The mental health of employees has been under a lot of scrutinies recently. Employee burnout has become a common problem due to over-hectic work schedules. Companies should pay a lot of consideration to this issue because any kind of burnout can make employees resign from a company and it’s not always easy to find a replacement.

Hence, companies can introduce so many changes in employees’ work schedules to make coming to work more enjoyable.

They should be permitted to exercise during the lunch hour. Employees develop better self-esteem when they work out. Apart from them, having obese employees reflects badly on the company. Extra weight can also cause problems for the employees due to diseases such as cardiac problems and diabetes.

You can also ensure that employees can also be asked to ride a bicycle while coming to and leaving work. This is not only beneficial for the environment but also for them because it gives them a workout early in the morning. They feel energetic throughout the day and hence work zestfully.

You can also ensure that when employees come to the office, all sweaty after a bicycle ride, they are pampered when they enter the sassy bathrooms of your company. After a shower, they will enter their cubicle bubbling with confidence and smelling great.

There is also a problem of employees feeling a high burnout during the pandemic. This has happened because although employees’ engagement has risen, their well-being has not. They are working more because all the time saved due to commuting is devoted to working. But this is the reason why burnout is happening. This is known as the wellbeing-engagement paradox of 2020.

According to this paradox, the well-being and engagement of employees rise in tandem, but due to working from home, this is not so anymore.

This is caused due to these problems:

• No fixed working hours: Indeed, employees don’t know when to finish their work when they are working from home, unlike in an office where there are fixed closing hours.
• Lack of work-life balance: As an employee working from home, he/she might know when to take breaks for lunch and dinner. Sometimes, an employee might have these meals while working which affects family time and hence causes stress.

Employees might also have to take calls while eating with family. This happens because companies are more vigilant about employees working from their homes and call them often during work hours.

• Distractions during work from home: Employees have to spend so much extra time taking care of household chores which affect their working hours. They have to take care of a grocery delivery, which is disengaging and spend time with pets. Sometimes, their children disturb them during work.

Working parents, especially mothers get annoyed when they have to take care of kids who bother their parents because there are no schools. They have been studying online during lockdowns and have no urge to do homework and parents have to force them to do so.

Hence, there is no time left for physical exercise for parents and hence mental health is adversely affected.

Countries worldwide are taking steps to ensure that the employees can be given mental-health elearning to ensure that there is no burnout.

The employees should be screened for their mental health and any intervention should be provided on time to make sure that they are dealt with before any crisis happens. Sometimes, employees might reach such a stage of a mental health crisis that any kind of intervention can’t help them stay on the job.

Employees should be given mental health elearning, but nobody should know about it to protect their integrity.

Apart from that, the family members can also be involved to know if something is bothering the employee. When the family supports such a person, they get the right amount of motivation to break out of any kind of sadness and pressure they are dealing with.

How to take initiative?

Let employees know about the treatments available:

Mental health elearning should be provided to employees on an individual basis because such issues differ between employees. It’s better, that a wellness coach can be called to the office, and based on his screening of employees, he can develop programs. He can talk to the worst affected employees about their issues and ask them to take treatment.

He can also share webcasts with them in emails talking about stress reduction issues. He can also highlight the importance of having proper mental health. Such employees can also be enrolled in the coach’s wellness online seminars if they have time for it on weekdays or can attend them during break hours.

Reducing the stigma of mental health:

The e-learning professionals can also ask the seniors to initiate the use of such mental-health e-learning before something worse happens. When employees watch their seniors talk about the importance of mental health, they are not afraid to come out in the open and talk about job stress. The taboo surrounding mental health is reduced, which goes a long way in making sure employees start using mental-health elearning.

The managers can also talk to their employees about any underlying stress after checking the reports prepared by the wellness coach after the individual screening.

When a manager feels that an employee is stressed, he/she should help him/her combat the issue by talking openly about it. Mental-health elearning resources can be sent, confidentially through LMS emails to such employees.