2025: Enhancing mental health, boosting productivity in workplace

Beyond the standing controversies around the philosophy of dignity in labour or work, where all types of works is not to be discriminated, the new elephant in the room is the diverse challenges at workplaces that are now posing a threat to the mental health of workers. Inadequate pay in an economy with high inflation rate, poor work environment, workplace toxicity, abuse of power, insecurity, excess workload, poor investment in career development, among others, could all lead to full blown mental breakdown/illness if not properly addressed by employers both in the public and private sectors of the country.

This rise in mental health challenges triggered by workplace inadequacies formed the theme of last year’s World Mental Health Day 2024 – It is Time to Prioritise Mental Health in Workplace.

Mental health is how a person functions in daily activities. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a lack of effective structures and support at work can affect a person’s mental health, making it impossible for them to enjoy their work and do their job well.

With an estimated WHO statistic of 40 million Nigerians having mental illness such as depression, anxiety disorders etc, a psychiatrist, Veronica Eze, told The Guardian that as 2025 unfolds, the workplace has a huge role to play to maintain sound mental health.

Eze, who is the CEO of Adicare Rehabilitation, said: “Mental health is a must have and there is no health without mental health. If you must maintain a sound mental health, the workplace has a huge role to play, just like the home and the community. People spend a lot of time in the workplace if not more than they do elsewhere. Even in this era of remote work, the bottom line of wherever a person works from is that the same person is still doing the job. So, people actually invest more time and personal resources in their work than they do in other aspects of their lives. People spend at least eight hours of their time if not more on their work every day and you need to be mentally healthy to do that effectively for productivity. This is why the mental health of anyone good or bad mostly revolves around what happens within the workplace.”

Eze defined good mental health as the ability for individuals to maintain a balance within the community and be able to interact, communicate freely without his or her attitude/behaviour affecting day-to-day activities.

“In this dwindling economy, perilous times if I may say, it is imperative for employers of labour both in the government and private organisations to ensure that their workers are paid, compensated and motivated accordingly as this would aid job satisfaction and in turn good mental health for their workers to be more productive. No employer of labour in this country should be paying the same salary they were paying their workers a year ago. The cost of living has multiplied in folds; so, why would anyone think that people who make a living from working for their organisations would survive on the same old salary. Motivation cuts across every line; you can motivate your workers through praise, appreciation, increasing salary, reducing work hours.

“For instance, the Lagos State government saw the stress people are going through and minimised the days people go to the office – you can work from home so long as you are working. Now these people are saving transport fare as well as cutting down travel stress. You can also motivate them by giving them gifts, by encouraging them with early salary payment, other supports such as raising a welfare committee that subsidises prices of food stuffs and other basic needs. By the time these workers are being supported and encouraged, it would relieve them of the harsh economic burden and help them to put in their best into the job without the mental stress and distraction of how to survive these perilous times. This is what it means to have job satisfaction. When you don’t have job satisfaction, you can’t be happy and accumulation of bitterness or unhappiness leads to mental illness.

“Also, there is a need to shun toxicity at the workplace as a toxic work environment puts a lot of mental stress on workers. If you’re a boss, you’re a boss; being toxic or extremely bossy is not how you show superiority or earn anyone’s respect. Rather what you’re doing is slowing down productivity of workers who instead of doing the job right are too busy being afraid of you and worrying over your toxic behaviour if they make mistakes. So, rather than concentrate on doing the job right, they are focused on the implications of making mistakes on a job that is ongoing or even yet to start.

“Also, ensure that individuals are not being overused – giving someone a task or assignment that takes more than a week and expecting them to complete it within a day. Of course because you are the boss, they would like to do your bidding to avoid the consequences that might befall them if they do otherwise; so they over-work themselves, sit in one spot all day and night, and close work extremely late while struggling through the tussles of the roads, the hike in transport fare at late hours to get home, the fear of getting home safe without falling prey to the danger that late night travel poses especially for those who have to do public transportation. This automatically affects their mental health. So, having a cantankerous boss doesn’t do anyone any good. It is also imperative for the job description of individuals to be defined. You don’t get one person to do everything. A job meant for four or five persons is now being done by one person and it is supposedly called multitasking in a disguise to save cost. This person at the end of each day goes home stressed and because they have to put food on their table, feed their family they have to go back the next day,” she said.

The psychiatrist further noted the importance of respect for all workers regardless of how low their level or position is at work.

