In times of economic downturn and financial stress, keeping your personal baggage from following you to the workplace is harder than you’d think.
A 2014 study conducted by Manulife Financial and research firm Ipsos-Reid found a direct link between personal financial wellness, physical and emotional health and workplace productivity.
“There were two things we were observing inside our business that made us take on this research in the first place, and they’re symptomatic of what’s happening across the country,” says Nancy Campbell, assistant vice-president of market development at Manulife.
The first, notes Campbell, is the prevalence of disability claims made that are related to mental health. “At one in three, it’s becoming absolutely epidemic,” she says.
The second observation was that employers were expressing concern for their employees’ inability to “get ready for retirement” due to the “immediate financial concerns they were facing.”
After conducting the study, researchers found that those who struggle financially are 16 per cent less productive on the job. Additionally, they also take 25 per cent more sick days than their financially prepared counterparts. For an employee earning $50,000 annually, this translates into $8,000 of lost productivity per year.
Dr. Karen MacNeill, a psychologist out of Copeman Healthcare, notes that in today’s lean economic situation, it is extremely important for psychologically strained individuals to learn resilience and mental fitness coping strategies.
The simplest way to do this, she notes, is to “go towards, and get support from, psychologists, physicians, financial planners, your manager, or whoever can help with the challenges that are overwhelming you.”
“The approach we take at the Copeman clinic is to empower our patients with a variety of tools and techniques to manage stress and promote wellbeing,” adds Copeman. “When looking at tools for managing work pressures, think of it as a mental fitness golf bag. You wouldn’t use the driver for every shot, but you’d have a variety of clubs for the situation at hand, whether managing conflict, getting perspective, or building confidence.”
