Mental Health Awareness for Small Business Owners

PRemployer on December 29, 2021

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Sadly, too many business owners pay too little attention to mental wellness. Not only do they fail to support their employees, reducing productivity, but they seldom maintain the mental wellness they need to effectively lead their team.

It is vital for business owners to be aware of the common signs of deteriorating mental well-being. Pay attention to signs of burnout, as well as things like decreased mood, reduced productivity, increased sick days, or out-of-character behavior. Owners who try to do everything often create more stress for themselves, which impedes their ability to lead. 

Here are some tips and hints to help you better prioritize mental well-being for yourself and your staff.

Tips to Prioritize Mental Well-Being

Supporting mental well-being happens at both an individual and a company level. These tips, however, are intended for owners and employees in leadership roles to better take care of themselves. Maintaining your, and your staff’s, general health improves workplace productivity and morale. However, while high stress and burnout affect mental health, they are not mental illnesses. For owners and employees who suffer from significant conditions, it is vital to seek licensed medical care and take steps according to their recommendations.

Establish Boundaries from Work

Business owners often let work run their life and fail to establish any kind of boundaries, leading to overwork through the entire part of the day. While working all hours may make you feel like you’re being more productive, establishing proper boundaries may instead help you feel more in control. It also improves your job performance by making sure you get enough sleep and stay healthy. Nobody can stay in work mode all the time without burning out, and staying refreshed will help you achieve long-term success.

To support this, it is a good idea to learn to delegate or outsource tasks so that you and your staff don’t get overwhelmed. Be careful to consider tasks that tend to be delegated back to you, as can often happen with HR functions at small companies. Don’t make yourself everybody's emergency responder, as that takes your time and energy away from the things only you can do.

Maintain an Exercise Routine

Staying physically healthy is a crucial part of maintaining mental well-being. Regular exercise will keep you healthier, and it will improve your mood. You don't have to spend all day at the gym to notice positive side effects. A walk nearby can help, as can turning at least some of your meetings into walking meetings. Even taking a few stretching breaks a day helps significantly. It is particularly important for the owner to take breaks, as it sends a strong message to others that doing so is allowed and desirable.

Make sure you maintain a healthy diet and don’t skip meals to get more done. Business owners can encourage this by providing healthier options, such as by having vegetable trays instead of donuts at meetings. Take a proper lunch break and encourage others to do the same. Watch for happy hour culture and encourage other forms of after-work socialization that do not involve alcohol and may involve physical activity (though be careful not to exclude disabled employees).

Spend Time with Friends and Family

Socializing helps you recharge your batteries even if you're an introvert. It also encourages you to take time away from work and to think about things other than work. Maintaining healthy relationships is an important piece of our well-being, and it’s not something that should be neglected. Too many business owners sacrifice friendships and even marriages by trying to do everything. That may make a successful business, but at some point, it’s vital to consider the true costs it’s taking from you.

Try having a proper dinner with friends or family, ideally every night, but as often as you can. Otherwise, try to see friends at least once every few weeks, whether you have dinner with them, are part of a church group, or attend an event. You can also try to accomplish multiple things through socializing. For instance, if you are also having problems exercising, consider playing sports with your friends or joining a sports club. Joining a game of football or basketball on the weekends will let you meet people and get some cardio. Even joining a running club or walking group will motivate you to be active while making friends.

Avoid the trap of having all your friends also be coworkers. Having a friend at work can help keep you engaged. However, having your work as your only, or most prominent avenue for socialization, becomes impossible to maintain boundaries. 

Partake in Hobbies 

In addition to finding time for the people you love, make sure to find time for the things you love to do. Pursuing hobbies offers a significant amount of personal enrichment, and they allow more opportunities to meet friends and socialize if you can do them with a group of people.

Take time for recreation that has nothing to do with your job and consider activities that work a different part of your brain. Using your brain differently helps some people recharge and can give you a different perspective on work-related problems. For example, if you spend a lot of your time writing, consider taking up a hobby that involves the visual arts, or even playing highly visual video games. Meanwhile, people who work with numbers can benefit from journaling or writing poetry. However, by no means is that the best or preferred way to approach hobbies. If you’re a computer programmer and you develop apps or games as a hobby, as long as you get fulfillment from it, then that’s the most important.

If you find it hard to turn off your work brain, find an activity that requires high levels of focus or helps you get into the flow. Most important, however, is to partake in activities you enjoy, even if they seem pointless to an outsider or make you feel guilty about not working. Too many people, and those who own their own businesses particularly, fail to prioritize themselves. However, you’re only doing yourself a disservice by neglecting your needs and emotional well-being.

Your hobbies are not a waste of time. They are part of what makes you a whole person, and a good reward for how hard you work. They can even improve your output and productivity. Also, sometimes the answer to burnout and feeling stuck in a rut is a new hobby or activity. Let yourself be a beginner sometimes. When your work is based on a high level of experience, it’s easy to forget the feeling of figuring something out in its entirety. That will also use different parts of your brain and can help you look at your current work differently.

Take Time to Preserve Your Mental Health

Overall, do not fall into the trap of thinking that the things you do to preserve your mental health will interfere with your ability to do your job or run your business. Instead, it’s likely your business will thrive if you and your employees set proper boundaries, look after your physical health, socialize, and make time for your hobbies.

One way to ensure that nobody becomes overwhelmed is to outsource HR. Partnering with a professional employer organization can help a lot by taking on routine HR tasks that can otherwise spill over onto you or other employees. That will free up a significant amount of internal time, and it will improve compliance and accuracy with taxes and payroll. 

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