According to the NHS, in 2017-2018, anxiety and depression accounted for 44% of all work-related ill health cases and 57% working days lost due to ill health. Those are astounding statistics. In the UK alone, half of all illness and absences are as a direct result of a mental health malady.
It’s been hard to ignore the warnings by major news outlets, the WHO and leading healthcare authorities that we’re on the cusp of a mental health epidemic. But, is there a solution? How can we make sure that more than half of working days each year are not lost as a direct result of stress? Yes. There are approaches that employers and employees can take to mitigate this problem.
The good news is that technological innovations to help us better deal with our emotional well-being spring into public consciousness all the time. We’re not just talking about healthcare apps and platforms, but technology in a broader sense.
A General Perspective
Before we dive into how specific solutions, such as receipt parsing API technology, can have a positive effect on the professional lives of those across the globe, it’s important to gain an expanded understanding of the issues we all face.
Don’t be concerned if your response to a stressful situation is anxiety, trepidation, or to power through it, feelings be damned. This is perfectly normal and can be categorized as flight or fight. Just because these are your gut feelings, it doesn’t mean that you’re struggling to deal with your emotions. On the contrary, it means that you have healthy response emotions.
However, should such stress or anxiety begin to affect the quality of your life, compromising your vocational enjoyment and the quality of your work, it may be a good idea to develop some techniques to support your mental health when working in expense management. Interested in learning more? Why not continue reading below. You never know, you may just discover that Hallelujah moment!
Create a Space to Relax
As efficient as OCR parser technology can be in helping to streamline professional duties and meticulously manage expenses, in terms of mental health, without a space to relax stress can infect our minds and have a significant effect on our happiness.
In today’s digital world, the boundaries between work and rest have become ever so blurred. Clients and colleagues can get hold of us 24-hours a day if they so wish. Are you guilty of checking your phone every ten minutes? Do you have your email window open throughout the day, regardless of whether you’re at work or not? If so, then you may need to prioritize a time to proactively rest.
Why? You run the risk of burnout if you don’t. Commercial expense calculation is paramount to any successful business. Make a manual mistake and the ramifications could be grave. This is as strong as case as you’re ever likely to find to employ an OCR parser and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) technology. Let the technology do the work for you. Why is this important? Streamlining processes gives you more opportunity to unwind. A calm, well rested person with access to the requisite tools to perform their role is someone who will excel.
Introduce a Mental Health First Ethos
Once you have cultivated a workplace environment that promotes productivity, it’s paramount that you reinforce this with an ethos that puts mental health at the forefront of your thinking.
What we mean is making positive changes to make sure that absences from work are reduced to zero – or at least, only in cases of extreme illness. Why not introduce a business-wide ethos of togetherness, support and understanding, combined with the IT architecture that promotes success?
Why is this so important? A happy workplace is one with excellent levels of employee retention – and minimal absence through sickness. Creating an infrastructure that minimizes stress is a large part of this. Receipt parsing API employed across any professional environment will streamline professional activities, making life easier for employees, and contributing greatly to a happy, productive workplace. This will promote your mental health first ethos.
Encourage Mindfulness
You might have noticed over the last few years that employers of all sizes across diverse sectors encouraging employees to participate in mindfulness at work – and for good reason.
Being mindful of where we are, our emotions and commitments is a sure-fire recipe for commercial success. It’s when we lose sight of our responsibilities and goals that the swell of emotion becomes difficult to ignore. What can this lead to? Unwelcome anxiety and depression and, in some cases, time away from our role.
Fortunately, there’s a wealth of ways that we can all be mindful at work. Being present and alert is one way. Being a single tasker is another. Feeling gratitude is yet another, as is adopting a success-orientated mindset.
OCR parser technology encourages mindfulness. It requires employees to be present and concentrating on one task. There are obvious parallels to be drawn with the gratitude of having the technology to streamline role duties and the success of completing the duties required of us. Being mindful may well be easier than we thought!
Cultivate Happiness
When we’re stressed, anxious or depressed we’re more likely to make mistakes. Oftentimes, we lose motivation when suffering from a poor state of mind. This can drastically affect our ability to work and value to our employer.
Cultivating happiness will quash this. Taking pride in your work is a great way to boost productivity and aptitude. Don’t forget that the happier we are, the more likely we are to perform well at work.
Luckily, happiness can be found in a wealth of places. The satisfaction of completing a particularly challenging task, perhaps with the help of an OCR parser, a conversation with a colleague, a cooling breeze on a hot and humid summer’s day, a delicious lunch, or praise for a job well done. Hold onto these feelings. They may well get you through those rougher days that, by the law of averages, you’re bound to encounter.
These are just four of the ways that you can support your mental health when working in an expense management position. A subject that we don’t talk about enough, mental health is paramount to working success. Start a conversation in your office today, make some small changes and you could just increase your productivity by more than 50%!