When it comes to mental health and the workplace, there are always many questions unanswered. A high proportion of workers – 80 percent – say their job negatively impacts their mental health and 39 percent of employees indicate they have left a job for the sake of their mental health.
The firm Kickresume has recently considered how workers feel about mental health at work. This included seeking to understand if workers:
• Would leave their job to save their mental health?
• How much does work affect their mental health?
• How important are mental health benefits compared to wages?
These questions were posed in a survey to 1,000 workers around the world to learn about their opinions on mental health benefits and their thoughts and experiences about mental health at work.
In relation to work having a form of negative effect upon mental health, the most common effect mentioned by the survey’s participants was stress, with 34 percent saying work stressed them out. In addition, 23 percent said their mood after work was affected, and a further 23 percent said they had reached a state of burnout.
However, 8 percent said their job did not affect their mental health and 11 percent said it in fact made them feel better. These were minority viewpoints.
In terms of workplace grading, mid (35 percent) and senior level (35 percent) employees were more likely than entry level workers (30 percent) to say they felt stressed out. They were also less likely to say work helped their mental health, with 16 percent of entry level employees providing this answer compared to 11 percent of mid and 10 percent of senior level workers.
The survey asked the respondents if they had ever made the decision to quit a job in order to protect their mental health. Nearly four in ten did, at 39 percent – and a further 33 percent said that while they had never done this, they had seriously considered it before. The remaining 28 percent said they had never considered taking this step.
Women were nearly 10 percent more likely than men to have left a job for this reason, with 46 percent of women compared to 37 percent of men. Yet men are more likely to have considered it without making the leap, at 34 percent compared to 31 percent of women.
The survey asked workers to share whether they had ever accessed mental health benefits at their job. Nearly two thirds at 62 percent said they had never taken advantage of these benefits at a current or previous job.
There was a gender difference in the data, with 64 percent of men never using mental health benefits compared to 59 percent of women. Women were also more likely to have accessed these benefits multiple times, at 14 percent compared to only 8 percent of men.
The survey asked respondents to choose one benefit that would improve their wellbeing at work. By far the most popular was flexible working arrangements, at 33 percent. Moreover, 21 percent chose more paid time off, slightly higher than the 19 percent who chose mental health benefits.
