So, You Don’t Have a Budget for Wellbeing?
Alternatively, you could be spending a small fortune on mental health training, resilience training, apps that nobody uses, and things don’t seem to be getting any better?
I hear both responses a lot and it makes me think about how many businesses are looking at this in the wrong way.
When it comes to workplace mental health, the basic principles of business and the basic principles of being a human being seem to fly out of the window as we replace logic and basic human instinct with a fear of the unknown.
Let me give you an example:
You have an expensive piece of kit on the factory shop floor. You have put a lot of investment into the purchase.
There is the purchase itself. Then there are the installation, training, and maintenance contracts to consider.
It has cost you a lot of money. It gets off to a great start. It is performing as well as expected and it is a great investment and at this rate, you will see your return on investment pretty soon. Then, there is a glitch. Too much pressure was applied and it was running outside the parameters in the spec. You were pushing it too hard and now the machine output and quality levels are being affected.
Productivity is down
Output is poor
People are getting injured
Customers are getting let down
How do you fix it?.......
You get to work on the machine and take a logical approach to solve the problem.
If you recognised that you didn’t have the skill set/s internally to diagnose the issue you would bring in a specialist technician
Involve the Quality Assurance teams alongside the internal specialist. This is most likely the Department Manager. Together you could apply a 5 WHY or 8D approach to problem-solving
Work with Health and Safety to apply safety controls to prevent injury and carry out regular risk assessments
What you would not do is.
Do nothing about it because you didn’t have the skill sets to fix it
Accept the decline in performance and productivity and do nothing
Allow deliveries to customers to fail or be of a sub-standard quality
Replace safety controls with a team of first aiders
Leave the investment sat there doing nothing and costing you money
Now, if we apply the same logic to workplace mental health why are organisations throwing this logical approach out of the window?
You don’t have to find more money to do workplace wellbeing well.
If you take a longer-term and more strategic view with the right approach, done consistently over time, looking after your workforce will save you money and create happier and more productive workplaces.