By now, you might have understood that the resources of your business are beyond your capital. It is a combination of manpower, finances and tools. When people are available to work without financial resources or tools, it can be challenging to get the business running. It is not any different the other way. Irrespective of the machines and money you have as a business owner, if you don’t have people to operate them effectively for the desired outcome, it’s going to be a problem.
It’s glaring that the world is evolving with the birth of artificial intelligence and automation. However, they still don’t beat the creativity and innovation a team can put into a business. This has pros and cons because, unlike artificial intelligence, a human being is an intertwinement of the body, emotions, intellect, and spirit. The combination of these parts makes up a person’s whole.
Though your intellect may be capable enough to operate the nuances of your business in the vehicle of a healthy body, you would still be unable to if your emotions are not in good shape. Similarly, your employees may know what to do and have the strength to do it. If their minds have been affected negatively, their chances of success reduce drastically. And since they’re giving the input to your business, its output also drops.
This is why mental health is as important as physical health in achieving excellence. Just as you need optimal health to manage your business operations, the employees in your team also need optimal mental health to function effectively.
Factors That Can Affect Your Team’s Mental Health
While your team is responsible for improving their mental health for better work performance, you also have a role in creating a conducive environment for them to be more efficient and productive.
As a business owner, you have a long list of tasks to do with deadlines. You need capital to start a project. Your company’s website and social media pages must be functional with engaging and relevant content. You have customers to satisfy. You need to attract and retain more customers because more customers would mean more visibility, more referrals, and more returns on investment. There’s a marketing strategy to plan and execute. The overall operations of your business require a ton of work. It is tempting to overload your team with responsibilities beyond their capacity or outside the scope of what was initially agreed upon, even unconsciously.
Work overload is just one of many factors that can trigger poor mental health at work for your team. Other factors include but are not limited to:
- Understaffing
- Unreasonable Work Hours
- Lack of Needed Skills
- Poor Physical or Virtual Workspaces
- Discrimination
- Isolation
- Harassment
- Underpayment
Understaffing
Understaffing, most times, is the root cause of excessive workload, which isn’t good for you or your workers. When there are fewer hands to handle needed tasks, the likely reaction is overloading the available ones. This reduces your employees’ productivity and, eventually, your company’s performance.
Unreasonable Work Hours
One thing workers detest and cringe at is long or inflexible work hours. I understand that there are milestones to achieve and lots of work. However, instituting unreasonably long and/or inflexible hours is not a way to get the best from your employees.
Lack of Needed Skills
Your workers will most likely suffer from poor mental health if they are underskilled for their position. Aside from feeling intimidated by skilled colleagues, underskilled employees will get frustrated when they underperform.
Poor Physical or Virtual Workspaces
If you’re working at a physical location, you cannot afford to have a working environment that is harmful to the health of your staff or unfriendly to the eyes. There are studies supporting the relationship between work environment aesthetics and employee productivity.
While it may surprise you that there could even be poor physical workspaces, using low-quality project management tools and subpar software applications for the virtual workspace can cause heartbreaks for your workers.
Discrimination
Discrimination against a team member due to race, religion, ethnicity or other reasons affects their mental health. It is inhumane and should never be done. While you may not indulge in it as a business owner, your organizational culture might allow it.
Isolation
Having a workspace or company policy that encourages isolation more than collaboration will reduce the level of output employees can achieve while working as a team.
Harassment
Physical, sexual, or verbal harassment negatively affects a person. Your workers are not different. If abusive words, molestation or violence is done at your workplace against a worker, their output and your company are affected.
Underpayment
Believe it or not, if employees feel they’re being paid less than they should, they would not be happy about it. While some team members might be passionate about their jobs, if wages, salaries or bonuses are delayed, slashed or minimal, they have less motivation to be more committed and productive.
How to Improve Your Employees’ Effectiveness and Company’s Performance
- Adequate Staffing
- Considerable Work Hours
- Training
- Appealing and Efficient Physical or Virtual Workspaces
- Acceptance
- Team Spirit
- Respect
- Adequate Rewards
Adequate Staffing
Hiring adequate staff will ensure your team members are not overburdened with responsibilities. In cases where more hands are needed, your business cannot afford to include more people on its payroll.
You can hire freelancers or agencies like Brand Patron that offer administrative support and other services your business needs. Instead of long-term employment, you can choose project-based contracts.
Considerable Work Hours
Not all jobs are indeed demanding. Some are more tasking than others. This also implies that work hours will not always be the same. Some jobs require 8 hours a day and some 4 hours. Other organizations work in shifts (morning, afternoon, evening, or one day on/off).
Depending on the demands of the roles and how many hands you have, fix work hours with your team in mind. Include lunch breaks as well.
Training
It may be the responsibility of your staff to upskill, but training your staff will also do you and your business a lot of good. I’m pretty intentional about upskilling and making it a part of the process for my team and interns at Brand Patron. With the knowledge they learn and the soft skills they develop, they can function more efficiently on the job.
You may recommend online courses they could enrol for, free or paid-for. If you are an on-site enterprise, you could invite leadership, human resources experts or any skill relevant to your business.
Your average staff will see reasons to appreciate you and invest more effort into their tasks. That will, in turn, boost the productivity of your business.
Appealing and Efficient Physical or Virtual Workspaces
After realizing the effect of workspace aesthetics on your employees’ mental health and productivity, implement elements of aesthetics that boost work productivity.
And in virtual workspaces, take advantage of tools like Google Workspace, Trello, Slack or Microsoft. These tools work efficiently with free features that will encourage smooth collaboration among your team.
Acceptance
Your organisation should have an acceptance policy to ensure everyone is accepted as they are, regardless of race, ethnic group, disabilities, gender or religion. You can have a more conducive environment that’ll foster higher performance.
Team Spirit
In place of isolation, promote collaboration among your staff. Organise your office so that people can connect without it getting in the way of their assignments. Let people work together by combining their strengths and overcoming each other’s weaknesses.
Respect
Respect has a sweet effect on people’s minds and can improve your employees’ mental health. This value must be made a culture in your company for a higher level of productivity to be achieved.
Adequate Rewards
Remember what I said about employees being unhappy when they’re paid less than they should be? Well, the reverse is also true. Employees have a sense of satisfaction when they’re paid their rightful dues. Yes, your company gets to decide what to pay its workers, but ensure you give them the proper pay for their work. This should be done as and when due.
Investing in the mental health of your employees to boost their productivity is a long-term investment with great returns. It’s a value that your team will remember and appreciate you for even when they’re no longer with you. You can build a system that promotes mental health at work that newer employees can also benefit from and maximise to work better in their positions in your company.
To ensure your business’s efficient operation and productivity, contact your reliable business partner to provide the administrative support and strategies you need.
Bye for now,
Alexis.
