Employee mental health and job performance go hand-in-hand, but most businesses aren’t doing enough to address this.
According to Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of Dying for a Paycheck, and Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford, there are several key drivers to workplace stress.
- Work-life balance conflicts
- Lack of autonomy and control
- Internal politics and people issues
- Excessive workloads
- Lack of purpose
Yet, the way most organizations operate today exacerbates these drivers and sabotages their people’s mental health.
We’re sending people back to the office five days a week, creating more work-life balance conflicts.
We’re drowning them in internal processes and unnecessary meetings, depriving them of authority and control and with that, the ability to get their job done and derive a sense of purpose from their work.
We’re ruling by committee and consensus, depriving people of decision-making authority even for the most inconsequential of decisions.
Despite well-funded and well-publicized research into mental health at work, most workplace wellbeing programs fall short, putting all of the emphasis on band-aid solutions – yoga classes, mindfulness workshops, and breathwork programs.
While these interventions are all effective at regulating our emotions, they fail to address the root causes underpinning workplace stress.
If you keep burning your hand on a hot stove, the solution isn’t to get better disinfectant or bandages – it’s to stop touching the damn stove.
And as research shows, it is in the interests of organizations and employers to address these root causes as it has a direct impact on job performance and company outcomes.
Research Proves the Impact of Mental Health on Job Performance
A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found a direct correlation between employee mental health and job performance.
The research analyzed data from 239 firms in China and revealed that mental well-being fuels higher engagement and increased innovation.
In short, employees with strong mental health are more likely to:
- Stay engaged in their work
- Generate creative ideas
- Take calculated risks
- Produce better overall outcomes
By examining the behaviors of employees who feel mentally well, researchers identified two crucial factors that enhance performance: work engagement and innovative behavior.
The Role of Work Engagement in Performance
When employees are mentally healthy, they’re more motivated to not only do their work but do so with a clear head and make better decisions.
This heightened level of engagement directly contributes to:
- Increased productivity: Engaged employees are far less likely to procrastinate or make errors, leading to higher-quality work.
- Improved problem-solving: A clear, healthy mind allows employees to focus on finding solutions to challenges, rather than feeling overwhelmed or stressed.
How Innovation Thrives with Mental Well-Being
Mentally healthy employees don’t just perform better—they think better too. According to the same study, mental well-being boosts a key driver of business success: innovation.
Here’s why:
- Risk-taking: With good mental health, employees are more comfortable taking calculated risks, which can lead to groundbreaking innovations.
- Collaboration: Healthy employees work well with others, sparking innovative ideas through teamwork and brainstorming sessions.
This echoes research on the impact of deep sleep on creativity. Naturally, you’re more likely to get a good night’s rest when you’re not stressed or generally anxious about the next day at the office.
Why Prioritizing Mental Health Matters for Your Company
Ignoring the mental health of your employees is no longer an option. The benefits of prioritizing mental well-being go beyond individual performance—they ripple out to impact your entire team and company culture.
A Real-World Example: Unilever’s Focus on Mental Well-Being
Unilever, the global FMCG behemoth, saw a 15% increase in productivity after it implemented a program called Agile Working, which provides flexible work arrangements and mental health support for employees.
The company also trialed a four-day workweek which generated the following outcomes.
- Decreased work stress by 33%
- increased strength and vigor at work by 15%
- Saw work/life conflict fall by 67%
By creating a work environment that emphasizes employee well-being, Unilever has not only improved employee satisfaction but also enhanced business outcomes.
The company is now rolling out its hybrid working approach globally, giving people two days from home each week.
How Is Your Company Supporting Mental Health?
So, how does your company go about prioritizing the mental health of its employees?
Aside from some of the band-aid solutions introduced earlier, and token offerings like mental health days, there are more that leaders can do structurally to address the root causes underpinning workplace stress.
These include but aren’t limited to:
- Eliminating unnecessary meetings, especially where information can be communicated asynchronously
- Implement flexible working arrangements – whether that be remote, a four-day workweek, or a hybrid of the two as is the case at Unilever
- Reviewing processes and policies to ensure they actually empower your people to do their jobs, instead of strip them of autonomy and control
- Leverage AI and automation more strategically to free people up to focus on higher value activities, and decrease their workload to a sustainable level
Final Thoughts
Far too often as leaders and as people we fall victim to short-term thinking.
But if we want to play the long-game in business, we need to ensure that the way our people work is sustainable, and that our organizations don’t become a victim of costly employee turnover because we didn’t do enough to ensure our people were not only happy at work, but derived meaning from it too.
The connection between employee mental health and job performance is clear, and it’s time to do more about it than roll out some yoga mats.
