Why workers in small businesses can struggle with mental health and 'presenteeism'

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And for small businesses with fewer resources to support mental health and wellbeing, these problems can become even more acute.

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Tuesday, July 25, 2023

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And for small businesses with fewer resources to support mental health and wellbeing, these problems can become even more acute.
Small companies can be great places to work for reasons including close and informal working relationships and a family-like ethos.
There may also be few opportunities for the redeployment of employees experiencing mental health challenges.
In the UK alone, half of private sector employment is in small businesses with less than 50 employees.

These managers also told us that presenteeism could create a greater management challenge than absenteeism.
This surprised us, as we expected sickness absence to be the bigger issue given the resource constraints for small businesses.
Those who successfully managed presenteeism worked hard to understand the issues and initiate conversations at an early stage.
Presenteeism isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can be restructured to become “functional presenteeism”.

It is positive to see workplace mental health and wellbeing moving up political and organisational agendas.
However, a broad focus on workplace wellbeing must not overshadow the need to pay attention to the sharp end of mental health.
This can put the onus on individuals to address wellbeing problems that stem from poor working conditions.
Our research findings show that, beyond wellbeing policies, symptom recognition and workplace adjustments, mental health training needs to include a focus on managing and mediating the tricky areas of presenteeism and performance management.