Redefining Productivity through Well-Being

We're talking mental health , but this year's theme is one that I knew I had to speak with Ola because he's very passionate , very , very passionate about the workplace and office culture , corporate culture . You know he's always going on and on about it , especially if you are following on LinkedIn , oh God , it has lots and lots of articles on office culture .

And if you are fortunate or is it fortunate to be on his contact list , I'm sure you're tired of him talking about workplace ethics , workplace culture and all of that . So when I saw that a theme for this year's World Mental Health Day , it's time to prioritize mental health in the workplace .

Mm again , no , we're going to take a step back or step away from a fight for life , not that we'll stop talking about it , but for this episode I said mm-mm . Ola , ola , oya , this is your forte . So how are you ? Good morning Ola .

And one of my own glimmers is fragrances and good food Nice and cakes . So sometimes when I'm cleaning down , I just remember maybe somebody just passes by with a very lovely fragrance . I I just begin to smile like a fool , like without the news , I just begin to smile , and that's exactly how I feel this morning .

So if you're not great , if you're not really good , that is the degree to which you can do good work good work . So if you're 60% old , also in your mental health space , you can't even give 60% to your work . You're probably giving you know there's a buffer . So if 25% is buffer , you're left with what ? Maybe 75% of 60 .

Right , so maybe that comes to about 45% and out of that you're still going to not allocate everything to work . all right , so at the end of the day , you find that people are not really giving their best to work because , um , there's one reason or the other .

Like he left that from happening , which is why we , why we encourage leaders to ensure that mental health conversation in the organization is priority . The degree to which a person feels appreciated , feels whole right , is the degree to which they can do good work that adds value right .

It's the degree to which they can do good work that adds value right to the organisation . It's just simple common sense . Well , that's what you will think , but again , that's what it is .

Yes , I , I know that somebody will say you're supposed to be first , it's okay , but for me , family is and it was . It was one of the reasons I needed to take a shift job . I wanted to be there for my children . I truly , truly , truly , and this is not because of cultural conditioning and all that .

I know a lot of mothers and I commiserate I hope that's the right word with mothers that wanted to breastfeed and couldn't breastfeed and all of that , with mothers that wanted to breastfeed and couldn't breastfeed and all of that . But I truly , truly wanted my children to be breastfed exclusively past six months At the time .

I don't think that service is still available in my former place of work , but at the time we had a crash in the office , yeah , and so you can imagine me leaving the house with the baby . Five am , and god rest her soul , but not rest . God bless her soul .

My daughter was very quiet in the studio and all , and the fact that I knew that during my breaks or when there was a program going on , or they could bring my daughter to me to breastfeed , I could breastfeed , I could walk to the crush and breastfeed her , who I was expressing , it really , really helped me give my best . Yeah , at work .

It helped me give my best .

The fact that I knew that my child was near me and and I think that , if you know , I really , really just liked it , it was , it was , it was I don't know , even if every other thing , you know , it was not like it was a perfect workplace , even if every other thing was not working the fact that I had that and it fed my number one value to be there

for my children , to be there for my child , it really helped me to . It cushioned the effect of the negatives . Does that make sense ? It cushioned the effect of work stress . It cushioned the effect of work stress . It cushions the effect of the extra hours I had to work . It cushioned the effect of the midnight shift .

Yeah , because I knew I could have my baby with me and I , I and I think you know , trying to answer the question I asked you . That's why , uh , mental health questions need to be answered .

Um , and it's like you said a person will not be able to give their best if they're worrying about , um , the nanny that they left their child with at home , or if they're and I'm speaking as a woman now or they're worried about what , how they're going to cook , what they're going to cook for someone like me who loves to cook ?

Yeah , it was , it was , it was , uh , that was one , you know , just like it was one of the . So I decided early that , okay , I would batch cook and then would microwave , and I didn't . Before I married , I did not like to . I loved to eat my food fresh , straight from the fire .

You know I'm cooking and we're eating it , but these are the realities and I knew that , despite you know , I don't want to throw around the word toxicity , but despite the negatives that came with um , with where I worked at the time , um , the fact that I was available to my child , uh , you know , it made me give and I think it was for me .

I was thanking them . I was thanking them , okay , and that's why I could give my best I was thanking them for , you know , for making a press available that I could be with my child , which I could eat . I could , you know it was , it was just beautiful .

I and I hope that you know and I I hope that other other offices , you know people , the offices and organizations and companies begin to think about that .

