Beyond The Office: How Companies Are Extending Mental Health Support To Employees' Families

Mental health and emotional wellbeing has emerged as a priority for companies over the last few years. According to research from Gallup, employees who believe their company cares about their wellbeing are 3x more likely to be engaged at work and 5x more likely to strongly advocate for their company as a place to work. 

Moreover, encouraging mental health conversations or extending mental health support to employees can break the stigma of it in the workplace, which is the need of the hour. 

What are some initiatives companies can do? 

Onboarding Initiatives: In this time and age, with more young people entering the workforce, it is important that companies have proper onboarding initiatives where freshers are able to transition to the workforce with ease. This can be done through the buddy systems- where older employees act as mentors for newer employees or through regular check in surveys. 

Counseling Services: Companies are now partnering with emotional wellness platforms and wellness providers to provide counseling for their employees. This gives employees a safe space to talk about any issues they might be facing at work and beyond. In the long run, this can help create a healthier work environment. 

Wellness Providers also allow users to add their families or their friends to avail counseling services which can be helpful for their personal lives as well.

Habit Building Activities: Beyond personal life, another aspect which contributes to an employees productivity is the habits that they maintain. Poor physical health, poor coping mechanisms such as smoking, drinking can lead to absenteeism and poor work productivity in the workplace. 

To combat this, companies can help with habit building activities such as stepathons, running clubs, holistics wellness programs (such as aerobics and zumba) can help employees build better habits. 

In some companies, gamification of these activities through leaderboards, rewards and recognition etc has helped another layer to these activities. 

Webinars/Seminars: Another category of activities which can improve morale in the workplace is through monthly webinars/ seminars for employees. These activities which cover topics ranging from parenthood, to workplace stress, to sensitization training and even financial and legal wellness can provide employees with the tools they need to address other aspects of their life. 

A seminar on financial wellness for example- can provide employees with the knowledge they need in case they might be looking to save/ invest for their future or their retirement. 

Pulse Check/ Culture Surveys: This is another important initiative companies can take up. Through culture surveys, companies can understand what the employees think about the company- if the culture is getting transmitted across via the senior management etc. This can help companies make the necessary changes that they need- to ensure they can improve productivity and wellbeing in the workplace. 

Companies need to take the initiative to help companies beyond their work. With wellbeing initiatives, companies can look to create a work environment that is productive and thriving. With well executed engagement programmes, productivity can increase by 21 per cent in their workplace

Dr Jini K Gopinath

Guest Author Chief Psychology Officer , YourDost