Mental Health in the Workplace
World Kindness Day invites people to engage in acts of kindness and goodwill. If you’re a people leader, you may be surprised at the benefits a culture of kindness brings to your work.
Why Promote Mental Health for Everyone?
While ‘kindness’ sounds like something you see on a motivational poster that sounds nice but largely ignored, being kind is making waves as being one of the most powerful actions you can take to positively affect change in your home and work life.
You’ve likely heard statistics on mental health, and if you’re paying attention, you know they’re not good. With the pandemic isolating people for so long, we learned to be alone. Unfortunately, the aftermath is that socializing, forming bonds, and caring about one another has been largely unlearned.
What impacts mental health?
Our overall mental health is a spectrum and is impacted by things such as work, financial issues, physical health, and family pressures.
Our clients are taking notice and focusing on positive mental health at work. While they cannot control what happens at home, they are committed to providing their employees with a safe, healthy, and inclusive work environment so that their workplace can be a source of peace and fulfillment rather than stress and toxicity.
One client has taken a forward-thinking approach to educating about mental health in the workplace that goes beyond awareness. It’s a call to action to engage and include people in their workplace who may be struggling.
Workplace Mental Health Training
TouchPoints Learning was engaged to create a set of custom training courses designed to go well beyond awareness of mental health and mental illness to include a host of issues people in the workplace may be struggling with, such as anxiety, sleep disorders, PTSD, substance use and addictions.
The objectives were twofold:
First, to reinforce that everyone struggles with something at some time. We never know what someone is dealing with. And second, to encourage action to improve the workplace environment. We have the power to turn the workplace from something people take sick days to avoid into a place where we reach out to those who look like they need it and show everyone the small kindnesses that, indeed, we all need.
The ALEC Method
When we’re at work and notice someone not themselves or demonstrating behaviours that often cause others to ignore or avoid them, we can ask if they’re OK.
The courses follow a formula of action called the ALEC method.
We chose the ALEC method to help educate employees that we can all take some time to ensure people don’t feel isolated at work; they feel included and noticed even if their behaviours might have people looking the other way.
On this World Kindness Day, can you ask how is your organization promoting kindness, inclusivity and a healthy work environment?
We’d love to hear from you and start a conversation on how we can help with awareness, education, and, yes—action.
Need help developing workplace training solutions?
Is there a workplace issue you would like to address in your organization? Call us. We can work with you to create custom solutions to support your leaders and teams.
