), 4–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.1982.tb02660.x

9.  John Yarnell, Stress at work—an independent risk factor for coronary heart disease?, European Heart Journal, Volume 29, Issue 5, March 2008, Pages 579–580, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehm641

10.  Harwood L, Ridley J, Wilson B, Laschinger HK. Occupational burnout, retention and health outcomes in nephrology nurses. CANNT Journal = Journal ACITN. 2010 Oct-Dec;20(4):18-23.

11.  Reichl C, Leiter MP, Spinath FM. Work–nonwork conflict and burnout: A meta-analysis. Human Relations. 2014;67(8):979-1005. doi:10.1177/0018726713509857

12.  Christina Maslach1, Wilmar B. Schaufeli2, and Michael P. Leiter3

    1Psychology Department, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-1650

    2Psychology Department, Utrecht University, Utrecht, 3508 TC The Netherlands

    3Psychology Department, Acadia University Wolfville, NS BOP 1X0 Canada

13.  Anthony Papa & Robyn Maitoza (2013) The Role of Loss in the Experience of Grief: The Case of Job Loss, Journal of Loss and Trauma, 18:2, 152-169, DOI: 10.1080/15325024.2012.684580