John Conrad

Photo by Jessica Vaughn

FOLEY - Recently, the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce invited Assistant Director of Bayview Professional Associates John Conrad, LICSW, to speak to local business leaders about maintaining employee mental health wellness in the workplace during COVID. He says while mental health issues were present in the workplace prior to COVID, the current pandemic has brought on more cases of anxiety, depression, substance misuse, marital problems, family problems, spikes in domestic violence, and suicide.

Conrad asked the question, “How can business owners help their employees manage stress and anxiety in the workplace?”

“You want to be respectful,” he said. “Be transparent. You want to provide education and resources to your employees, and prepare your management team, your supervisors, to identify mental health issues in employees. Take a look at your policies. We didn’t have anything about telehealth, and now we’re doing all kinds of telehealth so we had to take a look at that and add it to our policies.”

He suggested using or creating an EAP option, or Employee Assistant Program. Other recommendations were creating an employee survey to allow employees to anonymously give suggestions and share their concerns, create a COVID-committee to assist employees with adjusting to new policies and procedures due to the pandemic, allowing employees mental health days, encouraging exercise or activities to help them reduce stress, and giving employees the chance to voice ways they would feel safer in the workplace.

“Remind people that it’s okay to be anxious, a little bit of anxiety isn’t a bad thing,” Conrad said. “But if an employee feels like they have to keep their anxiety a secret, then that will intensify the anxiety. Offer to support anxious folks, and be aware that COVID-19 has and will trigger pre-existing mental health issues.”

According to Conrad, things that could impact employee mental health were workloads that could not physically be completed in the day, lack of communication in the workplace, monotonous work, not giving employees a clear description of their job/changes in their job due to COVID, not giving employees recognition for the work they do, and not taking employee concerns seriously.

“Talk about ideas with your team, what can we do to make this work, what do we need to do to help you feel safe,” Conrad said. “Let employees make suggestions, they’re part of the solution … Let them know this is something that you’re all trying to work on together, create a safe place for discussions, a place where people can come in and talk about their concerns.”

To learn more, visit https://altapointe.org/bayview-professional-associates.

For upcoming Chamber events, check out www.southbaldwinchamber.com.