Mental Health At Work: Top 10 Ways to Improve Employee Mental Wellness in 2025

In today’s fast-paced society, where offices and other work environments come with lots of physical and psychological pressure, protecting employee mental health at work is no longer option for organizations and employers.

Why Mental Health at Work Matters in 2025

Many corporate workers in Nigeria today have to deal with long commutes, unfavorable economic situations and ever mounting work related stress on a daily basis.

This bad trend makes it more important than ever for employers and their organizations to take steps towards protecting the mental health of their employees. However, the Nigerian corporate community is yet to take action on this front and many employees still work under unfavorable conditions.

Are you a HR manager or CEO looking to protect the mental health of your employees by implementing workplace mental health strategies? Then keep reading…

10 Proven Ways to Improve Workplace Mental Health

1. Implement Comprehensive Employee Wellness Programs

The first thing to do when attempting to create a safe space for employee mental health and boost morale is implementing an employee wellness program. A good wellness program should include:

• Confidential counseling services
• Onsite or virtual health checkups
• Fitness activities like yoga or aerobics
• Mental health insurance coverage through HMO plans.

2. Promote Open and Honest Communication

Secondly, nothing motivates employees faster than seeing their bosses leading by example. Therefore, organizations can break the spiral of silence around work related stress and burnout by:

• Encouraging people in leadership positions to talk openly about their own mental health struggles,
• Creating safe spaces for feedback and expression, feedback channels can be made anonymous if necessary.
• Removing stigma around seeking professional help. Organizations could also employ an in-house therapist if their financial situation allows it.

3. Offer Flexible Work Arrangements (Remote/Hybrid Word Patterns)

Another effective way to reduce work-stress and protect employee mental health is by offering employees a flexible work pattern that ensures that their jobs get done with as little stress as possible.

Organizations should also explore remote and hybrid work patterns for employees who have to travel long distances for work. This reduces physical stress, financial strain and fosters solid employee mental health and morale.

Other ways to reduce employee stress with:

• Remote or hybrid work options
• Custom schedules for caregivers
• Wellness days or mental health time-offs.

not sure which work mode would work best for your organization? check out more information on flexible work patterns here.

4. Provide Mental Health Training

One major issue with protecting employee mental health, is that most employees don’t fully understand what the term ‘mental health’ means. Most times, people mistake mental stress and physical stress, and this leads to them tackling the wrong problems. Therefore, organizations must educate their workforce on what mental health actually means, and train them to:

5. Foster a Positive and Inclusive Work Environment

Ethnocentrism and segregation amongst Nigerian corporate workers is another factor that causes mental stress in local organizations. Nigeria is home to over 250 ethnic groups, this means there is always a tendency for workers to break themselves into groups based on similarities within their ethnical background, and this could lead to some workers being isolated and marginalized. To avoid this, organizations should

• Promoting diversity and respect
• Encouraging peer recognition
• Quickly addressing toxic behaviors.

6. Encourage Regular Breaks and Downtime

Long work hours and infrequent breaks are also factors that could negatively affect employee mental health. Organize should implement and enforce.

• Frequent 5-minute breathers between tasks
• Daily “no screen” time
• Scheduled walking or wellness breaks.

According to scientific studies, these short breaks between tasks is an underrated stress management method that yields huge benefits. Besides offices don’t have to be stiff and lifeless environments to be productive,

7. Provide Easy Access to Mental Health Resources

After learning how to identify signs of mental health strain, employees must be able to access resources that give them the help required to tackle it, in order to recover and return as effective as ever. Therefore, employers should provide access to mental health repair resources like:

• list of therapists, hotlines, and online support groups.
• lists highlighting what’s included in their HMO mental health coverage.
• Quarterly wellness awareness days.

8. Teach Simple Stress Management Techniques For Employees

Since employee mental health problems tend to develop and compound over time, simple stress management techniques can help employees to tackle these problems in the early stages before they deteriorate into full blown problems. Therefore, organizations should organize classes where employees can learn simple stress management techniques like:

• Deep breathing and meditation.
• Journaling for mental clarity.
• Time-blocking to reduce overwhelm.

9. Monitor and Adjust Mental Health Strategies Regularly

While all the aforementioned tips and steps are very valid, they would all be rendered unproductive or underproductive if regular mental health checks aren’t carried out on employees. It is important that organizations do not just implement employee mental health policies and move on with business as usual, instead, the monitoring and maintenance of employee mental health should be seen as a continuous management function in order to ensure that the organization has a fully productive work force at all times.

This can be acheived by:

• Reviewing employee feedback quarterly.
• Tracking engagement with wellness programs.
• Adjusting based on new trends and challenges.

10. Recognize and Reward Contributions

While it might seem inconsequential, making employees feel recognized for their contributions to the organization’s successes can be a huge source of morale boost to them. To harness the power of gratitude, organizations should:

• Make shout-outs in meetings or newsletters.
• Distribute gift vouchers or team lunches.
• Encourage peer-to-peer thank-you cards and gifts.

Congratulations, you made it this far!

From the afore-mentioned points, it becomes clear that managing employee mental health isn’t a trivial issue, and shouldn’t be taken with levity by organizations and leaders in work spaces. In 2025, the conventional effort of creating helplines and running low-effort wellness checks (which tend to come after employees have broken down due to strain on their mental health). When employers make the mental health of their workers a priority, their employees will thrive and as a result business would thrive.

What Almamed Network Offers

At AlmaMed Network, we understand that managing employee mental health goes beyond the skill set of organizational heads. Therefore, we are committed to helping them and their businesses maintain an healthy, highly motivated workforce. Our corporate plans include services like :

• Tailored employee wellness solutions for Nigerian organizations
• Affordable HMO coverage that includes mental health support in workplaces.
• Monthly wellness screenings and mental health workshops

At AlmaMed Network, the mental health of your workforce is our sole business and we always take care of business.

Ready to take MENTAL WELLNESS IN YOUR ORGANIZATION Seriously?

Then you should contact AlmaMed Network today, and begin your journey to creating a safe haven for your employee.