Q: I would like to incorporate mental health care into my 97-employee business. How do I do that?
A: This is a complex and demanding issue, and what I am going to suggest is only a beginning. You should consult with more experts to help you build a psychologically safe and productive working environment.
Let’s start with an overview. The experts in Canada are guessing that 21 percent of our adult population is struggling with drug abuse, 16 percent are the same with alcohol abuse, 6.5 percent are into personal depression and 5.8 percent suffer from generalized anxiety.
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With figures like that you can bet that there are those among your 97 staffers who have serious personal problems. I hope that you will expedite and encourage personal counselling and treatment for those whom you encounter who are struggling. Neither counselling nor treatment can guarantee great results but when they are successful, they make a huge difference in the lives of those who had been previously suffering.
The big thing for you is the workplace. What can you do to make it a happy and healthy working environment, one that is satisfying for those whom you employ and that is productive for you as a manager? Here are a few thoughts:
- Be clear about tasks and responsibilities for each of your workers. The more that your workers understand what is expected from each of them, the less will be the interpersonal blaming when things go wrong. You want to solve problems when they arise, not point fingers at one another.
- Make sure that work assignments are reasonable. Expect too much from people and they will stress out as they fall apart, producing second-rate work. Expect too little and they will get bored and perhaps get into gossips and back-biting, all of which is devastating to morale.
- Provide opportunities to learn and to grow professionally. Your workers want to improve themselves. You had best encourage it. Maybe they can attend the occasional workshop, sign on for online courses, understudy those who are proficient or even apprentice if you have some guys working there with their tickets. Learning is a great morale booster, one that zeros right in on building positive self-esteem.
- Have a conflict resolution process available. The sooner you can resolve those who are in dispute the better will be your staff’s interpersonal relations with each other.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for advice from any staffer who might be in a position to know and include them in decision-making discussions when possible.
- Recognize achievement. I don’t care whether you make little certificates, bake a cake or give your achievers a free pass to the movies, and neither do they. What is important is that those who achieve get recognized for their creativity and productivity.
I am sure there are other ideas for you to consider but the above is at least a start and might get you out of the gate when the starter pistol is fired.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
