Workers’ Day has been celebrated internationally every May 1st for decades. Thanks to its festive nature, it has established a strong presence in society.
To make this day even more significant, at ifeel, we have a special Global Ambassador: the renowned football player Andrés Iniesta. Thanks to his commitment to psychological well-being at work, he is helping us spread awareness of the importance of taking care of ourselves and others in the workplace and prioritizing it in all organizations.
How to interpret International Workers’ Day
This is not just any day along with other dates on the calendar. It can be analyzed from various points of view: somewhere between protest, celebration, and vindication, Workers’ Day should be considered, first and foremost, as an opportunity.
From this point of view, International Workers’ Day is an opportunity to rethink what we need in our daily professional lives, regardless of the dates we celebrate it. Work is an area where we spend many hours interacting with various people, and we put our personal growth and fulfillment at stake. As in any other area of our lives, we must take care of our health in our workplace.
This is a good way to be effective and bring about fundamental changes that improve our physical and psychological well-being and generate solid results for companies. Therefore, it is essential to think and express, from time to time, what we are lacking and what we want to achieve to have better well-being. It is also necessary to identify what we have achieved and what we must preserve because we know it works. In short, employees and companies have a mission in terms of their mutual and sustainable growth: to use the most efficient means to achieve a new balance between serving the company’s interests and protecting people’s psychological well-being.
The importance of psychological well-being
Although circumstances sometimes prove otherwise, we do not always work the same way or at any cost. Or at least, we shouldn’t. Moreover, an increasing number of countries are subjecting employee labor relations to a legal framework that, despite its limitations, attempts to address certain basic conditions to ensure that work does not gradually destroy those who perform it.
Among these conditions is the support of employees’ psychological well-being. Employees must feel that they are working in a safe environment, with a healthy corporate culture, a realistic style of recognition, and a work environment that is mature and welcoming to the different personality types. These, and many others, are essential to building solid occupational health.
Prevention as an efficient well-being strategy
Although we do not always realize it on time, we all know that preventing problems is more efficient than tackling them when they have already emerged or worsened. That is why employees must learn not to push their abilities to their limits. We are more resilient and capable than we appear to be: everyone always has something more to give, an extra effort to make, one more idea if they put their mind to it. However, taking care of oneself and taking care of the team means being careful with that “extra push” we “could” give, and knowing how to control it.
At work, it’s not always about getting there first, getting there faster, or getting there at any cost. On the contrary, it is about getting there well. To achieve this, limits are necessary, and we must listen to them. We can approach them, but we should not do so entirely, keeping a healthy distance from that limit. They tell us that when we overstep them, our psychological balance begins to be affected.
A balanced dialogue between the responsibility that each worker has for their well-being and the responsibility that companies have to support it, primarily through the prevention of the main psychosocial risk factors that deteriorate it, is the right approach.
Emotional well-being for companies
At ifeel, our commitment focuses on employees’ health because we understand that taking care of it is the only realistic way to care for the organization’s health. For this reason, our team of psychologists specializing in well-being at work has created an emotional well-being program for companies.
Through this partnership, HR managers can receive personalized, data-driven advice on how to improve their teams’ psychological well-being. On the other hand, this program offers employees a global mental health care service structured at different levels according to their needs. Try our program now to learn more about its benefits.
Don’t forget to visit our Resources section. You will find a variety of content: podcasts, Human Resources guidebooks, or interviews with leading HR managers. In addition, we have produced a Psychosocial Risk Factors Template, which you can use to comply with the requirements of the Labor Inspection.
We hope you found this article on Workers’ Day interesting. If you would like more information about our emotional well-being program for companies, simply request it, and we will contact your team as soon as possible.
