Cost of living, housing crisis negatively impacting the workplace, new survey says

Worries over money, the ongoing housing crisis and job insecurity are affecting the mental health and wellbeing of Irish employees, with a knock-on effect for the workplace, new research has found.

The study, which was carried out for digital mental health company Silvercloud by Amwell, found 60 per cent of employees in medium to large companies said they felt down, depressed or hopeless, with younger staff more likely to be affected than their counterparts over the age of 35.

Money worries were the biggest negative influence on employees’ mental health and wellbeing over the past six months, the research found.

Challenges change depending on their stage of life, with those over 35 and those with children less likely to class their mental health as good. For those under 35, half said they felt stressed, anxious, burnt out and overwhelmed at work in the past six months.

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That is having a negative impact on their work, affecting productivity and quality of work, with 60 per cent saying they had taken days off in the past six months due to mental health needs.

“People feel underappreciated at work, they work long hours, they have no support for managers and colleagues. You’re not going to fix that with a digital intervention, you need a wider overhaul in that regard,” said Dr Dan Duffy, digital health scientist at Amwell. “I feel tech facilitated interventions, digital interventions, they work as access points into a system. But the system needs to be created.”

The SilverCloud survey analysed the wellbeing of more than 500 employees in medium and large organisations, with 10 in-depth interviews also carried out with human resource managers of companies with more than 500 employees and wellness experts, in partnership with Opinions.ie.

Almost 90 per cent said employers have a responsibility to protect staff mental health.

Digital mental health solutions have been highly successful when implemented, the survey found, with 92 per cent of employees saying they found them beneficial. More than 70 per cent of employees who had access to a digital mental health system availed of it, the survey found.

The provision of such supports can also be part of a business’s environmental, social and governance efforts, demonstrating commitment to the wellbeing of employees.

“When it comes to fostering a mental health strategy for an organisation, it has to be a board level priority. They have to walk the walk and talk the talk,” said Dr Duffy. “It’s about supporting the whole person as well. If you treat somebody badly their productivity goes down.”

“The employer market has always been very hard to crack from a digital intervention perspective,” said Dr Duffy. “But at the same time, I thought it was really, really surprising that people were interested in these sorts of initiatives and that when offered help, either by their manager, their employer, or their health insurance package, they would take it. So that to me is, showing that there is a place for interventions like this to work effectively within systems that are functioning.”