No man is an island – said an old song. No one of us can stand alone facing the challenges of working amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Having your talents in their best mental wellness means you manage to maintain the company’s productivity among the challenges and gain the trust and loyalty from your employees.
If you’re the type of person who does not believe that mental health affects someone’s job performance – it’s the best time to start shifting your mindset. Most likely, by this time, someone in your organization has already been hit by mental health challenges. Mental health factors affect a person’s job performance and employee retention. Yes, ignoring the mental health aspect in the workplace means you can lose your best talent – perhaps someone that you’ve been plotting and trained well to be included in the managerial level soon. Think about all the re-hiring, onboarding, and training of a new talent, once again. So, what should we do in the human resources department?
Florensia Unggul Damayanti, M.Kom., Application and Development Group Head at OnTrace shared her best practice on leading through relationship, amidst the pandemic:
1. Listen More
To understand the whole person, see how your teams are doing. I like to have a profound discussion with my team and ask them questions like: Are you getting what you need? Are you growing with us? Do you have the intellectual stimulation you need?
When I ask these questions, I’m able to receive feedback. I will never have to guess where someone is, mentally and emotionally, and they’ll always know that they matter. Consider your own team. Think about what you know of them as a whole person
2. Nurturing Diversity of Thought
Embrace members with different perspectives and thinking styles. Make sure your teams feel free to speak up. When those individuals do speak up, recognize them for sharing, so they understand the value of feedback. Leveraging the different viewpoints of my team members ensures that I find the best possible solutions.
3. Create a Connection by Building an Informal Network
The easiest way to create these networks is to empower my teams to build relationships with people from other teams and then leverage those relationships.
4. Keep Coaching Myself
I believe in intellectual curiosity. Intellectual curiosity allows me to acknowledge that I don’t know what I don’t know. I ask a lot of questions to my team and colleagues, who are more advanced than me in education, experience, or wisdom.
To Summarize…
It is commonly believed that mental health issues on your talents have symptoms such as: Feeling no control over their work, getting no recognition or rewards for good work, job expectations that are unclear or too demanding, being assigned unchallenging work, or an environment that is high-pressure or chaotic. When you hear a slight complaint regarding this, it’s time to manage it from a mental health perspective.
You May Also Read: