According to the World Health Organization, overloaded with stimuli and information from the digital world, fearing for our own safety, living in the immediate vicinity of a war-torn country and at the same time registering a decline in economic stability, associated with accelerating inflation, we are particularly vulnerable to stress and its associated consequences. All this, unfortunately, as reported by scientific research, affects the quality of our physical and mental well-being.
Employers and the Mental Health Crisis
This situation has a concrete impact on the state of the labor market - in the dimensions of efficiency, labor safety and economy. A study by the WHO estimates that widespread mental disorders cost the world $1 trillion a year. This amount consists not only of expenditure on health institutions, but also of the costs incurred by employers who hire people affected by this problem.
Here we must face the fact that this is a global situation. Taking into account the calculations of the World Health Organization, there are currently as many as 970 million people in the world with personality disorders and other ailments of a mental nature. Most of them are also active in the labor market. According to these statistics, one can safely assume that in any enterprise, company or organization there are people who are overloaded with stress. This, of course, carries a number of consequences not only for their personal life, but also for the interests of the employer. It is estimated that a company with 10,000 employees and a revenue of $70 million will lose as much as $17.2 million to problems resulting from their depression, including as many as $10 million due to absenteeism and reduced productivity related to mental health problems. [1]
The above data show how important the involvement of employers is in the issue of the quality of mental health of employees, because by investing in the mental well-being of the staff, we also take care of our interests, related to the business we do. It can therefore be said that the organization's support of employees in mental health prevention is a win-win solution. People, as a result of such actions, will receive resources that they could not have had it not been for the involvement of the employer. Thanks to them, they improve the quality of their lives, and at the same time the company can more effectively achieve its goals related to the economic activity carried out.
Consequences of lack of commitment to employee support
The conclusions of the observation of the situation on the labor market and the phenomenon of the global mental health crisis are simple - you need to invest in the psychological well-being of your employees. But what if we as employers ignore this problem? What professional spheres are affected by excessive stress and employee overload? What exactly can happen when we don't take care of these issues? Here are some examples of consequences:
- Decrease in productivity
If a person's mental problems are not properly taken care of, then it is difficult for him to act productively and engage in daily professional duties. Such a state can slow it down, cause chaos in thinking and acting. It definitely reflects on the efficiency and quality of his professional work.
- Reduced safety and hygiene at work
Stress overload, dealing with your troubles in private life or those that are related to health, affect the cognitive processes of the brain. These cognitive processes are, for example: thinking, memory, associating facts, reaction speed or concentration. This condition can increase workplace hazards and contribute to an increase in accidents.
- Increase in employee turnover
It is difficult to work in conditions filled with constant tension. Workplaces where no one cares about reducing stress-generating stimuli are often characterized by high turnover among employees. Given that the process of recruiting and introducing new employees to work is often associated with large expenditures by the employer, the commitment to improving this situation will reduce such costs.
- More absences
Mental health repair layoffs can last from a few weeks to several months. Depression is not enough, as with the flu, a few days devoted to bed rest. A longer absence of a sick employee has a number of costly consequences: overtime work of other team members, the need to bring in and train replacements, as well as postponement of project completion dates. Taking into account the fact that from the 34th day of the employee's illness, the full costs of payment of sickness benefits are borne by the employer, this can also be very unfavorable for him from an economic point of view.

How can employees be helped?
Despite understanding how important it is in today's world to engage the breadwinner in reducing stress and helping workers cope with ongoing mental crises, it is often difficult to systematically introduce action-based changes into the organization's culture.
This may be due to such reasons as:
- the belief that one should not delve into the sphere of mental health of employed persons in any way, since it is their intimate affair - because of this, a certain awkwardness may arise in touching on this issue, even on the basis of the mere conversation on the subject.
- the awareness of employees employed in HR structures that they are often not adequately prepared or trained in the field of mental health, which is after all dealt with by science - psychology or psychiatry - and not business.
Until now, there has not been and is not such a requirement that an employee of HR structures be a psychologist at the same time. Meanwhile, in the world we live in today, it is increasingly necessary to have competencies related to psychology, which can be intimidating or cause uncertainty in taking steps related to trying to support workers in their mental health care.
This can be remedied with external support from people who have the appropriate competences and a number of tools that have been developed by specialists.
Here we have at your disposal, among others:
- meetings with mental health experts, stress reduction workshops or face-to-face consultations with a psychologistwhich can be facilitated to employees by reimbursing their costs.
- tools to support self-understanding and designed to counteract mental health crises or to facilitate their conscious transition and to educate - what forms of help can be reached in the event of a long-term decline in well-being. This role is played, for example Focusly psychoeducational app, which can be used not only in an ongoing crisis, but above all in order to naturally build your mental resilience and counteract the decline in mental health.
- educating employees by organizing meetings on the subject of mental health with experts and initiating conversations on the importance of topics related to psycho-physical well-being. All this in order to deprecate the belief that still prevails in many social spheres that mental health problems are a cause for shame.
- wide information on the importance of not only qualitative working time, but also qualitative leisure time, for the performance of professional activities. Educating about the role of rest and its impact on well-being and supporting a variety of ways of spending time after work, through benefits such as MultiSport cards or applications for listening to relaxing music such as GO ON.
Not only is it worth it, but it should
As the global mental health crisis deepens, strategies to protect it should become a permanent part of corporate social responsibility. Such goals can be achieved in many ways. The choice is as great as the number of disturbing reports about the scale of diagnosed depression, mental disorders or the increasing number of suicide attempts among people. For this reason, the commitment of business to mental health prevention has long since gone out of fashion and should be considered as an ethical and economic obligation of any organization.
Bibliography:
- Chisholm D, Sweeny K, Sheehan P, Rasmussen B, Smit F, Cuijpers P, Saxena S. Scaling-up treatment of depression and anxiety: a global return on investment analysis. Lancet Psychiatry. 2016 May; 3 (5) :415-24. doi: 10.1016/S2215-0366 (16) 30024-4. Epub 2016 Apr 12. PMID: 27083119.
- Stewart WF, Ricci JA, Chee E, Hahn SR, Morganstein D. Cost of lost productive work time among US workers with depression. CAVE 2003; 289 (23) :3135-3144.
- Lerner D, Lyson M, Sandberg E, et al: The High Cost of Mental Disorders: Facts for Employers. Rutherford, CA, One Mind Initiative, 2017.
- Ronald C. Kessler, PhD, Hagop S. Akiskal, MD, Minnie Ames, PhD, Howard Birnbaum, PhD, Paul Greenberg, MA, Robert M.A. Hirschfeld, M.D., Robert Jin, M.S., Kathleen R. Merikangas, PhD, and Philip S. Wang, M.D., DrPH, The prevalence and effects of mood disorders on work performance in a nationally representative sample of US workers, Am J Psychiatry. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2007 Jul 18.