This Thursday (10th October) marks World Mental Health Day and this year the theme set by the World Federation for Mental Health is:

 “It is time to prioritise mental health in the workplace.”

 And hallelujah to that! Post-pandemic, people have never been so stressed out.

“Burnt-out Nation”
Never has it been so important to highlight and tackle what is becoming a global mental health crisis. Mental Health UK’s 2024 burnout report states We are becoming at “burnt-out nation”. A YouGov poll of over 2,000 adults found that 1 in 5 workers (20%) had to take time off due to poor mental health caused by high levels of pressure or stress.

As a species we are workers. We spend most of our waking hours at work and at its best, work can give us purpose, community, and joy. But when work falls short, combined with all the other pressures of life, it can become a source of stress and anxiety, and maybe even burnout.

What is Burnout?
Burnout is a sneaky, insidious thing that slowly creeps up on you. According to the WHO, burnout is caused by “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”. It is physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. It happens in stages and if left untreated burnout can ultimately result in significant ongoing problems like depression, isolation and chronic physical fatigue.

 Work-related stress and burnout can impact so many business-critical things like productivity, engagement, customer service and team morale. Happier, more fulfilled employees will be more efficient and creative at work. It makes business sense for leaders to help their teams manage their work worries and stresses for better business outcomes.

 Supporting Employee Mental Health
It is up to employers to build and implement organisation-wide mental health wellbeing strategies, whilst making sure that managers are given the training they need to be able to support their teams and people on a more personal level.

 Here at the Academy of Wide-Hearted Living we have drawn on our own personal experiences of work-related stress and burnout to build a programme of workshops that help create a healthy workplace to make people feel valued, supported and fulfilled and ultimately to avoid work-related stress that builds to the point of burnout.

 Our courses and workshops tackle wellbeing at work and teach tools and strategies to:

• Support employee happiness and encourage work/life balance.
• Foster deeper loyalty, reduce stress and improve performance.
• Build stronger, more collaborative teams.
• Encourage and nurture wellbeing.
• Build resilience.
• Improve engagement.

Whether work is the cause of someone’s mental health struggles, or just exacerbates the situation, employers have a responsibility to their people. It’s time to stop paying lip service to this mental health crisis and start taking significant action.

Request a call back if you’d like to know how we can help you, your business, and your people. It might just save someone’s life.