Gütersloh, 10/18/2023

Healthy Self-Care And Staff Care

New training opportunities for leaders focus on healthy self-care and staff care. Bertelsmann’s “Mental Health in Focus” initiative this year aims to enable leaders to make an effort to promote their own health and that of their team members in their daily work routine.

The background: around 9,000 employees have leadership responsibilities across the Bertelsmann Group. They often take on a double role with regard to promoting their team members. On the one hand, leaders have to motivate their colleagues’ performance and also ensure that they stay within their own limits of resilience. On the other hand, leaders are expected to also act as role models in this context. This is not an easy task considering the multi-faceted challenges of the modern working world, which bring along an increase in mental illnesses. The rising case numbers of mental illness diagnoses result in longer employee downtimes and higher offset costs for the company. At Bertelsmann, in-person training is provided in various corporate divisions to promote a healthy leadership style, and various e-learning and online training programs are offered. Now, more training opportunities have been added at Group level.

Role model function of leaders

Enabling leaders to create a healthy and safe work environment is an important goal in Bertelsmann’s ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) program and is managed by the cross-divisional and international “Health, Safety & Well-being” working group. As a starting point, healthy leadership is understood as a model composed of four core elements: healthy corporate culture, healthy job design, healthy self-care, and healthy staff care. In context with this model, healthy leadership has proven to contribute to the improvement of the physical and mental health of employees, who feel more connected with the organization and are more efficient in the long run. This year’s “Mental Health in Focus” initiative especially highlights the aspects of healthy self-care and staff care.

For the role model function of leaders, it is necessary for them to make an effort to promote their own health in the daily work routine. Integrating recreation to offset the daily work routine in order to remain physically and mentally healthy as well as efficient in the long term is essential. By making small changes to the daily routine, effective measures can be implemented that sustainably promote better stress management. If a leader is constantly overstressed, this can also have a negative effect on team members. The goal should be to establish a supportive and appreciative team climate in which health is given a high priority, and stress and illnesses are taken seriously and are appropriately addressed. Appreciation and constructive feedback also create many health-promoting effects and are an important source for enduring the demands of everyday work.