Prioritizing Wellness and Mental Health in the Workplace
Wellness and wellbeing in the workplace are critical not only for employee satisfaction but also for overall business success. A thriving workforce—supported through mental health resources, work-life balance, and a positive culture—drives productivity, reduces absenteeism and enhances employee retention.
According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 12 billion working days are lost globally each year due to anxiety and depression – that comes with a price tag of $1 trillion worth of lost productivity. It’s also estimated that by 2026, global corporate spending on wellness will hit $94.6 billion, but workers are still burned out. What’s going on?
Harvard Business Review notes that while many corporate wellness programs are showing up with investments and support, there is a disconnect between individual support and systemic change that leads to long-term wellness.
Wellness and wellbeing in the workplace are critical not only for employee satisfaction but also for overall business success. A thriving workforce—supported through mental health resources, work-life balance, and a positive culture—drives productivity, reduces absenteeism and enhances employee retention.
Make Mental Health Part of Your Culture
To make mental health part of an organization’s culture, businesses must go beyond surface-level initiatives and embed support into daily operations and leadership practices. This includes training managers to recognize signs of stress, normalizing conversations around mental health, offering flexible work arrangements, and ensuring access to quality mental health resources.
Here are some simple, actionable tips:
- Establish Regular Check-Ins: The best way to integrate wellness into your culture is being intentional about checking in on those who you support. Be open about your own challenges and it will give others permission to do the same.
- Say Goodbye (to Ghosting): Normalize work-life balance by being visible about your own. Whether it’s school pickup or hitting the gym, let your team know life outside of work matters.
- Make it a Thing (Without Making it a “Thing”): Forced wellness efforts may come off as cringy or inauthentic. You don’t have to start every corporate retreat with a guided meditation, but you could make space in your office and provide wellness alternatives to regularly scheduled programming, such as replacing happy hour in a bar with a riverside picnic.
Elevate Workplace Mental Wellness Resources
Supporting employee mental health goes beyond offering a basic benefits package. To create a culture of genuine care and resilience, consider integrating strategies like:
- Robust Benefits Packages: Partner with health plans that offer a wide, diverse network of mental health professionals. Check to see if there is ample coverage for telehealth and therapy, and see if there are any additional incentives offered in the wellness arena.
- Company-Provided Wellness Benefits: Establish recharge PTO days, have a wellness stipend and consider having external resources you can connect employees to if they need support with crisis, relationship, financial or legal issues.
- Physical and Digital Wellness Protections: Designate quiet zones or wellness rooms where employees can reset, reflect or simply take a mindful moment during busy days. You can also establish a meeting-free zone on the calendar that’s blocked and held.
Consider Organizational Change for Long-Term Impacts
Harvard Business Review outlines some suggestions for adopting a collective strategy to wellness in the workplace. This goes beyond the one-off items you use to sell a job position or company, but is truly reflective of institutional buy-in and real cultural adoption.
Is your organization able to pilot a four-day work week? What about creating a more structured pulse check between managers and employees? Perhaps there is an internal employee group that can serve as grassroots wellness ambassadors that can spearhead initiatives (like a run club) or can offer peer-to-peer support. You could even consider changes at the C-Suite by adjusting the leadership team to have a chief wellness or chief happiness officer (yes, that’s a thing).
No matter what you do, start small, build from there and keep your practices authentic, active and intentional.
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