Promoting good mental health amongst your tech & IT team
Promoting good mental health amongst tech & IT professionals is critical.
A sector characterised by its demands and challenges, promoting good mental health practices amongst tech & IT workers can help prevent stress and create positive working environments where individuals and organisations can thrive.
It can also be a core enabler of employee engagement and organisational performance, but the priority here is to advocate for normalising conversations around mental health.
Today is World Mental Health Day. Whatever your role in your business – owner, HR Manager, line manager – use it as an opportunity to raise awareness of mental health issues and mobilize efforts in support of good mental health amongst your employees.
It may not be feasible to build out a robust mental health policy with additional employee benefits overnight, but this shouldn’t be at the expense of taking no action at all.
Here’s 12 Actions You Can take to promote employee wellbeing
- 1. Start small. Pick one thing and build on it each week.
- 2. Talk to your employees. Check in; ask them how they’re doing. Connect with your team as individuals.
- 3. Create an environment where it’s safe and supportive for people in your team to talk about how you feel.
- 4. Lead by example and communicate how you feel. Help remove the stigma.
- 5. Make it evident to your employees that you care about their mental wellbeing.
- 6. Review healthcare packages to determine anything that supports good mental health, and communicate it.
- 7. Review the lifestyle & wellness perks you offer to see if there’s anything better you can do.
- 8. Encourage self-care, like exercise routines, balanced diet, and good sleep.
- 9. Learn to recognize the signs of stress, fatigue and depression.
- 10. Do some research, find resources, read – and train yourself and others in your Senior Management Team to become a ‘mental health’ first aider.
- 11. Encourage people to take time out if there is a need
- 12. Encourage people to pay attention to the moment (be present)
If you want to make promoting employee wellbeing and supporting mental health issues a priority, check out mentl. Based in the UAE, the founders of this website are on a mission to open up the conversation on mental health by being a trusted platform for leading content, expert resources, bespoke research and progressive advocacy.
