Managers’ awareness of mental health measures for their employees in small and medium-sized enterprises in a depopulated mountainous area in Japan

Abstract

The local economy is often supported by small and medium-sized enterprises. There is a need to consider effective promotion methods for mental health measures in these enterprises in depopulated mountainous areas. It is important to understand managers' awareness when considering effective mental health measures in these enterprises. The study's aim is to explore managers' awareness of mental health measures for employees in small and medium-sized enterprises in depopulated mountainous areas in Japan.Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 managers in 2019. The primary issues addressed by the interview were regarding the awareness among managers about mental health promotion measures for employees. These are the primary prevention measures. The interview also addressed issues related to the awareness of measures for mental health problems that are fundamental to the secondary and tertiary prevention measures. A qualitative descriptive analysis was conducted.Three categories and 8 subcategories emerged regarding the managers' awareness of mental health promotion measures for employees. The 3 categories were: "Individual support, including their life's aspect, while taking advantage of formal and informal relationships," "The difficulty of drawing out an employees' motivation to work, due to the changes over time in the work size or in their working relationships," and "Creating a comfortable working environment for employees, by complying with the labor standards and adjusting relationships." Regarding managers' awareness of the measures for mental health problems, four categories and 8 subcategories emerged. The 4 categories were: "Prevention and awareness of the incidence of mental health problems," "Individual support based on the enterprise's or employee's characteristics," "A lack of support for the manager to address employees' mental health problems," and "Employees quitting the job, due to the lack of appropriate support."Though managers in depopulated mountainous areas were well aware of the mental health activities offered, the categories showed the need to foster social capital. It also showed the need to collaborate with external support organizations, and the difficulties faced by small and medium-sized enterprises.Abbreviation: SMEs = small and medium-sized enterprises.

Research on the Application of Manager's Psychological Capital in Enterprise Performance

“…Therefore, if enterprises want to make progress, they should not only pay attention to external motivational factors but also pay more attention to the development of managers' psychological capital, as shown in Figure 1. As long as enterprises can help managers to build up strong self-confidence so that managers can always remain optimistic and hopeful about the enterprise and themselves, they can use this as a motivation to improve the performance of Corporate Performance (Fukita et al, 2022). Based on this, this paper aims to study the relationship between managers' psychological capital and Corporate Performance through a combination of theoretical and empirical methods, taking the basic concepts of managers' psychological capital and Corporate Performance as an entry point, exploring the impact of psychological capital on Corporate Performance, using relevant statistical analysis software to process and analyze the collected data, and testing the constructed structural equation model.…”

Managing mental health problems in the workplace: are small businesses different?

“…Indeed, small firms typically experience lower levels of sickness absenteeism (ONS, 2022;Statistics Canada, 2022), and have significantly lower prevalence of self-reported work-related stress, depression and anxiety (HSE, 2021). Yet, evidence suggests that retention of employees who do develop mental health problems is particularly challenging for small firms (Fukita et al, 2022;Salis et al, 2021). Auger and Pohlmann's (2022) survey of small employers found that, despite high levels of comfort in talking about mental health in the workplace (68% feeling 'somewhat' or 'very' comfortable), less than half this proportion (31%) felt well-prepared to address mental health issues as and when they arose.…”

“…Indeed, small firms typically experience lower levels of sickness absenteeism (ONS, 2022; Statistics Canada, 2022), and have significantly lower prevalence of self-reported work-related stress, depression and anxiety (HSE, 2021). Yet, evidence suggests that retention of employees who do develop mental health problems is particularly challenging for small firms (Fukita et al. , 2022; Salis et al.…”