For Managers and Leaders
Overview
Improving the wellbeing of your workforce and investing in a mentally healthy workplace will reap many benefits for your team, and individual staff, to yourself, and for the Organisation. Results from four internal UN Staff wellbeing surveys, and internal sick leave and pension data, demonstrate a clear need that more has to be done to protect, improve and resolve the mental health and wellbeing of UN staff members.
49% of staff reported significant symptoms of mental health concern, but only 6% in total are receiving professional support, and only 2% of those are receiving that support from internal programs. (Source UN Global Health and Wellbeing Survey 2015, total responses n=17365 staff completed or partially completed).
A key objective of the UN System Workplace Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy is an increase in staff member resilience, productivity and engagement.
Why It Is Important
- Good health and well-being make a positive difference to employee resilience, engagement, performance and quality of workplace relationships;
- Good mental health and well-being positively impacts on resilience and productivity of individuals, teams and the organization;
- Managers and leaders have improved workplace relations, experience reputational enhancement, demonstrate improvement in job performance;
- The organization can achieve reductions in financial costs of sickness, turnover, poor productivity, incivility, employee claims and benefits;
- UN agencies as employers, leaders and managers can contribute to achieving Goal Three of the Sustainable Development Goals;
- It’s the right thing to do from a humanitarian perspective. Managers, leaders and organizations are contributing to achieving Goal 3 of Sustainable development goals; are working towards meeting human rights expectations, and their employer / industrial occupational health and safety obligations.