The way you work influences the rest of your life. If you sit for eight hours a day in a cubicle, on a chair that hurts your back, using a mouse that hurts your hands, sitting in a posture that hurts your neck, working through materials that flood your brain with cortisol, you can't reasonably be expected to arrive home at 5 PM feeling refreshed and ready for family life.
In other words, the way you spend forty hours of your week will heavily influence the way you feel during your free time. In this article, we take a look at how HR can contribute to improved workplace well-being.
Defining Physical Strain
Physical strain does not have to be the result of blue-collar work. Yes, drills that rattle your joints, crawl spaces that force you onto your knees, and heavy equipment that puts an enormous strain on your back will certainly have a wearing impact on your physical health. But so can the monotony of desk work we described in the introduction, the ways in which physical discomfort can come from even mundane activities.
Physical strain in the work context can include:
- Physical fatigue: If you arrive home from your desk job mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted, unable to engage with your family past 8 PM, it's safe to say you're encountering physical strain. The quality of your life at home is being actively depreciated by your experiences on the job.
- Aches and pains: For a long time, ergonomics was a surprisingly underappreciated concern when it came to designing office equipment. The rise of ergonomic chairs, mouse pads, and so on improved upon this problem, but you can certainly develop inflammation doing the same activities over and over again.
- Burnout: Harder to quantify, but every bit as valid as any other concern, burning out is an emotional sort of fatigue that, if left unchecked, can result in depression, anxiety, and other problems.
- Environmental strain: The risk of incurring environmental strain will be dependent on the responsibilities of the job. They could include consistent exposure to loud noises, contact with chemicals or gases that are not human-safe, and other factors.
Naturally, this is an incomplete list. Work-related strain is specific both to the position in question, and the individuals occupying it. In that way, it is important for businesses to make employee communications an ongoing effort.
Good company policy should reflect the fact that last month’s pain points may not be the same as today’s.
The Connection Between Physical and Mental Strain
Physical and mental health are intrinsically linked in a connection that runs both ways. If your physical health is poor, it will impact the way you feel mentally and emotionally.
This connection is obvious enough for most people to see. What's sometimes less clear is that your emotional health can also impact your physical health.
Excessive levels of cortisol, adrenaline, and other stress and depression-related chemicals can trigger inflammation inside your body that can result in joint pain and other forms of physical discomfort.
These feelings can also disrupt your sleep cycle, which leads to other consequences, including diminished metabolism, which contributes to weight gain and slower recovery time for physical ailments.
It's always important to keep in mind that human health exists in a complicated and endlessly interwoven tapestry. To ensure an optimal experience, all aspects of the person should be taken into account.
How Human Resources Can Address Physical and Mental Strain
Certainly, this is a tall order, and not one that can be handled with a single effort. The most important thing a human resources department can do is adopt an attitude of constant communication.
By seeking feedback from employees and taking what they say to heart, human resources contributes positively toward an environment where everyone feels seen and heard.
Other things an HR department can do to address the issues we've described include:
- Workplace ergonomics: Equipment designed to reduce the physical toll created by using a piece of equipment over and over again. This can be everything from chairs and desks to special computer mouse and keyboard setups.
- Health and wellness programs: HR departments can develop comprehensive wellness programs that take into account both the physical and emotional needs of employees. This can include everything from gym memberships and health classes to mental health resources.
- Flexible work arrangements: All of the considerations we mentioned above are designed to address the symptoms of an unsuitable work environment. HR can also advocate for policies that get at the heart of the matter. If work is creating physical and emotional stress, they can identify more flexible employment arrangements that take some of the pain points out of the equation. Remote work, unlimited time off, four-day work weeks—these programs don't necessarily work in every setting, but they can be appropriate solutions to many of the problems we've described above when they are applied correctly.
Ultimately, HR contributes to improved mental and physical health of the employees working at a business through advocacy. They do not necessarily make policies, but they can take data and make informed recommendations to leadership.
Conclusion
Ultimately, it's not any single department's responsibility to fix workplace conditions for everyone. Realistically, no professional environment that requires forty-plus hours a week of sedentary indoor activity is going to be optimal from a human biology perspective. That's simply not the way our bodies were designed to behave.
Recognizing the imperfection of modern work dynamics and addressing them holistically is a sustainable path forward. A few new policies here and there won't change everything, but they will make a difference, and they will also develop within organizations a culture of support that, in and of itself, can make a big difference.