She added: “Individuals should be treated with respect and dignity. A lot of people, because they do a low class job, people that are on top at their workplace want to take advantage of them. However, low a person’s job is, there is always dignity in labour. So, the erratic display of superiority shouldn’t even come into labour. You do not humiliate a person because they are doing a lower job. Also workers should be allowed to go on leave and actually enjoy their leave. Some organisations don’t allow their workers to go on leave in the name of high workload. So people work year-in year-out without a break. This would automatically lead to a mental health breakdown eventually. Also, organisations should ensure to take care of the medicals of their workers and allow them take sick leave and go for treatment when the need arises. Above all, the workplace should have a time for recreation. The management should organise recreational therapy for their staff. There should be a time out for workers and good staff should be motivated through awards at the end of the year. Soft loans should also be made available for staff especially when there is a financial emergency. You should make a workplace a better place for individuals to always look forward to going the next day.”

On the implications of a workplace not encouraging mental health, Eze said: “If workers are well managed, there will be good productivity; if not there will be decline in performance; there will be role clashing. If staff mental health is not coordinated, there will be crisscrossing in whatever they do and it would end up affecting the organisation’s productivity. Some workers would end up with different mental conditions and there will be burden of care as many of them will be taking sick leave. Mental illness is not like malaria that takes two days sick leave to get better. The sick leave you give for mental illness ranges from three months to one year. You can see lost work hours. You have a total number of 100 staff and 20 come down with mental illness; what you get is low workforce which equates to low productivity. Also there will be a lot of errors in productivity that could cause the organisation litigation. Now once a staff comes down with a lot of workplace burden and stress, it would come down to mental illness. This would then come back to also affect the family and once the family is affected it would degenerate to the community because it is the individual that makes the community. Now if you have more people coming down with mental illness in the community, the burden of care would be so much that even the hospital will be pressured; they won’t be able to deliver.

For instance, at Yaba Psychiatrist Hospital most of the time you find out there are no beds because a lot of people are coming down with mental illness and there are so many people to attend to. We all know that the government hospitals are cheaper than the private and in this economy a lot of people can’t afford private hospitals and when they can’t get into government hospital, a lot of them resort to local treatment, which can’t provide deserved treatment satisfaction and because of mismanagement some patients might die if not physically but brain dead. When you have mental illness your brain can’t perform. So, it is imperative to treat your workers well and by doing so everyone is happy including you as the head.”

Highlighting the types of mental illness that workers can come down with, Eze said: “A lot of people can’t meet up with their family roles and responsibilities due to poor salary, increase in pump price of petrol, high cost ofb transportation and food items; people can no longer meet the needs of their family and there is quarrel between husbands and wives, which is also leading to divorce; children have taken to the streets and are exposed to social vices such as use of substance; some females have gone into sex work and cybercrime. All these put together are really defacing families and individuals in the society. Now you see a lot of people coming down with generalised anxiety, fear of the unknown, how they are going to manage their families. Some have come down with depression, and some with even post-traumatic stress disorder have surfaced. People that have gone through one trauma or the other but were managing their lives well before the economy deteriorated to this extent are now crashing back on the trauma which remains in their subconscious memory. If there is no money to treat this immediately, it could lead to full blown mental illness.”

The Guardian also spoke with an administrative expert, Chinenye (surname withheld for personal reasons) on the inadequacies of personnel management in organisations, especially in this era of inflation and the implications on both employees and employers.

She said: “The staff are unhappy and distracted because they are thinking about so many things. So they are not delivering on assigned task. Unhappy staff is an unhappy work environment. They are making so many errors which could be costly ones that sometimes lead to litigation. Not paying staff well leads to staff attrition as they are looking for a job elsewhere. So, there is disloyalty; as they are doing your job they are looking elsewhere for higher pay and they are going to leave. They are not going to think about how long they have spent or what damage they have done. With staff attrition the company suffers because you have to source and employ new staff. You will have to train them again; after training they also leave due to poor payment policy and you find yourself right at the beginning because you refused to pay people who work for you well.

This ultimately hampers the growth of the company. Also, poor payment means not getting the best hands as right now companies are trying to squeeze everything to avoid increasing their expense yet they want experienced people and experienced people are making demands; they want a particular amount of money or no deal. So many companies are losing their good hands and are not able to attract people of the same experience based on what you were paying before. For those of us who are in the financial services sector, this could lead to staff either manipulating figures; sometimes they connive with customers to get loans disburse with the intention to share; sometimes they also take money from customers without full disclosure. They cover up customers inadequacies for being able to access a loan because they are financially induced. This is why it is professionally advisable as a-must-do for managers and employers of labour to have training on personnel handling and management. A lot of these managers in organisations don’t have it. This is why in a degenerated economy as Nigeria’s, managers do not have the understanding to increase salaries to equate inflation percentage.

