Occupational and Environmental Medicine*, published research findings which identified that if you have poor team spirit in your workplace, you could have more staff that are suffering depression as a consequence.
3,347 Finnish employees were surveyed, aged between 30 and 64. Each employee was asked how they felt about their working environment, including quality of communication, team spirit, and their degree of job control/demands.
They then rated their work environment according to four descriptions of the atmosphere in the workplace:
- encouraging and supportive of new ideas
- prejudiced and conservative
- nice and easy
- or quarrelsome and disagreeable.
Each person was also asked about their personal lives, living arrangements, and access to health services.
They were then assessed on their diagnoses of depression, anxiety, and alcohol misuse and information was collected from a national register on what anti depressant prescriptions they had, over the following three years.
What is significant is that poor team spirit resulted in more employees reporting symptoms of depression, in fact over 60% were more likely to report depressive symptoms and they were over 50% more likely to be taking antidepressants.
Depression and anxiety is not new in the workplace and accounts for a considerable amount of sick leave and low productivity.
That is why I am passionate about helping workplaces improve communication within their teams, which in turn will reduce conflict, increase productivity, increase morale and stop you losing your marbles (your staff)!
I offer workshops on communication, reducing conflict, responding to the abusive ‘ego in the workplace’ or bullying behaviours and building better teams.
If you are serious about having a fun place to work, an increase in productivity and better teams – then contact me now!
Find out what colour marble you are!!
*”The association between team climate at work and mental health in the Finnish Health 2000 Study.”
Online First Occup Environ Med 2009; doi 10.1136/oem.2008.043299