​Work psychosocial factors can impact employee mental health, in a general sense or acutely, and so need to be understood and managed. Having said that, mental health is complex, multifactorial and ultimately, individual. It is therefore important to look at how employees’ mental health is shaped by their experience at work as well as other factors.

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We reviewed our cases over the past 3 years to dig a little deeper into the nature of employee mental health cases, the role of work factors and what is needed in different situations.

 

The following four themes emerged.

 

Our mental health is most strongly impacted by the things that matter most to us. Most employees who seek professional help for mental health concerns do so due to issues in their personal life, outside of work—in their partner relationships, family issues, juggling responsibilities and general life stress and anxiety.

 

When something goes wrong with the things that are most important to us our psychological wellbeing can quickly unravel. It’s important to have a program that helps employees with life challenges early, not simply in a crisis when the unravelling has begun and is spiralling. A proactive, early intervention program is a much more reliable path to a quick and sustainable recovery.

 

It is difficult to untangle life and work issues as they are continuously interacting to impact our psychological functioning and wellbeing. What may present as a work cause may be due to difficulties in our personal life and vice versa.

 

Due to this entanglement, a broad-based, whole of person program is needed, managing both ‘work’ and ‘life’ issues.

 

Where a work-related issue is impacting mental health across a population, or subgroup, it is likely that there is a psychosocial work hazard that requires organisational action or changes. Repeat mental health issues across people in a role or area, suggest a job design, resources, or environment issue that needs to be identified and addressed to alleviate the problem, often along with support strategies such as skills training, coaching or debriefing to mitigate the effects.   

 

That is not to say that employees in this scenario wouldn’t benefit from individual professional support but also, from a preventive perspective, an assessment should be done to identify and adjust relevant work/organisational factors as far as is feasible.

 

An individual with a work-related mental health issue, as opposed to a pattern of mental health issues across a group, is more common in workplaces. This individual employee problem tends to be related to personal vulnerability, job fit, unique experience in the role and/or a compounding external stressor. As such scenarios are the most prevalent, it’s important to have professional support, usually through an EAP with the resources to partner with HR/WHS to assess the issue and recommend the appropriate case, situation strategy.

 

When EAP and HR/WHS partner on such cases to provide a supportive and solution-oriented approach to these situations, the temperature and tension drops, conflict and escalation is avoided, and the case can move to a positive resolution for the individual and the organisation.

 

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Our takeaway was that the focus on ‘psychosocial (work) hazards’ is useful from a job design and culture perspective for all organisations and is particularly useful in industry sectors with roles with inherent psychosocial risk. It also places on notice organisations with toxic or neglected cultures.

 

Having said that, the mental health concerns of most employees’ stem from multiple factors and the individual’s experience, capacity and vulnerability. As a result, the most useful professional input helps to address this with the individual or, where work factors are most salient in an individual case, jointly with the individual and the organisation (HR/WHS).

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