Dashpivot Article – Mental Health Safety Moments

How to Hold Mental Health Safety Moments at Your Workplace

What is Mental Health in the Workplace?

Mental health, in the context of professional environments, refers to a state of emotional and psychological well-being that allows individuals to effectively manage stress, maintain a positive outlook, cope with challenges, and engage in productive interactions with colleagues and tasks.

Why is Mental Health Important?

Mental health is vital for individuals working in physically demanding and challenging environments for many reasons:

Safety: Workers must stay alert to ensure their safety and that of their colleagues. Mental health issues can impair concentration, increasing accidents.

Physical Health: Mental health and physical well-being are interconnected. Stress, anxiety, and depression can manifest physically, affecting job performance.

Job Performance: Good mental health leads to better productivity, fewer errors, and the ability to meet job demands effectively.

Team Dynamics: Mental health issues can lead to conflicts, poor communication, and reduced cohesion among team members.

Job Satisfaction: Employees with good mental health are more satisfied with their jobs, reducing turnover rates.

Reduced Absenteeism: Mental health support reduces absenteeism due to mental health-related sick days.

Stigma Reduction: Promoting mental health awareness reduces the stigma associated with seeking help.

Legal and Ethical Responsibilities: Employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthy environment, including addressing mental health.

Productivity and Profitability: A mentally healthy workforce enhances productivity and profitability.

Subjects for Mental Health Safety Moments

Many safety moments tend to focus on physical hazards. Mental health safety moments should focus instead on psychosocial hazards. Psychosocial hazards are hazards from the workplace that may affect the mental health of workers.

These hazards usually stem from interactions between co-workers and how the organisation manages its employees. Below is a list of common psychosocial hazards that would beneficial to hold mental health safety moments for:

Job Demands

Discussing job demands can help workers learn effective coping strategies and make the organisation aware of required changes, which reduces stress and prevents burnout.

Low Job Control

Focusing on job control can empower workers to have more influence over their tasks. This enhances their sense of autonomy and well-being.

Poor Support

Highlighting the importance of support can encourage team members to seek help when needed, promoting a sense of belonging within the organisation.

Lack of Role Clarity

Addressing role clarity issues can reduce confusion and frustration which results in improved job satisfaction and performance.

Poor Organisational Change Management

Discussing change management can alleviate anxiety during transitions and help workers adapt more smoothly.

Traumatic Events or Material

Talking about trauma can provide an outlet for team members to share their experiences and seek support. This reduces its psychological impact on the team member.

Violence and Aggression

Addressing violence and aggression helps create a zero-tolerance workplace culture and ensures that employees feel safe and supported.

Bullying

Encouraging discussions about bullying can empower victims to seek help and foster a culture of respect and empathy.

Harassment

Addressing harassment issues creates a safe space for reporting incidents and promotes a harassment-free workplace.

Conflict or Poor Workplace Relationships

Discussing conflict and relationships can offer strategies for conflict resolution, improving team dynamics and mental well-being.

How to Hold Mental Health Safety Moments in the Workplace

To effectively hold mental health safety moments meetings with your team, you will need to establish a regular schedule for these discussions to ensure they remain engaging.

Mental health safety moments should stay short and focused, lasting between 15-20 minutes. They should foster an informal and welcoming atmosphere for open participation.

At the start of each meeting, share relevant announcements, updates, or mental health resources. Choose specific mental health topics that resonate with team members, such as stress management, work-life balance, or recognising signs of distress.

You should encourage everyone to be open about sharing their personal experiences with the team. This reduces the stigma surrounding mental health discussions. Additionally, provide educational materials and resources for continued learning beyond the meetings.

Where necessary, you should incorporate interactive activities or exercises to promote engagement and understanding. Make sure to cultivate an environment where team members feel comfortable offering peer support and referring colleagues to appropriate resources.

Allocate time for questions and answers during the meetings. Wrap up each session by discussing practical action steps for enhancing mental health in relation to the topic and encouraging personal commitments.

Between meetings, follow up with team members to address any mental health concerns that were raised. You should also ensure accessibility to discussed information and support resources.

Lastly, regularly seek feedback from your team to refine the format and content of the meetings in order to improve future mental health safety moments.

Below is an example of how a safety moment can be recorded for future reference by filling out a safety moments form:

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Record your mental health safety moments with free customisable forms

Mental health safety moments are an effective way to address mental health topics and reduce the impact that psychosocial hazards have on your team members.

To ensure that everyone can refer to what was discussed afterwards and access additional resources, you should consider using this free safety moments template. This template contains all the necessary fields to hold a safety moments meeting.

Discussion points can be recorded, action items can be assigned, and attendees can record their signatures. It can also be customised to include fields that are required for discussing mental health topics.

For example, if you provide mental health resources for your team, you can add an attachments field that stores the resources for future reference.

Keep track of your safety moments by digitising your documents

Recording your mental health safety moments with a framework is a good way to give them structure. However, using forms is just the first step towards utilising safety moments to their full potential.

Safety moments are intended to help reduce safety incidents. However, it can be difficult to see if they are having an impact if all of your data is across separate forms.

By using a safety moments app, you can aggregate all your safety moments data and compare it to the incident rate over time. This allows you to determine if your meetings are impacting workplace safety and make further adjustments to your safety moments for the benefit of your team.