The importance of championing mental health in the workplace

Poor mental health is a growing and considerable concern within UK workplaces. Evidence suggests that mental health issues are responsible for almost 12.7% of all sickness absence days across the country.

One of the biggest challenges with tackling poor mental health is removing the stigma that surrounds it. It can be very common to ignore emotional and mental health issues, as they are often deemed too embarrassing, confusing, or scary to talk about.

But this really does need to change. After all, happier, more contented staff make for productive and successful team members. Put simply, good mental health is a win-win for employees, employers, and their organisations.

Your safest business investment to date

Investing in the mental health of your staff pays dividends. Research suggests that for every £1 you invest into employee mental health, you'll receive up to £5.30 in return! So, more UK businesses need to start paying more attention to properly addressing mental health and removing the unfair stigma that, for some reason, surrounds it.

Ethically supporting staff's mental health is the right thing to do, and it speaks volumes about your work culture. Employers that take the subject of mental health seriously help to ensure higher engagement levels and productivity, not to mention drastically lessen absence rates and secures the retention of talent!

Why emotional intelligence is beneficial in the workplace

Let us explain why emotional intelligence is beneficial in the workplace. Emotional intelligence (also known as EI) is the ability to recognise, understand, and appropriately respond to the emotions in ourselves and others.

The most significant benefit of having strong emotional intelligence is that it can greatly increase a person's happiness. As a result of effective training, your employees can grasp the skills needed to overcome certain situations and help them become less stressed, resulting in a happier and more productive day with better communication throughout your team. Other benefits of emotional intelligence include:

• Better decision making & problem solving
• Improved composure
• Improved self awareness
• More easily resolve conflicts
• Handle constructive criticism better
• Improved job satisfaction & performance
• Emotional self regulation

How to measure emotional intelligence in the workplace

Emotional intelligence does not come naturally to everyone, and it can take a little time to get it right. But by supplying regular and effective training you can help strengthen your employees' emotional intelligence.

Unfortunately, whilst models of measuring emotional intelligence assessments are out there, there isn't an accurate measure of a person's emotional intelligence. But a person with strong emotional intelligence is easily identifiable by several characteristics, such as active listening, social awareness and intrinsic motivation. You will be able to see your employees develop and improve in areas such as conflict resolution, decision making, responding to constructive criticism and problem-solving.

Online Mental Health & Wellbeing training courses

Here at HR Hub Plus Limited, we offer a variety of Mental Health & Wellbeing courses that are designed for any level of employee across all industry sectors.

Some of our most popular courses in this bundle include:

• Mental Health Awareness Training
• Stress Awareness Training
• Emotional Intelligence Training
• Anxiety Management Training Courses
• Resilience Training

By providing staff with this training, we hope we can play our part in helping to raise awareness on understanding, recognising, and managing mental ill health as well as maintaining and celebrating good mental wellbeing.

For more information about our wide choice of courses, get in touch!