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Mental Wellbeing & Stress Reduction

Mental Wellbeing 

We all have mental health, just as we all have physical health. How are you feeling? How well can you cope with day-to-day life? Mental wellbeing is not a straight path - it can change from moment to moment, day to day, and where we work can be a contributing factor to this.   

Good mental wellbeing means you feel relatively confident in yourself with positive self-esteem, this will reflect in your relationships with others. If you are not dealing with your mental wellbeing well, you might feel stressed, anxious and/or depressed.

Stress

Stress is our body’s response to pressures from a situation or life event. What contributes to stress is different for each of us and can vary depending on social and economic circumstances. Common features of things that can make us feel stressed include unexpected events or change or feeling that we lack control over a situation.

Stress can be beneficial in short bursts, helping us stay alert and perform at our best. It is normal for people to feel stress from work demands. However, continued or extreme stress at work can be harmful to mental health. Stress can contribute to the development of anxiety and/or depression and may cause an existing condition to get worse. Stress can increase our risk of injury, fatigue and burnout.

 

Contributing factors to stress at work

  • Working long hours / overtime / shift work. Taking regular five-minute breaks can help towards productivity
  • Time pressure, including fast-paced work or working to unrealistic targets
  • Not feeling like you have enough control over how you do your work
  • Not being involved in wider business decisions
  • Not receiving enough support from your line management
  • Job insecurity
  • High mental task demands, work that requires high-level decision-making
  • Not feeling like your role has clarity  
  • Receiving poor communication
  • Conflict with colleagues or managers
  • Poorly managed change, lack of organisational justice
  • Not receiving enough recognition and/or reward
  • Bullying
  • Discrimination – whether based on gender, ethnicity, race or sexuality
  • Work of an emotionally and/or disturbing nature.

Physical signs of stress

  • Chest pain or a pounding heart
  • Fatigue
  • Nausea, diarrhoea or constipation
  • Getting colds more often
  • Muscle tension, pains and headaches
  • Episodes of fast, shallow breathing and excessive sweating
  • Loss or change of appetite
  • Sleeping problems.

Non-physical signs of stress

  • Feeling overwhelmed or frustrated
  • Feeling guilty or unhappy
  • Being irritable
  • Excessive worrying
  • Losing confidence and being indecisive
  • Thinking negatively
  • Having racing thoughts
  • Memory problems.

 

Most jobs involve some degree of stress, and this can affect people at all levels within an organisation from frontline employees to senior members of staff. As an employer, there are ways you can help manage and prevent stress by improving conditions and removing the stigma around mental health at work.

A survey by mental health charity Mind revealed that 1 in 10 employees rated their current mental health as poor or very poor. 40% took time off work because of it and over half felt their employer does not support mental health.

Workplace stress can affect an individual’s:

  • Performance
  • Memory
  • Self-Esteem
  • Concentration
  • Ability to learn.

This can reduce productivity, leading to staff under-performing.

In the UK, stress accounts for 75% of sickness absence costing UK businesses an estimated 105 million working days. Poor mental health costs UK employers between £22bn and £42bn each year.

The cost of mental health-related presenteeism (people coming to work when ill) is higher than the cost of absence, estimated at between £17 billion and £26 billion in the UK.

Stress/anxiety/worry is the highest issue for young people in Gloucestershire.

Between 2014 and 2025, Gloucestershire’s adult population will increase by 8.2%, the population aged over 75 years will rapidly increase and there will be fewer people aged between 20 and 24 and between 40 and 54 years.

This could lead to an increase in social isolation, loneliness due to personal bereavement, and a potential increase in mental health issues.

 

What you can do to support mental wellbeing and stress?

Support for your employees

There are many techniques that can be used in the workplace to help us manage stress more effectively.

Examples include:

  • Creating an environment where it is okay to talk about mental wellbeing
  • Encouraging regular five-minute breaks from work
  • Taking walks during lunch breaks
  • Supporting effective time management and planning

In order to provide more holistic support for employee mental wellbeing employers can:

For more detailed guidance resources and training download our Mental Wellbeing Toolkit

Using Best-You to support your employees

Best-You is an online platform and app that you and your employees can use as your own personal platform to communicate, create goals and track your progress.

Create a private Group and invite staff to discuss healthy lifestyles within the workplace – activity, eating or anything else that fits your organisation.

Employees can create goals for healthy eating, smoking, alcohol, weight and activity. They can track their progress against their goal each day and Best-You will give motivational feedback.  

Best-You is full of helpful guidance with a specialised area on mood and stress. Employees can complete self-assessments and discuss this with their employer, if appropriate.  

Ideas for a healthy workplace

The Healthy Workplaces Gloucestershire accreditation scheme will improve your organisation's culture around mental wellbeing by giving you the opportunity to engage with your employees and offer them support.

Below are some suggestions that may help reduce stress in your workplace:

  • Display resources from trustworthy sources (e.g. Time to Change) around the workplace
  • Have a mental health champion
  • Promote physical activity and healthy eating to improve mental health and wellbeing
  • Provide guidance on mindfulness and activities such as yoga and meditation
  • Line managers being open with employees about whom they can talk to about any issues they might have
  • Have a policy that addresses stress in the workplace
  • Have workflow meetings to allow employees to raise any workload issues they may be having.