Five ways to reduce the impact of personal relationship stress on mental health
1. Understand the impact on mental health
Individuals struggling with their children or going through a relationship breakdown can feel a huge sense of failure, increasing their desire to hide what’s going on.
Much as they try to forget what’s happening at work, this will weigh heavily on them and cause them to become more distracted, forgetful, frustrated, short-tempered or tearful.
Trying to hide these symptoms and present an ‘I’m fine’ mask can also be physically and mentally exhausting. This can increase anxiety, leading to physical and mental health issues.
By making sure employees know they’re not alone and making them feel safer sharing what’s going on for them, you can dramatically reduce the strain they’re under.
This psychological safety can help to reduce flawed and suboptimal thinking and the pressure of feeling like they’ll be consequences if they’re not putting a brave face on all the time.
2. Act on your demographic data
Different demographics will be impacted in different ways at different times of the year, so look at what your data is telling you.
We see a huge spike in calls to our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for relationship counselling in January, after the break puts additional strain on already fragile relationships.
Men, who are more likely to have let friendships slide after getting a partner, can feel more isolated when the person they usually confide in becomes the person they’re struggling with.
While women are more likely to find themselves responsible for managing the mental health of their children, and challenges such as school refusing after the school holidays.
By monitoring your data, you can better support employees, even if it’s just an email to acknowledge it’s not a great time of the year for everyone and signpost towards support.
3. Get board-level buy-in
Mental health issues are the biggest reason for employees to go absent and leave the workforce, yet one of the main drivers undermining mental health isn’t being discussed.
Encourage leaders to understand the role they can play in destigmatising personal relationship stress, by talking about challenges they’ve faced and what helped them.
Create a culture where it’s okay for someone to admit when they’re going through a divorce, distressed by family estrangement or a troubled child, so they can get the support needed.
Make sure policies and support services specifically mention how you can help people impacted by personal relationship stress and update communications accordingly.
Ensure support is both practical and emotional, as someone might call the EAP for advice on separating assets but be too distressed to absorb this until they’ve processed their feelings.
4. Educate managers to be proactive
Our research also showed that employees given proactive support were eight times less likely to take any sick leave and twenty times less likely to want to move to another employer.
Employees in distress won’t remember exactly what their manager said or did but they will remember how they made them feel.
It’s particularly important for managers to take people who are struggling aside and use the ALEC model to ASK how they are, LISTEN, ENCOURAGE action and CHECK-IN.
This does not require managers to become counsellors and try to give unsolicited advice, or solve the employee’s problems. It does require them to be supportive and make adjustments.
For example, if the employee needs to phone a counsellor or speak to a lawyer or teacher, a little flexibility now will be rewarded with increased loyalty and productivity down the line.
5. Focus on parental stress
One of the most stigmatised and growing areas of personal relationship strain is parental stress, linked to issues ranging from children’s mental health to eating disorders.
More than one in four (28%) employees are now very or extremely worried about their child’s mental health, yet public services are overwhelmed.
According to Young Minds, the average time from referral to first contact with the Children’s and Young People’s Mental Health Service (CHAMS) is now 392 days, just over a year.
Instead of waiting for parents being left unsupported to become burned out and ill from constantly worrying about their child, proactive support can help them stay resilient.
Parent Power Hours, for example, can bring struggling parents together for signposting to free support and workshops on managing parental stress and raising confident children.
As with all personal relationship stress, the priority is to make sure employees know the organisation is happy to have a conversation about the issue and help. This can help them stay calm, so they can think clearly, manage their emotions and work towards a solution.
By Nicola Jagielski, Clinical Director, PAM Group
