Today’s corporate wellness programs tend to focus on helping employees improve their health by creating clinical improvement initiatives around certain measures such as blood pressure, Body Mass Index (BMI), cholesterol, glucose, and smoking cessation. Often missing from corporate wellness programs, however, is a focus on mental health and emotional wellness. While mental health is not as easily measured as blood pressure or cholesterol, it deserves equal attention especially when considering the costs associated with poor mental and emotional health.
Productivity loss, absenteeism, job abandonment, and higher turnover are often directly linked to poor mental health. At the onset, companies need to be certain that their culture and work practices can support the mental health and emotional needs of its employees. They must communicate that they care about each employee as a person and that they are committed to providing the best working environment possible. Employers can suggest that their employees complete a health risk assessment (HRA) which often includes questions pertaining to mental health.
By providing educational opportunities and enhancing awareness of mental illnesses through discussion, organizations can de-stigmatize those very illnesses which keep employees silent in their pain. Wellness programs may offer peer-to-peer support groups for mental health conditions.
