The business costs of mental health

Mental health issues are significant health issues that can negatively affect a person’s relationships, productivity, and physical health. Common signs of poor mental health are feeling down, loss of pleasure or interest, sleeping difficulties, appetite changes, constant worry or feeling numb and empty inside.

Consequently, workers with mental health issues are more likely to take time off and are about 21-40% less productive at work compared to workers without mental health issues. One strategy to avoid the high cost of mental health issues at work is just not to hire or retain workers with mental health issues. Only 5% of SMEs in Malaysia were willing to hire someone with a mental health condition.

But given that

1. 30% of Malaysians have poor mental health at any one point in time;

2. 80% of the population will develop a mental health condition in their lifetime;

3. and there is a 13% likelihood that someone coming in healthy will eventually develop a mental health condition when working under stress.

Social avoidance or discrimination against people with mental health issues are simply not viable solutions.

What are the costs of mental health at the workplace?

We calculated the costs in 3 areas – sickness absenteeism, – working when unwell, and staff turnover.

We invite organisations to consider investing in 3 areas to improve mental health in the workplace.  

1. Increase mental health awareness: This helps people identify common signs of poor mental health and to understand causes and consequences of poor mental health.
2. Make mental health help accessible to all employees. This could be universal wellness programmes for everyone, preventive programmes for those at risk—like stress management—and treatment programmes that offer confidential counselling sessions.
3. Put formal policies and procedures that promote mental health in place. For instance, training programmes for managers about mental health, or supporting leave of absence for workers with mental health issues.

Click here to access the full report.