TOTAL WORKER HEALTH - Emotional Health

Today, there’s a growing awareness that mental health is just as critical as the physical health and safety of your workers. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to stress out the workforce with soaring infectious rates, ever changing mask rules, along with amplifying fear of financial burdens or job security.  Feelings of stress and anxiety are at an all-time high and the emotional health of our workers can no longer go ignored. 

  The CDC reports that poor mental health and stress can negatively affect employees:

• Job performance and productivity
• Engagement with work
• Communication with coworkers
• Physical capability and daily functioning

Mental illnesses such as depression are also associated with higher rates of injury/disability along with unemployment. (Sourced from CDC)

This can be an awful cycle - If an employee suffers an injury at work or develops any serious health condition, their mental health will likely be affected by the challenges they’ll face, such as mobility issues, loss of independence, the need to depend on social and medical networks and inability to meet their previous responsibilities.

Some workers embody the "too tough to worry about it" mentality with the attitude that nothing terrible could happen to them and discussions of mental health can seem out of place. The common perception is that workers should be able to handle health and emotional issues, bravely soldiering on until the work has ended. 

Until recently safety managers didn’t have to be overly concerned about the mental health of their workers – this was something often handled within HR/benefits or at home. 

With growing evidence of increased injury or safety risk and link to mental health, this needs to be a topic everyone is willing to tackle and it starts with promotion and willingness to engage your workforce on a personal level to understand when workers may be struggling and the ability to promote the importance of seeking help. 

A Society for Human Resource Management survey of 1,099 employees found that work-related concerns left more than 40 percent of employees feeling hopeless, burned out or exhausted as they grapple with lives altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the findings:

• 37 percent of workers who do not or cannot telecommute think their pay and benefits have been threatened to a great extent, versus 22 percent of workers who telecommute full time during the pandemic.
• 55 percent report often having little interest or pleasure in doing things since COVID-19 began.

It is natural to feel stress, grief and worry during the pandemic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).