You know , especially for women , um , especially women who want to have a career , uh , want to go up the career ladder , and still has the um and still has family as the number one value , there has to be a balance , all right , what do you want to say to that ? Before I push you forward , again .

Again , so what I think that we take for granted this thing is it's just , everything is connected one way or the other right , so it makes again .

So what I think that we take for granted is the fact that and I'm going to limit with most of my conversation um to nigeria is that because we believe that nigerians are very resilient , we take a lot of these things for granted . That's the conclusion that I've come to is because the statistics for workplace burnout .

It doesn't make any sense , but we cover up a lot of things as Nigerians that you don't even know that you're burning out , even though the signs are there . You don't even know you're burning out . The signs are there , and sometimes it's not about the workplace per se .

It could be about everything that is happening in your life , but there's no way to separate what's happening at home from what's happening at the office . One way or the other , one will feed into the other . It's very difficult for people to leave their problems at home when they get to the office . That switch is not easy to make .

Instead of what you can't leave all work at home , all the work at the office , and get home and pretend as if you didn't have any issues . Do you understand how it is ? So it just makes a lot of sense if organizations can , at the very least . So you can't even ask questions when conversations are not going on .

I think that's where the problem really starts from . It's only when there is communication where people are talking about these things without fear that something is going to happen to them . Hr is going to , because what I say about hr most times is hr is for the management , hr is not for the people . Most times , you know who plays the pipe up .

It would usually dictate the team you know . So if organizations can begin to allow conversations you know what I heard I was telling you about this podcast I was listening to is that 3% of leaders in organizations talk about mental health 3% . That's abysmal .

That's worse than abysmal , because the truth is , if a leader is not leading that conversation , the conversation is not going to happen . It's not going to happen . It's not going to happen .

So , until leaders come into a place where they take that lead and allow for multiple conversations and the truth is not every conversation is going to be positive , like in terms of getting positive feedback right but this is what I see of feedback .

Feedback is just it's telling me that we're going in the direction that is not good , it's not supposed to be good , or blah blah . It's just information about what it is that is happening that is not good , it's not supposed to be good , or blah blah . It's just information about what it is that is happening that is not going well .

It's just a little bit of retuning or fine-tuning or changing the direction of the router to ensure that this is where we say we are going to , we are lined up with what it is we say we are going to do and we arrive at that place with the most of our employees right , happy to be going on that journey with us .

Right , and the one thing is that I believe that in the short term the revenue might , might , but in the long term it's going to grow and this is why I say so right .

So if you start talking about work-life balance , so you start talking about prioritizing your mental health and your physical health , you start talking about stuff like that and you're giving people options of how to work to ensure that that happens , you would find that , based on the value system of the organization , some people would leave , or you would move some

people out of your organization that don't fit into your culture . That's going to happen . But what would happen is because you now have a strong culture , because you now have a workplace that people love to work in , because you made it a place , as such , you are going to attract great talent . It's just common sense .

People love to work with great organizations . It's proven . People don't leave organizations . They leave their managers . Managers usually are a downline of what the organization represents . So if you have a good organization , most likely you'll have great managers . Managers usually are a downline of what the organization represents , right ?

So if you have a good organization , most likely you'll have great managers , and people want

to work . Questions are these days people have conversations at interviews and they're asking the interviewers how is your work piece ? They're asking these questions now . I was interviewing a young chap and I said what are the expectations he , what are the expectations of the organization ?

He said the only thing that he doesn't think he can deal with is toxic culture . Oh my , I'm like this . This guy is too young to understand how these things , but it tells me that people are becoming more aware , you know , and the JNZs are not afraid to speak their truth right .

So it will come to a place where it's either organizations take it a bit more seriously or they don't really do physical . That's what I see . I don't see how we can sustain the kind of culture of not taking care of your mind space . I don't see how it's going to be sustained in the way . Let's look at Nigeria , the way Nigeria is .

Organizations need to be overtly understanding of what people are going through . The cost of a module of rice has gone up by . I don't know . It's now about 5,000 naira per module . I don't know how much it used to be . A bag of rice like's now about 5,000 naira from the hotel , I don't know how much it used to be .

A bag of rice here is about 120,000 naira . That used to be 50,000 naira . That's about 100% . You come to the office , you're thinking about your family . You come to the office and the organization hasn't done anything to increase your take-home . That's how it happens . You begin to worry about that .