Some managers have not even adjusted the work pattern of their staff to do remote for some days and do on site on other days. It is not like they do not know but they just chose to feign ignorance. Some managers even deliberately underpay staff. They know the situation of the country and so they know that these people should actually earn more than they are being paid but most of them are looking at the bottom line, they don’t want to increase the expense line of the organisation. Meanwhile, other expense lines have increased automatically; an example is fueling. The cost of power has tripled or quadrupled and then staff salaries are static. So if you go to the expense line you will see that the cost of fueling has gone up by four times but personnel cost is still the same. How? The personnel are the most important assets of any organisation but most of the time for some organisations, they are at the bottom of the list in terms of consideration for welfare. Staff see it; they are displeased and this lackluster attitude begins to come in. In fact, there are instances where staff would speak to managers and superiors rudely out of frustration. Maybe he or she comes to work and hasn’t had breakfast or lunch and you’re still screaming at him or her to deliver and probably he or she doesn’t even know how to pay transport fare home that day.

So, he is frustrated; you’re going to lose your respect in his sight. So, poor workplace management has made the work environment where payments are not upgraded accordingly very tense. For management staff who are sensitive, they know it is not a good place to be. If you notice your staff are hungry, how do you want that person to deliver on assigned work let alone extra work? Managers need to begin to pay more attention to personnel. Personnel management should not be left to HR alone; line managers should be able to understand and speak up for junior officers who may not be getting the same benefits as they are getting. So aside from increasing salaries and adjusting work schedules, they should also create incentive schemes for staff to earn a little more as a bonus.”

Also speaking, Adebayo Olanipekun, a digital creator, narrated how he left his N200,000 monthly salary a few months ago in a microfinance bank to become a digital creator where he earns more than his old monthly salary within a week.

“I was working in a micro finance bank on Lagos Island and I live on the Mainland. I realised that I was spending 80 per cent of my salary on transportation and feeding with excess workload that compels me to close 8pm every day and I end up getting home around 10pm to 11 pm depending on the traffic for each day. The next day I am at the office by 8am; sometimes I have to go out and deal directly with customers, which means spending the whole day in the sun and then returning to the office to file the field work activities. Most times I have had to crash in the office because it was too late to return home. When the stress became too much and there was nothing to fall back to – I couldn’t even afford to rent a one bedroom apartment for myself so I still live with my parents in a room and parlour apartment, and they are also looking up to me to help them financially – I knew I had to leave the job. I had gathered enough experience on the job to take up a new job as a digital creator for a financial institution and I had to work remotely too so I jumped at it and it’s been the best move I have made in my entire life.”

When asked if he has plans to leave his present job for another one with better pay, Olanipekun said: “This job gives me peace of mind, flexibility and pays my bills. I just rented a decent room and parlour apartment in Ajao and it feels good to be able to save comfortably within a couple months and pay for the rent. Now I can also give my parents a monthly allowance even if it’s not so much but they are happy and grateful to God for this new job. So, I don’t know a lot of jobs in this country that allow you to work with ease and pay you well enough to meet your daily needs, which is why I don’t have plans to leave, instead I want to work really hard enough to impress my employers and get promoted.”

In its mental health at workplace journal, the WHO stated that decent work supports good mental health by providing a livelihood, a sense of confidence, purpose and achievement, an opportunity for positive relationships and inclusion in a community as well as a platform for structured routines, among many other benefits.

“Safe and healthy working environments are not only a fundamental right but are also more likely to minimise tension and conflicts at work and improve staff retention, work performance and productivity. All workers have the right to a safe and healthy environment at work. Mental health is fundamental to our collective and individual ability as humans to think, emote, interact with each other, earn a living and enjoy life. On this basis, the promotion, protection and restoration of mental health can be regarded as a vital concern of individuals, communities and societies throughout the world. The productivity of any organisation, private or public, depends on the mental health of the workers. A safe and healthy work environment can support mental health and good mental health can help people work productively,” the body said.

WHO’s constitution on mental health states integral ways to support mental health at workplace. These are: Create a safe and healthy work environment. This includes prioritising physical and psychological safety and ensuring that workers feel secure financially and in their job future.

Have a workplace policy on mental health. This policy should clearly articulate the company’s vision, values, principles, and objectives.

Provide opportunities for learning. This can include participating in company mentor programmes, professional development workshops, or courses.

Provide conflict resolution practices. This can include having a process for requesting a meeting with a supervisor or human resources to solve conflicts.

Offer counseling and support services. Human resources can provide information on whether an employee assistance programme is available.

Encourage employees to talk about their feelings. This can help employees maintain their mental health and deal with times of trouble.

Help employees identify ways to get support. This can include helping them learn about options for support at work or how to request reasonable adjustments.