A recent study found 34% of employees reported lower mental health levels compared to six months ago. Alarmingly, 37% also reported decreased levels of engagement and sense of belonging.

In Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace indicated that Australia and New Zealand had the second-highest rate of reported stress at 47%. In addition, an analysis of 382,000 employee exit interviews found levels of employee burnout have almost doubled in the past year.

The return to the office appears to be a contributing factor with 52% of employees preferring flexible/hybrid work to minimise mental health concerns. *

This number is increasing each year. How much of this is due to the re-percussions of what happened to people’s psyche during the covid era or is there a different, unspoken pandemic at play?

While most major companies have an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) in place to help support staff members to manage mental health issues, multiple reports suggest that as little as 5% of employees use this resource.

With the current shortage of staff across the board in all industries, there is an undue level of pressure placed on the existing staff members to keep up with the required deadlines.

Staff are feeling more and more under pressure. Being in a frequent state of overwhelm triggers the body’s stress response: Flight, Fight or Freeze.

You can identify if one of your team members (or yourself) is experiencing stress by looking out for any of these telltale signs.

Flight: this individual consistently arrives to work late and finds any reason to get out of the office to run errands, takes longer lunch breaks and has regular sick days or appointments during work hours (even if they are for children or elderly parents).

The implication for this person, is that they may be on the brink of serious depression. Finding it difficult to get out of bed, and not knowing how to cope with their job that they once performed easily and now looking for reasons to avoid being at work.

Fight: The staff member who is the keyboard warrior. Shooting off emails at rapid pace. Picking errors and finding the “worst case scenario” in all the project proposals. This person will likely have very elevated cortisol levels (the body’s stress hormone). They will often complain about having poor sleep and has coffee on a drip.

Freeze: Similar to the “flight” employee, this person makes the appearance of looking busy, maybe doing lots of small errands like volunteering to do the coffee run or going out to buy a cake for someone’s birthday. However, if you look closely at their actual output, it is possible that key tasks are not being done, although their folders are well organised, this person is focused on completing small (often insignificant) tasks, and the items required to deliver actual output are being neglected. The freeze response in staff is resulting in the ever-increasing levels of presenteeism.

Presenteeism is where employees “show up” to work but are not actively present in the work-day.

Having employees in your team that are experiencing any one of these stress responses is highly detrimental to the productivity of the rest of the group. The cost of workplace stress is far greater than simply looking at the total number of personal leave days. Unproductive team members create higher costs due to missed deadlines and leaving out important details in a project, creating bigger issues further down the track.

Stress is now (unfortunately) an accepted part of our everyday environment. Driving through busy traffic, financial pressures and the constant presence of information demanding attention on social media means that humankind is required to operate at a level of “on” that our bodies were never designed for.

Since the average working person spends more than 20% of their waking hours at work or engaged in work activity, it is increasingly more important that workplaces do more to help their staff members reduce their stress levels in order to maintain their productivity and thereby support staff retention.

While some workplaces are trying to implement innovative ideas such as lunchtime yoga and routine stretch breaks, these are rarely embraced by the majority of staff, and therefore are doomed to fail. Why? Because we are wired to fit in and be seen to be part of the crowd. Unless there is a high percentage uptake in the workplace for these programs, it will be difficult for people to maintain their commitment to the new process.

One option that has higher probability of success, is using a staff reward program where people are selected to attend an off-site wellness session. By utilising a rotational system, every staff member recognises that they will “get a turn” and, being able to share a unique experience, helps to create a cohesive workplace and boost morale.

Employers who actively promote a supportive environment that encourages employees to prioritise their health and well-being, fosters a culture where taking time out is not only accepted but encouraged for the overall benefit of the workforce and the organisation.

If you are based in Perth and would like to find out more about this program, send a message with “Workplace wellbeing” in the subject and I will provide you with some options.