Mental illnesses are now the most common cause of early retirement, accounting for more than 40 percent. The DAK Health Report 2022 states that mental illnesses are the most common cause of sick leave directly after musculoskeletal disorders. According to the German Federal Ministry of Health, around 15 percent of all days of absence are due to mental illnesses. But in order to assess the explosiveness of mental illnesses for a company, another aspect is important: the duration of sick leave. At an average of 36 days, the duration of sick leave is three times higher than for other illnesses.
This shows that mental health is not only very important for the individual employee. It is also of great economic importance to companies. Consequently, it pays to invest in this area in more ways than one. If you want to know exactly what the cost-benefit ratio of investing in workplace health promotion and reducing absenteeism is, you can calculate the savings potential HERE.
Mental illnesses have growing importance for workplace health promotion
Stresses that promote mental illness usually arise where people come together. This is for example in the family, but also in the workplace. Work has changed significantly as a result of digitization and the resulting increase in mobility and flexibility. Hybrid working requires employees to be able to find a good balance. And this despite the dissolution of strict boundaries between work and leisure. New technologies and an ever shorter cycle in which employees have to adapt to innovations also place high demands. The German Federal Ministry of Health states: “For fear of not being able to keep up, many people make their work the focus of their lives without restriction. Experts call this “dissolution of boundaries. Increased personal responsibility and the growing complexity of job requirements are causing the boundaries between job and private life to blur. Pressure increases, and self-determination over one’s own life decreases.”
Effective workplace health promotion should therefore offer employees more than just individual preventive measures. It is important to provide them with the tools they need. This is to integrate healthy behaviors into their daily lives on a permanent basis.
Offers for the promotion and maintenance of mental health:
- improves the working atmosphere,
- increases the attractiveness of the workplace and loyalty to the company,
- increases productivity and
- reduces absenteeism
Can preventive health care be fun?
“Looking at health promotion and prevention, it shows that not all employees have access to workplace health promotion (39 percent of women, 48 percent of men).” When planning health promotion, companies should always keep in mind that mental health measures must be attractive to employees and easy to implement. To this end, the offerings should be diverse and easy to integrate into very different daily routines. And most importantly, they must offer motivating incentives to participate and stick with it in order to be effective. The Changers Fit app offers all of this. Various gamification elements, such as challenges, a dedicated reward system, badges and much more, ensure an above-average participation rate. Companies can use the Changers Fit App to manage their entire workplace health promotion. In addition, it is possible to access a pool of existing prevention measures.
What else Changers Fit App has to offer, you can find HERE. Test the health app, which is successfully used by large companies such as BOSCH, DB or DEVK. The Changers Fit App has been awarded several times; in the field of workplace health promotion as EUPD TOP BRAND and by the Solarimpulse Foundation for efficient climate protection.
HERE you can find the free trial version.
