Mental health: With 'end in sight' for the pandemic, what do employers need to know?

The sun is setting on the work-from-home golden hour. The World Health Organization just announced that the ‘end is in sight’ for the pandemic, but employers around the world have been luring employees back to work for months. And now, some employers in the US are officially calling time on the home-based work season.

The Wall Street Journal reports that starting this month, “attendance [will be] expected and office resisters will be put on notice” at several large corporations in the US.

Some employers are opening new office spaces hoping and expecting that workers will use them. Others are trying to balance all preferences, by giving employees the flexibility to choose where they work and for which hours.

At the same time, many tech companies are allowing employees to work full time from home, from the office, or a combination of the two. Some are even allowing employees to choose which country they work from.

PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022 finds that workers who can’t work remotely are also far less likely than others to say they find their job fulfilling, believe that their team cares about their wellbeing, feel that they’re fairly rewarded financially or feel they can be creative in their work.

This group represented 45% of the respondents in the survey and reported less satisfaction with their job than those working in hybrid or fully remote work settings (50% versus 63%).

Insights from Deloitte suggest that empowering employees to work from a suitable and convenient location rather than requiring them to work from a particular office has the potential to promote a better work/life balance as well as being a more equitable approach.

In the end, hybrid work is probably the sweet spot, with employees able to enjoy some autonomy over their work lives and employers having the comfort of seeing their workers back at their desks at least two or three days a week.

Taking all things together, and considering outcomes like the ‘great resignation’ and the freshly coined ‘quiet quitting’ phenomenon, it becomes clear that work is a definitive factor in the balancing of the human psyche. Selling labour also puts a figure on employees' sense of self-worth.

The COVID-19 restrictions, which compelled employers to modify the traditional ‘clock-in and clock out’ employment terms, allowed employees to reclaim their time and redress an often lopsided work/life balance.

The future of work has raised some of the most intense debates because work impacts quality of life. At the heart of that is wellbeing: mental, physical and emotional. Employees now expect work to work for them, not just those working in their own countries, but those working abroad, and even those considering foreign placements.

Therefore, as employers roll out return-to-work programmes, they need to design systems to enable workers to have meaningful and healthy return-to-work experiences by providing individual, manager and organizational interventions.

Organizations like the Wellcome Trust are placing mental health firmly on the agenda for the workplace. The Trust has found that more and more employers are looking for ways to support the mental health of their staff. As a result, the global corporate wellness market is predicted to grow to $66 billion by 2022.

There are many reasons why employers choose to invest in workplace mental health, including research showing that anxiety and depression are costing the global economy approximately $1 trillion every year in lost productivity.

Employers and employees can often have strained relationships but the latest research from Edelman shows that 78% of employees trust their employer and 69% believe the people they work with are a significant source of community in their life. Staggering statistics, indeed. But if the majority of the 7000 global respondents are to be believed, then it begs the question, what more can employers do to support the mental wellbeing of their employees?

Allianz Partners suggests that mental health support needs to be:

Employers now need to seize the opportunity to add real value to their employees’ lives and contribute to a society where mental health and wellbeing are not discussed in the shadows but addressed and supported in the light of day.

One review of workplace intervention studies has found that relaxation techniques, taking time to recover from the physical and psychological effects of work, promotion of physical activity and stress management are central to person-directed interventions.

Employers need to take a participatory approach to institute organizational support systems that help workers reduce stress and become more productive. This would require that managers are trained to respond quickly and adequately to employees in distress and create an environment that allows them to seek help without shame.

Workers themselves need to be trained in mental health literacy and awareness to improve their knowledge on the subject and encourage a non-stigmatizing approach to mental health issues. Employers can also provide opportunities for employees to acquire a variety of stress-management skills including skills like mindfulness, self-reflection and problem solving as well as physical exercise and activity.