While we now find ourselves in a position of our work lives returning more and more to pre covid conditions, we are seeing a hangover effect or Covid fatigue which for many people will take some time and maybe external assistance to process. Now more than ever it is important to have mental health management conversations within your organisation to prevent or support mental health injuries.
In all states WorkSafe and SafeWork are providing great resources and in some cases funding/grants to help manage our workers mental health, with the common by-line being ‘it’s never been more important to create mentally healthy workplaces’, and team involvement and communication is paramount to this.
Post Covid workplaces are reporting team member issues like, lack of engagement, nervousness in returning to workplaces, physical signs like headaches & indigestion problems, emotional and behavioural signs of irritability, lack of concentration, anxiety, poor work performance, relationships issues at home or work and an uptake in alcohol consumption.
Communicating with your team to ensure you are managing factors within your control such as: appropriate training, high job control, recognition of work effort, engagement of isolated workers and regular team catchups like Toolbox Meetings are just some of the things that will have a positive effect.
Starting conversations regarding mental health management will not be easy and for some may even be confronting or overwhelming as we’ve traditionally had a mentality of managing physical injuries that we can see or are easily diagnosed and are therefore made obvious, is a way simpler process.
In researching some information to begin the education process we found the below resources that might help you start some internal discussions of what support might look like for you.
Statically 1 in 5 people take time off because they are mentally unwell, that’s a really high number and Covid has compounded this, so have a listen and a read and see if there’s even one thing that if implemented might help in your workplace.