As years go by, many leaders have learned that mental health is vital for everyone in the workplace. Mental fitness reflects how a company runs and how employees perform. Without it, there would be less motivation and reduced employee performance. There would be low-quality output from each of the departments, too.
Whether you’re a manager or an associate, you can’t help but feel tired or burnt out because you sometimes forget why you’re doing your job in the first place. Even if you love what you do, there still comes a time when you’re not feeling any inspiration to move. However, it’s okay to feel tired—that’s perfectly natural. Still, there’s a huge difference between feeling tired and burnt out.
Difference Between Tired and Burnt Out
The difference between the two is relatively simple. Exhaustion is what a person feels at the end of a long and busy day at work. A good night’s rest can fix this just fine, and you get to wake up feeling fresh and ready for another day’s work.
On the other hand, burnout is when a person constantly feels tired. They don’t have the motivation to do any work, which obviously affects their job performance. You feel tired even after a night’s sleep, and you feel like you don’t like what you’re doing anymore. This happens when you sometimes forget your purpose or any other mental or emotional struggles you’re going through.
Promoting Work-life Balance
Forcing or letting your employees work late, work from home on the weekends, and arrive too early damages your company little by little. If this is how you run by your team, you will, without a doubt, make them feel burnt out in the long run. You can’t expect them to do well. This is why promoting a healthy work-life balance is vital for becoming more motivated and productive at work.
What You Can Do as a Leader
If you’re a leader in a company and prioritize your employees’ performance, you should improve the mental health or mental fitness protocols. If the budget is your reason, it doesn’t take much from it. You don’t need to spend even a penny to ensure your colleagues’ mental health perform to their greatest potential. All you need is time and effort, and they will follow.
Make your team feel safe by telling them that the workplace is secure to open up about stress or anxiety. You can have a weekly email to remind your employees about their mental health. Schedule regular activities and projects that promote and boost your teamwork and individual performances. You can include them in your request for proposal (RFP) automation software for it to be part of your company’s protocol.
Encourage your employees to take vacations regularly or whenever they need to. Offer your support in their personal life and hobbies and encourage them to boost their entire life outside work. This will make them better employees and you a better leader.
Whatever way you do this, it will improve your workflow and performance. Better yet, this will make the team feel motivated and reduce downtime, both for the company and the employees’ wellness.
What You Can Do as an Employee and a Colleague
Even if it’s becoming common for a company to prioritize mental health, not all give the time and effort to promote it. If you’re one of the employees and you have no control of the protocol, don’t think that there’s nothing you can do. There’s always a way to promote mental health and fitness without it being official in the company.
You can start by reflecting on yourself and your own work life. Figure out your own mental and emotional state and improve what needs to improve. When you feel burnt out, only you can remind yourself why you’re doing your job. Even if there’s someone else to remind you, they’re just there to guide and help you get to that reminder itself.
As colleagues, looking out for each other will definitely boost your individual performances and work as a team. Even if you’re working remotely, you can send each other messages and remind them to have a mental fitness check every once in a while to make sure that everybody’s doing okay.
Final Thoughts
Many leaders have been learning the extreme importance of mental health and fitness in the workplace. However, not all organizations and companies have helpful mental fitness protocols. If no one in your workplace reminds you why you’re in that job and that company, then you should remind yourself every day. This way, you could reduce the times you feel burnt out. Even if your workplace has a mental health protocol, it’s still up to you to believe and trust your pace.
