According to research from the mental health charity, Mind, around 42% of us have considered resigning as a result of workplace stress – and around 14% had actually resigned.

Stress comes in many forms. It can sometimes be subtle, and difficult to measure. You might not even realise that you’re suffering from stress until the symptoms become too severe to comfortably ignore.

Given that the average employee will spend around eighty thousand hours working in a single lifetime, it’s critical that we take this problem seriously. After all, if it isn’t properly addressed, then we’ll continue to suffer throughout our working lives, as a result of substandard mental wellbeing.

Set the Culture

The culture of a workspace should be designed to support mental health. Since everyone’s needs are different in this respect, the culture should be flexible. Some employees, for example, might benefit from working from home, while others might insist on working longer hours in the office.

Check-ins can help HR managers to stay on top of everyone’s state of mind, and help to ensure that little problems don’t have a chance to develop into bigger ones. At the same time, longer breaks, natural light, access to green space, and other perks can also be helpful.

Training

It’s important to also empower employees to recognise their own problems and deal with them. Providing training is a great way of doing this. Managers and staff can access resources and online materials via the Acas website. Taking the first step and recognising that mental health is important is a good first step to creating the environment you’re looking for.

Add a Mental Health and Wellbeing programme

By putting in place formal mechanisms to allow those with problems to come forward without fear of judgement or reprisals, then you’ll make it easier for problems to be addressed early on. With the help of the right HR software, for example, staff will be able to get in touch with the relevant HR manager without drawing attention to themselves.

Supporting Employee Wellness

Employers might also take an active role in encouraging healthy practices in the workplace. This might mean implementing policies that limit social media, as well as putting in place social events and meditation classes. You might limit the amount of holiday time that can roll over into the following year, and thereby encourage employees to actually take some time off. Ideally, these measures shouldn’t be viewed as a top-down imposition, but as an optional benefit for everyone in the workplace.

Naturally, if your working practices are a source of constant stress, then no amount of meditation is going to be able to address the problem. For this reason, it’s critical that we eliminate the problem at source, rather than just put sticking plasters over the top.