07 Dec How to Promote Mental Wellbeing At Work During The Q4 Holiday Season

Quarter four for nonprofit leaders and organizations is a highly active and engaging time for meeting end-of-year fundraising goals and planning for the year ahead. However, because of this, during the busy holiday season, nonprofit leaders may have less time to focus on their mental health. You may have not know, but nearly one million Americans miss work each day because of stress. High-stress levels also lead to a negative impact on productivity and can cause potentially harmful health effects. Here are some tips to help you keep yourself and your team’s mental health in check during the holidays.

Encourage Vacations

Take a vacation! Often times nonprofit employees come to work exhausted, which can negatively impact team productivity. Taking a step away from work is essential for you and your team to work at optimal levels of attention, focus, and creative thinking. Studies show that more vacations result in greater work success.

Train your Leadership to Promote Mental Wellbeing            

Train your nonprofit organization’s leadership to create a healthy psychological culture. Support training your managers in areas that promote employee wellness and mental health. Creating a supportive work environment where your leadership is trained to promote mental well-being can have a positive impact on employee productivity. This will allow supervisors to be more cognizant of the impact of workload or workplace stressors that could create anxiety within an employee and create strategies to mitigate the stressors that could inhibit the employee’s performance.

Institute clear workplace guidelines for health and safety

Create and establish policies that promote the health and safety of your nonprofit employees. Your nonprofit’s workplace guidelines can be utilized to develop processes for addressing prevention, early identification, support and rehabilitation for distress, burnout, substance abuse and other mental health concerns.

Positive and supportive workplace practices boost employee physical and psychological health, company morale, and your company’s productivity. An APA’s 2021 Work and Well-being Survey found that people who feel tense or stressed during the workday are more than three times more likely to plan to look for another job, while employees who feel supported are more likely to stay, reducing the costs of employee turnover. As you can see, it’s vital to make efforts to support the mental health of you and your employees. We’d love to hear what your organization does!