Mental health at work: Productivity vs well-being

Is mental health and well-being an individual or an organisational responsibility? In this episode, Raj Mariwala, director at Mariwala Health Initiative, and Santrupt Misra, director of Group HR at Aditya Birla Group, discuss the importance of talking about mental health at work and how organisations can be more inclusive.

Highlights

Mental illness is often treated just like physical health, that is, a set of symptoms that needs to be cured. But the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that mental health is deeply connected to our lives, the environments we inhabit, and our contexts.
A well-run organisation realises that there is no dichotomy between revenue generation and employee well-being. They understand that organisations are productive precisely because of their employees.
Workplaces need to make reasonable accommodations for mental health, and this can include extra days of leave and decreasing daily working hours, among other measures.
If senior leadership can display authenticity and vulnerability, it makes people around them feel more comfortable to share.
Workplaces mirror the larger prejudices of society. Therefore, mental health policies in an organisation need to include other anti-discrimination policies and safeguards.

Organisations need to look at different ways to measure productivity.

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2. Productivity at the cost of well-being

3. Supporting well-being in resource-scarce environments

4. Mental health in India: Underserved and underfunded

5. Employee mental health: A guide for the social sector

6. It’s a New Era for Mental Health at Work

7. Who is ‘self-improvement’ for?

8. The problem with resilience as we know it

9. The politics of mental health and well-being

10. Are our cities making us lonely?

11. Community mental health: Not a silver bullet

12. Why we need to take a systemic approach to suicide prevention