May was Mental Health Awareness Month in the US. And, in workplaces across the country, events and initiatives took place to inspire important conversations.
Some businesses opened spaces for people to share their mental health stories - if they want to. Others created virtual boards, encouraging employees to write something they are grateful for each day.
Then, there were various campaigns designed to engage teams, customers, and followers with the event.
Here is an excellent example from LL.Bean, which wiped its Instagram account to motivate people to go outside.
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All of these ideas are excellent. But, creating positive mental health and well-being in any workplace is about much more than short-term campaigns, events, and initiatives.
Everything Is Connected
Positive mental health in the workplace is intrinsically connected with team communication, engagement, leadership styles, work-life balance, schedule flexibility, staff behaviors, workloads, management expectations, job clarity, trust, experience, and the surrounding environment.
Moreover, with every intention and action, leaders and colleagues influence the contact center team’s mental health and well-being.
As such, while various mental health activities have their place, managers must not lose sight of what makes the most difference in how people feel.
The Next Step
To positively influence the day-to-day actions and intentions of the entire service operation, the contact center can create a vision.
By building this out and connecting agents to it, contact center leaders can articulate just how integral they are to the business’s success.
Such a strategy fills agents with a sense of purpose, which inspires them to give a little more and provides a reason to come to work that is not only monetary.
That is more powerful to improve mental health than any bite-sized initiative.
