Unprecedented market failures and widespread loss of revenue highlight some of the devastating effects of the pandemic. Mental health keynote speakers have been busy lately as stress levels in the workplace continue to rise.
Managers realize that the coronavirus has hurt more than their bottom line. It’s also affected human resources across the board. Adam Markel is a mental health speaker on a mission to extinguish the stigma of mental health and help businesses rebuild resilient teams.
How Does Mental Health Relate to Your Company Productivity?
We all knew that we’d eventually make it through the worst of the pandemic but we’re still dealing with the aftermath of widespread social isolation. Employers should understand how employee mental health affects productivity and revenue.
It might not make sense to prioritize employee mental health over backlogs and getting systems up to speed, but tasks like this are more effective if you focus on the well-being of your workforce. Right now, 40% of workers in the US experience a significant amount of work-related stress and 26% say that it’s chronic. More than that, 70% of employees in the US are working far below their potential.
The truth is, healthy employees are more productive. It’s a natural byproduct of health and wellness in the workplace. A healthy workforce benefits your company in a myriad of ways, including:
- Decreased Employee Dissatisfaction. Studies on organizational behavior intervention, which include hiring mental health motivational speakers, are shown to reduce grievances and increase employee satisfaction.
- Less Absenteeism. Studies indicate employee fitness, both mental and physical, is known to decrease days missed from health-related problems.
- Savings on Health Insurance. There’s a reason insurance companies give away free gym memberships. Preventative maintenance is more cost-effective.
- More Productivity. Programs supporting mental health prevent employee burnout, enhance individual performance and build stronger teams.
Your staff is already worried about a laundry list of uncertainties. Their personal health and the health of their family members are at the top of that list. Companies need to bring these issues to light in the early stages while they are still manageable.
The Immediate Benefits of Health and Wellness in the Workplace
We all need to manage our mental health, and we can improve it. Reassurance can give your workforce an instant boost of confidence. Studies show that there’s a direct correlation between absenteeism and wellness programs.
Initiating programs that support effective coping mechanisms is a good start. It demonstrates that we value their contributions. This kind of empathy creates a sense of community and social identity.
The power of the group is not to be underestimated. Those who are able to employ effective coping mechanisms have a ripple effect within your organization. Employee wellness benefit programs are beginning to flourish due to this fact.
How to Build Workplace Wellness Culture
When our team members execute healthy behaviors, everybody wins. We explained a little bit about the importance of employee mental health and how it affects productivity. The next sections uncover strategies mental health speakers for an event often use to jumpstart the process.
Create Awareness About Employee Mental Health
Consider this, does running cause you to sweat or does sweat cause you to run? The response to anxiety can cause people to start depressing. Depressing can cause people to feel stress from anxiety, rely on old habits, accept a situation as hopeless, to accept the idea that they won’t ever recover.
Mental Health is health. There’s a lot of stigma around mental health and mood disorders ( which are often temporary). A lack of awareness leads us to mistake a myth for reality. It may cause us to define ourselves or others as hopelessly anxious, depressed or addicted. Labels like these cannot define who we are.
- Have you ever been sick?
- Have you ever had food poisoning?
- Have you ever had a physical injury?
Just like physical illness, no one is immune to anxiety, depression, fear, obsessive behavior or a feeling of helplessness. These are ordinary things that we go through as human beings. It’s a part of life.
Imagine if you compromised your physical health from eating something you were allergic to every day. What if you never found out you were allergic? How could you ever get better?
The need for mental health motivational speakers is growing fast because a paradigm shift is in order. The sooner we can change the way we think about well-being, the sooner we can recover and bounce forward.
A Mental Health Keynote Speaker Will Encourage Good Rest
One of the biggest reasons corporations bring in mental health speakers for an event is to prevent employee burnout. Some of the best and brightest people on our teams burn out. They feel the need to be perfect and that anything less is a failure. They work themselves into a frenzy at the expense of their health. This might produce great results in the short term but it’s counterproductive in the long run.
A flexible schedule that incorporates rest keeps us in shape and on task. Help people set healthy boundaries between work, rest and recovery. Here are some useful ideas to consider:
- Encourage time off
- Encourage short breaks
- Announce when you are taking time off
- Give your staff some autonomy
- Remind them to take a full lunch
- Don’t send them home with weekend work
- Reward employees with trips to serene destinations
If you are a business owner, make an effort to listen to your employees to see how they are feeling. Some people work better on a set schedule, some work better in the office, some work better at home.
A simple check-in to see how they are feeling can help you gauge what’s best for your staff members. This helps them feel connected and less likely to go overboard. Programs should also be available remotely. Invite a mental health speaker to remind staff who are working from home to be mindful of their recovery and heal from the pressures of work.
Encourage Healthy Eating Habits
You are what you eat. It might be cheesy and cliché but it rings true. A healthy body leads to a healthy mind, and healthy employees are more productive. Eating the right foods supports concentration, lifts our mood and helps reduce impulsive behavior.
Physical fitness, healthy eating habits and sleep hygiene are all important pillars of an employee wellness benefits program. It’s important to our overall mental health and well-being.
One trick that long-distance runners use is to eat raw potatoes. The complex carbohydrates break down slowly giving them long-lasting energy.
No one wants to eat a raw potato, that’s a bit extreme. But an investment in food education with interesting information like this can be helpful. Many people don’t realize how food affects cognitive abilities. Way to encourage healthy eating habits include:
- Allow full lunch breaks
- Encourage mindful eating
- Provide healthy snacks
- Bring in a fun chef with tasty ideas
- Provide healthy food options
Foods that support brain health include:
- Oats
- Plain yogurt
- Avocado
- Olive oil
- Green vegetables
- Almonds
- Walnuts
- Berries
- Egg whites
- Fish
- Lean proteins
- Cacao nibs
When your glucose level (blood sugar) spikes from an ultra sugary snack, your blood sugar level skyrockets, giving you a short burst of energy until you end up crashing. Healthy sugars from whole fruits give us consistent concentration rather than a roller coaster ride of energy levels.
Educate About Stress Management
Stress management is all the rage lately, especially among mental health speakers, and for good reason. Adam Markel believes that a certain degree of stress is healthy and gives us more energy. Too much stress can leave us feeling depleted and tense. Ambient stress also affects others who could use better stress management strategies themselves. Ideas to foster stress management in your workforce:
- Bring in a mindfulness coach
- Provide literature on stress management
- Set up an activity room where people can blow off steam with puzzles, video games, coloring books, etc.
- Set up a nap room or nap pods
- Hire a massage therapist periodically
Career people tend to forget how much well-being impacts their future. Many love what they do and are passionate about it, but it’s easy to cross the line from passionate to perfectionist. They often undervalue how much well-being affects their performance.
Set up a health and wellness workshop in the workplace to get people excited about the benefits of stress management
How a Mental Health Keynote Speaker Helps
Mental health disorders are on the rise and group stress is a major source of lost revenue for businesses all over the world. Organizations need to think fast to keep things under control and start a dialogue about mental health.
The goals of Adam Markel’s keynote events are designed to increase mental health literacy and provide specialized support for organizations looking to recover from the impacts of the pandemic.
He lays out actionable plans designed to increase well-being and improve productivity with useful resources, humor and high-impact presentations. Want to know more about how you can support your workforce and increase productivity? Get in touch.
