Not Making Employees 'Robots', How To Support Mental Health In The Working Environment

Illustration of the atmosphere at work (Pexels/Fox)

JAKARTA - Every October 10 is celebrated by World Mental Health Day or World Mental Health Day. The theme World Mental Health Day 2024 carries the theme It's Time to Prioritize Mental Health in the Workplace or Time to Prioritize Mental Health in Workplace.

Writer and entrepreneur Okki Sutanto said that discussing maintaining mental health in the workplace is very important. According to him, all parties in the work environment must take the initiative to provide mental health support facilities for employees.

"Incidentally, I also used to study psychologically, so I was quite exposed to mental health issues. And I think this is a quite important theme, because there are not too many who have discussed this, and there are not many initiatives from the workplace, from the workplace, from the government, from the policy side, from the regulatory side, to prioritize mental health," said Okki Sutanto when met in the Gatot Subroto area, South Jakarta, on Thursday, October 3, 2024.

What companies should do to maintain the mental health of employees is to provide a safe space to discuss it. The company must also make healthy work regulations both physically and psychologically.

"I think we have to discuss this more, so that workplaces can also start providing safe spaces, starting to be able to make regulations that are more health-friendly, and also don't need to assume that these employees are robots that must continue to be 24 times 7 productive," he explained.

According to Okki Sutanto, the workplace in Indonesia as much as possible adapts a better work system from abroad. One of them is working day only four days a week.

"There are a number of initiatives abroad that have started to be made, 4 working days, for example, so people don't have to keep working continuously, have 3 days to downtime, to rest, to continue their families," he said.

Another policy that can be implemented from other countries is that superiors are not allowed to contact employees outside of work hours, in order to maintain mental health together.

There is also a policy in Spain, outside of working hours, superiors are no longer allowed to contact their employees, to their staff. In my opinion, initiatives like this should be reproduced in Indonesia, so that we can make a more mentally healthy workplace," concluded Okki Sutanto.