Webinar From Burnout to Balance: HR Tools for Young Employees

From Burnout to Balance: Insights from the Mental Health Webinar

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During the recent webinar “From Burnout to Balance: HR Tools for Young Employees” professionals from various sectors came together to discuss a current topic: mental health in the workplace. The goal was clear: to provide insight into the challenges that organizations experience today and to provide practical tools to deal with them effectively.

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Using interactive polls and conversations, valuable input was collected from participants, who ranged from HR professionals and managers to employees and owners. These insights provide a clear picture of the current state of mental health in organizations.

Most important mental challenges within organizations

One of the first questions asked participants focused on the biggest mental challenges within their organization. The answers left little to the imagination: almost two thirds of the participants indicated that high workload and stress are the biggest challenge.

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In addition, approximately 40% indicates that there is still a lack of openness about mental health within their organization. Insufficient support from HR or managers and a disturbed work-life balance were also often highlighted.

Mental Health and Absenteeism Prevention Policy

Although most organizations recognize that mental health policy is important, practice shows that there is often still a lot of room for improvement here. Only a small part of the participants indicated that their organization has an effective and well-functioning policy.

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On the other hand, almost half said that there is a policy, but that it is inadequate in implementation. Around a third of the organizations completely lack a specific policy, even though the need for this is acknowledged.

Absenteeism prevention: From promise to action

Absenteeism prevention is often mentioned as a priority, but implementation lags behind. roughly 40% of the participants indicated that although absenteeism prevention is a priority within their organization, they lack sufficient attention and resources to carry it out effectively. This indicates a gap between intent and actual implementation.

Creating a safe culture: Where are organizations now?

Another important question was whether employees feel safe discussing mental health issues. Only 16% of the participants indicated that employees feel completely safe discussing this.

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A large majority of participants (68%) indicated that there is sometimes room for openness, but that improvement is clearly still possible. In addition, he gave 16% indicates that there is still considerable stigma around discussing mental health.

From reactive to proactive policy

A recurring theme in the webinar was the need to move from a reactive to a proactive approach. Many organizations only intervene when an employee already calls in sick. Instead, the focus should be on early identification and creating a supportive work environment.

The participants discussed an approach based on three core pillars:

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1. Amplition: Investing in strengthening resilience and well-being before problems arise.
2. Prevention: Early identification of possible mental health problems.
3. Curation: Targeted support for employees who are already experiencing complaints.

Concrete action points from the discussion

During the webinar, various examples of what organizations can do in concrete terms were shared:

• Building a culture where it's normal to talk about mental health.
• -> Train managers to recognize stress signals and how to deal with them.
• -> Improving communication around available support resources.
• -> Enabling anonymous and accessible access to support.

The importance of Early Intervention

What became clear from the participants' contributions is that mental health is not just about responding to problems, but above all about preventing them.

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Almost half of the participants indicated that their organization should take steps in the field of early detection and prevention. By intervening in time and providing targeted support, organizations can prevent failure and provide sustainable support to employees.

A step forward in mental health

The webinar showed that many organizations are aware of the importance of mental health, but that there are still steps to be taken. Participants indicated that they would bring concrete action points to their own organizations, such as revising the prevention policy and strengthening communication about available tools.

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