4 ways to look after managers’ mental wellbeing, from the Chartered Management Institute

Long office hours combined with the ‘always-on’ digital culture is having a detrimental effect on managers’ wellbeing. CMI’s Future Forecast research shows that managers are working on average 44 extra days a year over and above their contracted hours, up from 40 days in 2015. This isn’t just damaging to the wellbeing of managers, it has a harmful effect on the economy too.

CMI’s Quality of Working Life research has shown the links between working longer hours and suffering from increased headaches, irritability and insomnia, all early symptoms of mental health problems and potential burnout.

This long hours culture is causing one in 10 managers to take sick leave for stress and mental health. To tackle the £70bn cost of sick leave and 4.5% of GDP productivity gap, and to prevent staff burnout, effective management is essential to how stress is handled and treated in the workplace.

Improving managers’ quality of working life will boost productivity and foster a more engaged workforce. After all, despite the UK’s long hours culture, we remain far less productive than our counterparts in France and Germany, where they have adopted shorter working weeks.

Here are four ways employers can improve their staff wellbeing, in turn boosting productivity:

1. Develop better line managers

Line managers have a critical role to play in driving employee engagement. More open, empowering management styles are connected with lower levels of stress, higher job satisfaction and greater personal productivity. If you don’t get the fundamentals right when it comes to line management, other wellbeing initiatives will fall flat.

2. Help staff maintain a healthy work-life balance & switch off!

Managers should be proactive in ensuring their teams are not overworking and sacrificing quality time with their friends and family – it’s their duty to lead by example. Managers should actively encourage their team to adopt healthier working habits by ensuring staff take full lunch breaks, take annual leave and are resting and recuperating after busy periods.

With the rise of digital technology, avoiding digital presenteeism means giving colleagues the license to switch off! That email on a Friday evening? It can wait until Monday morning!

3. Communication = trust

While CMI’s The Middle Manager Lifeline research showed 85% of managers agree that trust is vital to an organisation’s success, only 36% of middle managers say they trust their leaders fully. CMI’s findings show that a trusting working culture is a building block for growth – and that trusting a working culture comes from good communication. So what does this mean? Be transparent with staff about what you’re thinking and about business decisions. Be honest, including about mistakes – and lessons learned. And inspire your team by talking about your vision, the organisation’s purpose and how their work contributes to a bigger whole.

4. Empower your people

One of the most powerful drivers of job satisfaction is a personal sense of achievement. Where innovative, entrepreneurial and empowering management styles are found, more than 84% of managers are satisfied with their jobs.

Managers play an instrumental role in ensuring the wellbeing of their staff. Getting this right boils down to setting the right example and reducing the stigma around mental health through transparency and clear communication. In an increasingly digitally-reliant environment, managers and employers need to do more to manage the impact of rising hours and after-hours communication to help solve the productivity puzzle.

This article is written by Patrick Woodman, head of research and advocacy, Chartered Management Institute.