It’s no secret that employees in Britain experience some of the highest workplace stress and anxiety rates in all of Europe. Charities and non-profit organisations are sadly not exempt from such negative mental health issues. If you run a non-profit organisation or a charity, your core focus is undoubtedly to raise awareness for your cause and fundraise to keep your organisation operational. However, it’s also essential to promote well-being in the workplace and keep your team happy. The following is a quick guide on how you can achieve that goal while still keeping your organisation’s objectives at the heart of what you do:
Raise Awareness for Mental Health
As is the case in any workplace, talking about mental health is akin to talking about the elephant in the room.Yet, without making positive changes to wellbeing in the workplace, people’s mental health can decline - especially if they feel no one cares about what they are going through. That’s why it’s crucial to raise awareness about it in your non-profit organisation or charity. There are several ways that you can achieve that: Ensure all team members, including new starters, understand the help and support available to them from your organisation; Invite inspirational guest speakers to your premises, so your team has the opportunity to highlight any problems in their work that affect their mental health; Ensure that staff get involved with all decision-making within your organisation, especially where it involves the work they do.
Stop Piling On the Work
You hire people to carry out specific functions within your non-profit organisation or charity. It’s vital everyone has a fair and manageable workload. Otherwise, it can result in colleagues calling in sick due to stress and anxiety. If you can’t afford to hire extra team members, consider outsourcing some of your core functions. For example, you can get the best accountancy services for charities instead of relying on a team member to do your bookkeeping work alongside their regular duties.You should also see if there are online solutions that can help reduce the extra workload placed on your staff. It’s also worth bearing in mind that many service providers offer discounts for non-profit organisations like yours if cost is a big concern.
Encourage Wellness
You may not realise it, but many employees work through their lunch breaks and often stay behind after closing time because they feel they must complete their tasks in their entirety. As you can appreciate, that can negatively impact a person’s mental health well-being. That’s why you must encourage wellness in your organisation. Examples include encouraging all staff to take their complete lunch breaks, finish work at their contracted finish times, and avoid working during the weekend or from home each evening. Lastly, another way you can encourage more wellness and positivity is by offering flexible working terms. For instance, you could agree to team members doing some of their work from home. Or, you could accommodate different start and finish times to suit lifestyle demands, such as taking children to school and picking them up at the end of the day.
