health & wellness
Intra-personal
Skills
A PROACTIVE WAY TO PERSONAL
SUSTAINABILITY
By Dr. Helena Lass
A mentally healthy workplace is one that protects and pro-motes
mental wellness. For those experiencing stress,
burnout and depression, workplaces can empower the
power to seek help, not only benefitting the individual,
but also the organization as a whole, as well as the wider community.
Fatigue, boredom, lack of engagement, absenteeism and pre-sentism
are all symptoms of internal mental malfunctioning. As
any HR manager or team leader well knows, stress, burnout and
depression can deeply affect team relationship dynamics and cause
loss of potential revenue.
A GLOBAL EPIDEMIC
In 2011 the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC)
commissioned a study to determine the number of people living
with mental health problems and illness today, and the associated
costs countrywide. The MHCC found that the economic cost to
Canada was a massive $50 billion per year. This represented 2.8
per cent of Canada’s GDP in 2011 and is reported to have cost
businesses more than $6 billion in lost productivity from absen-teeism,
presenteeism and turnover.
Mood Disorders Society Canada’s, “Mental Health in the
Workplace” survey conducted in 2014 found that 21.4 per cent of
Canada’s working population is currently experiencing a mental
illness, with the youngest workers among the hardest hit. Twenty-eight
per cent of people aged 20-29 experience a mental illness in
any given year and that by the time a worker is 40 years old, he or
she will have a 50 per cent chance of developing – or have already
had – a mental illness.
This is echoed over in the United Kingdom, where the Sainsbury
Centre for Mental Health 2016/17 report “Mental health at work:
developing the business case,” found that the overall cost to British
employers of stress, anxiety and depression amounted to £1,300
($2,245) per employee per year, reflecting a significant 25.6 per
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THE TERM INTRAPERSONAL
– “INTRA” MEANING INSIDE
– SEPARATES OUR INNER
FUNCTIONS AND PROCESSES
FROM THE PHYSIOLOGICAL
FUNCTIONS OF THE BODY.
HRPROFESSIONALNOW.CA ❚ AUGUST 2018 ❚ 35
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