Workplaces as Engines of Mental Health and Well-Being - 2. Connection and Community
Essential 2: Connection and Community
Last week I introduced you to the U.S. Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being.[1
My intention when I started to pen last week’s newsletter was to explore each of the 5 Essentials in one newsletter, but I soon realised that was not going to happen. There was so much to explore and discuss within each of the Essentials that each was going to warrant a newsletter of its own.
The Framework can be viewed as a starting point for organisations in updating and institutionalising policies, processes, and practices to best support the mental health and well-being of employees.
Five Essentials for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being
Source: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/workplace-mental-health-well-being.pdf
Last week we explored Protection from Harm and this week we will look at Essential 2: Connection and Community.
Essential 2: Connection and Community
Organisations that create opportunities for social connection and community can help improve health and well-being. The Essential rests on two human needs: social support and belonging. Social support networks can mitigate feelings of loneliness and isolation. Fostering a sense of belonging has the potential to improve the health and well-being of employees and communities and the prosperity of the organisation itself.
The Connection & Community components in the framework are:
· Create cultures of inclusion and belonging
· Cultivate trusted relationships
· Foster collaboration and teamwork
Create cultures of inclusion and belonging
Organisations must encourage what scientists call prosocial behaviour. Prosocial behaviours are those intended to help other people. These actions are characterized by a concern for the rights, feelings, and welfare of other people. Behaviours that can be described as prosocial include feeling empathy and concern for others.
Prosocial behaviour includes a wide range of actions such as helping, sharing, comforting, and cooperating. Research has shown that people who engage in prosocial behaviour experience better moods and tend to experience negative moods less frequently.[2] It can have a powerful impact on many aspects of well-being including reducing the risk of loneliness, alcohol use, and depression.[3] It can also mitigate the negative emotional effects of stress.[4]
Organisational cultures that promote belonging can also foster a powerful force against bias, discrimination, and exclusion in the workplace.
Connection should be encouraged and employees from all backgrounds included. Employees must be supported with an environment of psychological safety so there is no fear of retaliation or repercussion to have their voices and concerns heard. Leaders must create an environment in which everyone feels heard, respected, and valued.
In March I wrote a newsletter that discussed the reasons many employees are leaving the workplace and what leaders could do about it. The top ten reasons employees are leaving are based on research from McKinsey. The result of the research is based on the top three rankings from respondents to the McKinsey survey who left a job between December 2020 and December 2021 without another job offer in hand. These are the employees who had just had enough.
One of the reasons was a noninclusive, unwelcoming, and disconnected community.
“There are many non-inclusive workplace behaviours that will make employees want to leave their employer. It could include the use of words, humour, gestures, other acts, or omissions that cause an employee offence. Discrimination, derision and blaming drive non-inclusion. There are also less obvious behaviours with the same outcomes including inattentive listening, making assumptions before checking the facts, command and control supervision, more criticism than praise, and actively creating division, not cohesion. All these behaviours are unwelcoming.”
Building a culture of inclusion and belonging must be an integral part of the organisation’s core values and beliefs. We must provide everyone with the resources and education regarding inclusion. It must be intentional.
Cultivate trusted relationships
All employees must be able to build trust and have a better understanding of each other as people, not just workers. When leaders create the structures and opportunities to allow this to happen, it can mitigate loneliness and helps employees across the entire organisation value and empathise with each other.
Trusted relationships can help employees cope with stress and uncertainty by supporting each other. People will share their feelings, challenges, concerns, and anxieties with others when they trust the other person to do the right thing with the information shared.
Clear, transparent, and consistent communication between leaders and employees can build trust. Leaders must really listen to employees, acknowledge their concerns and anxieties, and act when appropriate.
I wrote two newsletters at the start of the year about trust. The first explored the impact of mistrust in the workplace and the damage the pandemic had done to leaders and employee trust. The second provided 10 actions that can be taken to intentionally build and improve trust in the workplace which will have a direct impact on employee well-being.
Actions included taking small incremental steps, giving up control, listening, embracing mistakes, empathy, authenticity, feedback and provision of psychological safety.
Foster collaboration and teamwork
Many leaders are leading remote teams for the first time and fostering collaboration and teamwork may need to be more intentional than it has previously.
Employees must be provided with the tools to enable effective communication and collaboration across locations. Leaders and teams must determine when physical co-location will increase the outcomes of collaboration and team-building activities.
Leaders must practice mindful communication and encourage effective collaboration through equal participation, inclusion, and enablement.
Wrap
Next week I will explore more Essentials and components of the framework.
[1] https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/10/20/us-surgeon-general-releases-new-framework-mental-health-well-being-workplace.html
[2] Raposa EB, Laws HB, Ansell EB. Prosocial behaviour mitigates the negative effects of stress in everyday life. Clin Psychol Sci. 2016;4(4):691-698. doi:10.1177/2167702615611073
[3] American Psychological Association. Manage stress: Strengthen your support network.
[4] Raposa EB, Laws HB, Ansell EB. Prosocial behavior mitigates the negative effects of stress in everyday life. Clin Psychol Sci. 2016;4(4):691-698. doi:10.1177/2167702615611073