You begin to worry about , before you know it , the quality of your work is going to drop , whether you want to or not . So if organizations don't take it as a priority to say , okay , we can't meet all your needs , okay , but this is what we can do . Sometimes it's just showing that we care . Sometimes you're showing that we care .

I was talking to a friend of mine who said that during covid they are um , where he works , the gazelle works for actually had to employ the services of psychologists because somebody in the organization committed suicide . But it didn't have to get to that place for you to know the temperature of the mental health of staff . It didn't have to get to that .

It's a good thing that they have started . But the challenge again is that I think because of our exposure to what mental health really is , he said to me that a number of people are not taking advantage of this .

The organization that does psychotherapy is still there to talk with , but the staff are not taking the opportunity because they are not sure if whatever conversation goes back to management and that yeah .

All right , all right , so I'm , I'm , I'm around the stigma end , where your , your colleagues know that you're going to talk to someone at the Yemi Bureau . So this leads to emotional suppression . Then this leads to water cooler talk . You know , colleagues are talking oh , that person went to this , that person went to that .

So again , especially in these times we will get to the statistics in a moment especially in these times that is the perception of stigma . Even if this perception of stigma is , even if the you know , this perception of stigma is what would hold people back , what I believe will hold people back , and I'll use myself again as an example .

When I was diagnosed in 2015 , or initially , it was manic depression and , of course , eventually we found out that it was bipolar affective disorder . I was on traffic radio at the time and I ran the money bit and I had to get to the neuropsychiatric hospital Yaba that's where I , before I got private consultancy and all that . I had to go to Yabba .

Yeah , I couldn't tell anybody in office . I couldn't . I couldn't Save for my late friend Femi Akoni . I told him and then he would take off my shift and then I would take his evening shift and then Simi also would take my shift .

Fast forward to , I think , think two weeks ago , three weeks ago , speaking to my ex-boss , you know he's also retired now , and then we're talking about mental health questions and all that . And he's looking at me . I said , okay , what did you think was happening on those mornings that I didn't start off the station ?

What did you think was happening on those mornings that I didn't start off the station ? What you think was ? And it was looking at me like huh , you know . So the question here is the . The the perception of stigma leads somewhat to what I think is the major challenge for creating a healthy , psychological , safe space of work emotional suppression .

Just like you said , hr is for the management , not for the people . So for the HRs that are listening to this , how can they create support systems that gives the employee some sense of safety and also feeds the bottom line of the management ?

You can tell them oh , we care about you , oh , we care about you , we care about you . But they can see in what you do , that you don't give too much about them . They can see that .

So even if HR is championing mental health advocacy right , but it's doing the exact same doing now the exact same thing that negates whatever it is they're saying I'm going to believe what you're doing rather than what you're saying , right .

So until it comes to a place where again , like I said , leaders can lead the conversation on mental health without um punitive measures for people who say you know what I need ? I actually think I need to take a break and then be able to work with them . Hr is going to work with them in a way that you can check .

I don't think these things are that hard . If money is valuable to you , their health mental and physical health should be premium to you . It should be priority . It should be . It should be they would give the best to you , to the capacity of which their wellness allow , right ?

So it just makes sense that if that is so , and then the bosses are leading that conversation , trust me it would become easy , because I think , at the end of the day , it's not just the stigma that is the issue , it's the trust stigma Stigma is one trust is another If stigma exists , but I trust that you people are going to hold me .

You're not going to allow me to fall . I can still go ahead and do what it is I should do . It's when I don't trust that you guys would and I'm saying you guys , not me , the organization are going to stick with me during this process then I most likely would do what I know to do , because I don't want to expose myself to people I don't trust .

are people going to see me ? So sticker is going to be around for a long time . It's we're going to get around forever , but at least it's changing from ostracizing people who have certain mental health right so you know um , then you know we are not having conversation , open conversation exactly , exactly about it . So let's look at some .

Let's look at some specific nigerians . I could go to the world . I don't want to go to the world , I could go there . But let's look at some Nigeria-specific statistics . In Nigeria , over 80% of people living with mental illness do not have access to adequate care .

You and I know that , with stigma being a major barrier for seeking help , of course , hopefully , with conversations like this , we have quite a lot of people who are having conversations . Now we have I just met her doctor . We have , uh , of course , my my ever beautiful uh moji , uh , kenes dami , you know all this . They're having these conversations .

