Respected health organizations define mental health as a state of well-being.
It’s said that a sound mental health can help you cope up with daily stresses and work productively while realizing your potential and contributing to society.
Today, mental health has become a topic of discussion. Most people are working towards ensuring mental health; companies are also joining the campaign.
Despite the popularity, some industries have yet to fully promote mental health in their workplaces. The question often asked is, of what importance is mental health?
If you’re in the skilled trades industry, here are the importance of mental health:
Increased Quality Of Service Delivery
Service delivery is important in any industry. It depicts how effectively you’ll meet your clients’ needs. Poor quality service delivery results in reworks and unsatisfied customers. Prolonged poor services will likely put you out of business within no time.
Mental health greatly affects service delivery. Workers with poor mental health are stressed and will often be lost in thoughts as they serve clients. With these, there’s a high possibility of errors and safety compromises that can cost your business.
Yet with better mental health, you don’t have to worry about losing clients due to poor service delivery. Skilled trade companies are partnering with bodies to promote mental health awareness and practices to improve the workplace. It’s something you should consider and adopt.
Reduced Business Expenses
Businesses aim to keep their expenses to the bare minimum. The aim is to avail of money for reinvesting and enjoying business growth. Most states require that businesses offer health insurance to their workers. As a business, you’ll pay premiums to a health insurance provider, depending on the risk factor.
Where your workers have poor mental health, the insurance provider will consider you a high risk. As a result, you’ll pay more premiums that add up to your expenses.
In contrast, when there’s good mental health, your workers won’t need to visit psychologists or purchase medications like anti-depressants regularly. They’ll use their insurance covers minimally, terming your business low-risk. You’ll pay fewer premiums, availing of money to fund other business operations.
Better Teamwork
Teamwork is something advocated for in business. It entails working together to solve problems for clients and the business. Teamwork promotes creativity, innovation, and faster work execution. Poor mental health defeats this.
Some symptoms of poor mental health are withdrawal from social gatherings and anger. These two are the opposite of what’s needed for teamwork. Workers with mental health issues prefer working in solitude and often pick up fights with other workers. Working alone increases the time spent to finish a task, while fights result in time wastage during conflict resolution.
Nonetheless, with mental health in place, workers will work together harmoniously. They’ll better manage their anger, enabling you to reap all the benefits of teamwork.
Increased Work Productivity
Most businesses yearn for productivity. Productivity refers to the amount of work done in a day. It results in increased sales, returns, and profits, which are some of businesses’ bottom lines.
Some of the aspects that lower business productivity are absenteeism and reduced focus. Poor mental health fuels these two aspects.
With absenteeism, workers with poor mental health will take sick leaves to see psychologists and other health experts. The result is a reduced number of workers at work. There will be less work done if there are no replacements, resulting in poor productivity.
On the other hand, as previously stated, poor mental health reduces focus on work execution. Such workers will take longer than usual to execute tasks. In the end, less will be done in a day, leading to losses.
With better mental health, you’ll always have a full house at work, with everyone doing the most and best. The result is higher productivity levels.
Better Staff Morale
Staff morale refers to their enthusiasm to work and fulfill their responsibilities. It’s a quality desired by most business owners. Poor mental health leads to low motivation at work since it’s associated with depression and low moods.
But good mental health ensures the opposite. There will be minimal to no work supervision since workers are self-driven.
Better staff morale results in positivity and happiness at work too. The result is the body releasing dopamine and serotonin hormones which activate the brain. With this, your workers will solve problems better.
Also, when workers are motivated to work, they adopt a proactive approach. A proactive approach leads to smarter ways of executing work and realizing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs.)
Conclusion
From the discussion above, mental health is quite important, not only to personal wellbeing but also to businesses. The discussion has detailed mental health benefits in the skilled trades industry.
With this insight, you’re better placed to decide whether or not to promote mental health in your workplace. Please make the right decision for your workers and business.