Branding for brands you share more than purpose with

Ismael talks with Mentiness cofounders about how to care for the mental health of our teams:

At Soluble we work with brands that challenge us. Also with brands that make us grow. And sometimes brands burst into our lives like Mentiness, with which we share much more than a purpose.

Since we met Rebeca and Javier last fall, we've embarked on an inspiring journey that has allowed us to help them drive their brand and has already left a clear mark on Soluble. Their project directly impacts the happiness of organizations and the people who make them up, so the collaboration between Soluble and Mentiness had to happen. This year we've integrated their platform into our wellbeing culture and our day-to-day to care for the mental health of all professionals in the studio. To keep working on our 'making people happier at work'.

Getting tools to face stress, developing our emotional intelligence and offering our team a prevention and support service. We do it because we know that mental health doesn't stay at the office door. "Our mental health is affected by personal aspects but also aspects related to work, like job satisfaction and motivation," Rebeca Calvo, clinical psychologist, and Javier Serrano, CEO of Mentiness, tell me. "Given that we're not impermeable to what happens in the world, if I have a personal problem my work performance will probably be affected and vice versa. If I'm in a job where I'm treated badly, my social life, romantic relationships, or even my self-concept are going to get worse".

According to the WHO, 70% of mental health problems are related to depression and anxiety, "two issues with a very high prevention factor," they explain to me. A prevention that companies should not ignore in the work environment. The numbers are clear: 18% of depressive disorders are caused by work-related stress.

The role of the company

Why do you want to talk about mental health in the workplace? This is a question Javier and Rebeca have been asked many times. I'll admit I get asked frequently why I talk about mental health in environments where the main objective is to talk about work. Today I'm not going to answer—I'll leave it to what Rebeca and Javier tell me: "Organizations are a good starting point to address the mental health issue. Both in the intervention aspect and in the mental health promotion aspect, the latter is important because there's a lot of stigma and it's essential to talk about it." That's how Mentiness was born: to make psychology visible as a basic resource for the health of companies and people.

If there's still someone reading this with doubts about the importance of mental health in the team, I'll throw a question at them: how much does it cost a business to have an unhappy work culture? We could measure how much it impacts team motivation, workplace absenteeism, productivity, and talent retention.

"Imagine that to produce in your company you need a machine that costs you 500,000 euros. Wouldn't you service it? Wouldn't you give it the necessary care so it works as best as possible? It's the same with people. Putting them at the center means understanding that a company's profits depend directly on its team, and if that team is struggling, it will underperform. Plus, it also means understanding that work shouldn't be a threat to health. Caring for people means having healthy teams, which leads to healthy organizations." Putting them at the center of the organization—genuinely caring about having happy teams—is a profitable business model in the long term.

To be happy I want…

Recently I was talking about how it's fundamental that we create our own definition of happiness as a first step to achieve it. As companies and as professionals. I like the definition that Rebeca and Javier share with me: that state of happiness we're looking for is, fundamentally, the feeling of being satisfied with what we do and who we are; a sum of personal and work factors that need to be built on foundations without which we can't keep building: "That work allows us to have quality of life. That is, that it doesn't harm our physical or mental health".

Quality of life, but… how do we achieve it at work? They give me more answers: "Motivation, finding purpose in our tasks, feeling that we belong to a group, the possibility of growing within the company and developing ourselves or having inspiring leaders increases our satisfaction". On a personal level, "managing our emotions and having a balance—that it's not all work—and tools to manage stress" are the factors that will help us.

Can we measure our emotional wellbeing?

Mentiness has given us a tool that provides us with real-time metrics so we can identify those areas where we have problems and where we can take action, so we're aware of our people's wellbeing indicators, we get improvement proposals and can intervene when necessary. It's a tool entirely oriented toward prevention that also connects us with mental health professionals in individual sessions. This way we generate strategies that allow us to have a team that's happier every day, each day closer to our purpose.