In today’s day and age, with electronics constantly buzzing for our attention and crises springing up in the media left and right, it can be hard for employees and employers alike to keep their wits about them. Now more than ever, a proactive strategy that fosters a friendly office environment and robust mental health for your employees is vitally important. Nonetheless, few managers know where to begin when it comes to implementing a proactive mental health strategy that works for everyone.

Where should managers begin, and what resources should they take into consideration as they build their mental health strategies? By relying on expert testimony and avoiding common mistakes, you can develop a proactive strategy that ensures your workers are happy and healthy for years to come.

Building a healthy workspace

Healthy minds can’t tolerate unhealthy workspaces. It’s thus crucially important that your HR team is constantly working towards developing a safer, more transparent, and healthier office space where everyone’s needs are taken into consideration. Doing this isn’t easy, however, so where should they begin?

Reviewing some common tips is a great place to start. By adopting tried and true methods into your own workplace, such as fostering mindful thinking and creative spaces where ideas can be put forward without fear of rebuke. Repressive creative regimes that dismiss any ideas developed by lower level employees out of hand are a frequent staple of workplaces that damage employee’s mental health, meaning everyone on your team should know that their contributions are welcome.

Similarly, fostering free and open dialogues amongst your employees helps them embrace different perspectives and gives them opportunities to vent their frustrations, which are important to prevent workers from simmering over perceived slights or mistakes. Employers should understand the importance of flexibility in the workplace, giving their workers “mental health days” frequently when they’re stressed out and providing them with breaks to help alleviate stress and large workloads.

Mental health issues and high levels of stress are often one of the most common reasons employees need to take a day off or check out of the office early, meaning it’s vital for your company’s financial wellbeing and their mental fortitude in the long run to give your workers the time off and support that they need.

Making mental health a priority

Countless pages of research confirm what common sense has told us for ages; stressful environments where solar panels are unavailable and where employees feel boxed in will necessarily result in melt downs, productivity losses, and worst of all, physical or mental injury for employees. Deloitte’s research on mental health highlights how important it is to place mental health at the top of your company’s agenda, as the alternative is a bitter environment where failure is bred at least as often as success is.

But how exactly are managers supposed to make mental health a priority? The key to forming a proactive mental health strategy is establishing a strong HR team early on in your business’ life. Without the appropriate number of employees trained ahead of time to deal with mental health issues, your business will be helpless when they inevitably arise and disrupt operations or the lives of your workers.

Most successful proactive strategies possess a few key ideas worth keeping in mind when you develop your own. Making sure to avoid a “one size fits all” solution, for instance, and making sure that mental health is widely understood by your workers in general, are all important towards preempting mental health issues. Like all business crises, it’s vastly more efficient to be proactive about mental health crises, rather than sitting around waiting for them to happen so you can rush in to clean them up.

Your target population for mental health services should be broad; everyone in your office, from the CEO to your interns, should have access to mental health assistance and understand how important it is to come forward early with mental health issues. Social stigmas against mental health should be vehemently fought, and HR should constantly stay on its toes, on the watch for instances of workplace bullying.

Implementing a proactive mental health strategy will cost your business some serious capital, but every penny is worth it. Healthy, happy employees are invaluable, and by eliminating mental health issues before they arise, your business can churn on towards success, confident that it has the workers needed to get the job done.