We have benga koka . We have have Dr Abayomi Manuel . We have , you know , these people are having these conversations and these are psychiatrists . They are psychiatrists who have stepped out . Of these people I just mentioned , they stepped out of academia . Right , they stepped out of academia . You can search them . You know they stepped template of academia .

You can search them . You know the statement of academia and they will . They work to break down what mental health questions are , and that is where and where the ones were able to tell me there's a difference between maintaining mental health and mental health . So we need to demystify the concept of mental health .

The other day I put on my status when you hear mental health will come to your mind and the responses were hilarious and I'm like what , for clarity's sake ? Were hilarious . Ah , otikolo , you know you're worried and I'm like what , for ? For ? For , for clarity's sake . What mental health is ?

It's your relationship , your personal relationship with your emotional , psychological and social well-being , how it affects how you think , how you feel , how you act , how you handle stress and relate to others . That's exactly what mental health is .

So when you say I am protecting my mental health , you are saying to me what I'm hearing is I am protecting what makes me feel safe emotionally , what makes me feel safe psychologically and what makes me feel safe socially .

What you're doing to me right now does not make me feel safe , does not make me think properly , does not make me act properly , and I don't want to get across that line . I don't want to step over that line that I now become something else because of what you're doing to me . So I need to protect that . That is what protecting your mental health is .

Mental health is another matter . That is where we have all the diagnosis the manic depression , the anxiety disorders , the eating disorders , the trauma-related stuff , the personality disorders . That is where we have mental ill health .

But to talk about mental health , we're talking about how you relate with yourself and , by extension , the people within your ecosystem , and how that serves you daily . I think that's the , you know we . It's a huge question and you know , if I start I won't stop and I really need to keep this , this conversation , short .

So , um , the other thing that I I would love for you to speak to , ola , is you've spoken to it , but I have seen one infomercial or one that you shared , sometimes on burnout . A lot of people don't even know how to identify burnout . A lot of people don't even know how to identify burnout .

It took me time to know that when I get cynical , I'm actually burnt out already . Yes , when I become very cynical about things and I'm seeing because I'm 80% well , 70% a positive person . So when , I begin to see negatives .

It took me a while to find out that , oh , I'm bent on it and when I take time out and I step out of whatever I ease is causing that stress . I can now see it with my eyes and that is me I have been able to identify for myself . Okay , ego living mindfully .

But for those who do not know , because I know there are a lot of markers , I can't remember that you are that information that you shared , or um , it was , it was a picture . But if you have it , do you have it with you ? Is it accessible ? Can you just give us some pointers to know that you are burnt out or you are burning out ?

Yes , I'm still learning . I'm learning how to use the simple everyday English to talk about this .

He sat down with his friend , was telling his friend and then he asked his friend one question Do you think sometimes about getting out of it ? The moment he said that question , I said that is a suicidal threat and that was it , but the friend didn't get it . The friend probably was talking about basketball , because they play basketball together .

Right , the guy committed suicide that night .

What if it said this person or this person lost their life by a suicide ? I'm still working on that , but it just occurred to me about two weeks ago or a week ago and I saw it on , and it just hit me , me about two weeks ago or no a week ago , and I saw it on .

You know , and it just hit me , that's true Committing suicide with saying that this person has committed an offense , and these kind of things .

People will take more offense if you say this person took his life . It feels harder , but that's , that's again . That's the truth , because that's what that's what happened . The reality is that he took his own life .

If I wanted to use a different word , I would say he took his own life , but I'm not entirely sure of how we receive even that word , which is the clearest form of explaining suicide . It's to say this person took their own life , but it seems that a lot of people are still not comfortable with the idea of one person taking their life .

But again , that's fine .

If normally you're cranky and then you suddenly don't have that energy , you should check it . Anything that changes your normal behavior should be checked . Cryokinesis is not even your normal behavior in the first place right , but let's just assume that you haven't .

you're not self-aware , you haven't taken the steps to understand what has made you to be that kind of person . If you now begin to change from that without you initiating steps to get better , then you should look at it . Why am I still For ?

I was going back to back to back to back and I knew that at that point the work that I was doing , the expectations of the work , surpassed what I could get . But I had never at that point understood that this could lead to excessive stress . You know , I said that stress burnout is just stress that is exaggerated .

You've gone from what the level of stress you can manage , beyond what it is that you can manage , and that for me . That exactly , and that was it for me . So I asked for a break and I took a break . Guess what , guess what . The second day after I left , that I wasn't going to do .

