Managing mental health at a hybrid workplace

Mental health has become the concern of the ILO long before the COVID-19 was declared as a global pandemic in March last year. Grace Monica Halim, Technical Officer of the ILO Geneva, highlighted that mental health problems at work cost the global economy up to US$ 1 trillion each year in lost productivity. In Switzerland, for example, the cost of work-related stress during the pandemic increased by 600 million Swiss Francs each month from 7.6 billion pre-pandemic.

Teleworking has brought new stresses, as workers find themselves isolated or juggling family and professional responsibilities. She explained that work-related stress includes a variety of conditions, such as overwork, job insecurity and blurred work-life balance. Thus, she emphasized the importance of managing work stress to help reduce the risk of work injury that may result in lost days on the job and negative effects on productivity.