Across the globe, companies big and small depend on hard-working employees to achieve success. With so much at stake, it’s easy for owners and managers to only focus on the bottom line, neglecting their workers in the process.
Unfortunately, pushing employees into productivity, rather than motivating them towards it, is a recipe for disaster. Often companies function on a model in which employee satisfaction and wellness take a backseat to sales and profits.
With this in mind, industry leaders must take steps to prioritize the mental health of their employees. Luckily, thanks to different technology developments, doing so has never been easier. From wearables to virtual therapy to digital resources, today’s tech is primed for helping companies do more for their workers’ mental health.
Here are some ways in which tech can be leveraged to support employees’ mental health and wellness:
Preventing burnout
Helping employees reach their full potential is one thing, but pushing them to the point of burnout is both unsustainable and unethical. Unfortunately, many business leaders – especially in high-pressure and deadline-driven sectors – fail to spot the signs of burnout until it’s too late.
Enter biometric wearables. While an Apple Watch or Fitbit won’t emit a pending burnout notice, these and similar wearables monitor everything from heart rate to sleep patterns. If an employee notices their resting heart rate has increased the past few days and their amount of sleep has decreased, they may opt to take a day or two off and avoid burnout in the process.
With this in mind, business leaders should consider supplying their employees with biometric wearable technology. Doing so not only gives them the tools to detect burnout, it takes the pressure off management who otherwise must worry about which team members are being overworked and which aren’t.
Work-life balance
Working from home used to be difficult for companies to implement. But thanks to smart technology solutions, working from home has never been easier.
While many business leaders remain skeptical about the merits of letting employees work from home, the workers themselves seem to be on board. That’s no surprise, given the freedom it provides.
What makes working from home such a hit among employees is that it helps them achieve better work-life balance. It’s not that they get to work less at home, it’s that they get to work on their own time. If they need to pick their kids up from school or run to the pharmacy, they can do so without it causing a significant interruption. As a result, they’re not nearly as stressed and overburdened as they are when forced to be in the same place for eight to ten hours each day.
Personalizing their path to wellness
There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to mental health. Everyone’s path is different. With this in mind, companies concerned about supporting employee mental health must think of ways for workers to get custom-fit assistance.
Fortunately, technology is making it easier for individuals to get the specific help they need. From free mental health tests online to licensed therapy available through virtual tele-medicine, workers can take steps to improve their mental health without relying on cookie-cutter solutions. It’s just one more way technology is helping businesses support the mental health of their employees.
Exploring new options
If there’s one thing about the technological leaps of the last three decades, it’s the ever-increasing amount of information available to the average person. Scientific data, expert advice, and innovative insights can now be accessed with a few clicks.
The result is a world where employees can harness technology to learn about mental health therapies and treatments they may otherwise never know existed. While it’s always important for people to know which sources of information to trust and which to fact-check, having so many mental health resources available through technology is a privilege that ought to be taken advantage of as much as possible.
Highlighting areas of potential improvement
Productivity software and similar solutions aimed at improving employee performance can be used to gather insights about the operation. For instance, if performance metrics dip for multiple workers during the same time of day, it could signal the need for operational adjustments.
Whether your business is big and multinational or small and just getting started, it undoubtedly needs employees operating at the top of their game. For business leaders concerned about the mental health of their workers, using technology may be the best way to do so going forward.