The second day my vitals started to end up fine almost started to end up . Fine that was .

You know I have to do that . When did this start ? Is this started when job expectations and real expectations begin to fly out of the roof , beyond what it is that I could , you know , adapt to and do . And so , if people begin to check that , it becomes easier to say you know , um , adapt to and do .

And also , if people begin to check that it becomes easier to say you know what ? Um , I can spread my leave over um the year , if you know that is so .

If it's , the stress of work is that you begin to find a new place to work at , which is a bit hard , or you schedule your leave in such a way that once you every , maybe every two , three months , you take a couple of days . The funny thing is that when you take like three , four days of work , it's just you just come back and you're good .

I don't know how this thing happens .

If the farther you pull back at the arrow , the farther it's going to go . So again , I'm Yoruba .

It comes down to that adage maja ma sa lafi , ma kinko ju . You know when to fight , you know when to retreat . Okay , it's tough to conquer , it's everywhere in our lingua , or it's tough to conquer . It's everywhere in our lingua stuff to conquer . Take , step out . Take a step out . If there's nothing , that's going to happen .

You know , if you step out of that bubble of , oh , if I drop this ball , something is going to happen , nothing's going to happen and I'm going to happen and I'm going to be a little bit maybe , like my husband will say , brash . I don't know why he calls it that . See that office .

They owe you only one minute silence , and that's if they even give you , if they even give that condolence register , all right , and then some . You know so , please , please , please , and that's my call to action . My call to action is to employees , ola . Your call to action will be to employers , because that's your forte .

My call to action is to you , an employee . You know yourself and , as Ola and I have said , whatever it is that you're working , we know that the economy is crazy . We understand that you can't have it all . You shouldn't expect to have it all , because that will make life very boring .

There should be highs , there should be lows , there should be hills , there should be valleys , right . But you know , I'm inviting you to take stock of where you're working . I'm inviting you to take stock of where you're working . I'm inviting you to take stock of the , of how you feel when you're working .

Look at the story I earlier the workplace was not perfect , the pay wasn't good and all that it did serve a particular side of me to be there for my family . Look at the parameters , keep stock and I appeal to you that your workplace can be toxic and you can overcome that toxicity , right , you can be toxic wise .

Right , you can be toxic wise by taking yourself seriously . I don't want to take . Taking yourself seriously in this context means that you're taking your mental health , you're taking your social health , you're taking your financial health , everything seriously to give you a whole person . That is my call to action to you , to all employers . Over to you , ola .

That's one thing that an organization can do without it being stigmatized . If you bring somebody in to teach them about mindfulness , somebody comes in and teaches them about meditation . You create spaces for that . Somebody's coming to teach them how to manage their finances .

Just because you're earning $2 million a month doesn't mean you know exactly how to make the most of that amount .

So if organizations begin , to help with financial literacy , help with teaching , bringing experts , people who , by what they do , helps the employees to see that the organization cares about how I feel , how I'm doing , how my mental health is going , how my mental health and wellness is going , how I'm progressing in what I do .

If I know that this organization cares for me and we can work out what it is that can benefit all parties concerned , then go into this . I'll tell this story and I'll end in this story . Okay , all my friends left the same organization , working in different departments , about six months after each other .

I did not even know about the organization until the first one left told me about it , and then the second one left , told me about it . The second one even was what called my mind to come up . This place must be really toxic For him to arrive at a new workplace and he felt alive .

Within one year of walking into that new place , he decided this was where he was going to stay . Within one year , the difference in the culture for him was light and dark . The difference in the culture for him was light and dark alright yes .

Okay , um , that you , that you are a manager or you are the owner of a business , if you don't , if you don't take care of the people who make your vision , your dream , come alive , your company will be unhappy . So , the people who work for you and help your business , your vision , bring it to life , these are the people that matter .

I hope we can get that . You know employers of labor , no matter how small your business is , that person who is helping you to to flesh out , to give flesh , to give meat to that dream that you slept one day and you thought you could change the world with .

If you treat them well , they'll be able to carry your message as a lighthouse wherever they're going to . Thank you so very much , alah , for being part of Mindful Within . Miss Chase , of course we are getting ready much a lot for being part of mindfully to michelle . Of course we are getting ready for a fight for life .

We're getting ready for a fight of life . Um , I can't wait . I can't wait either . I can't wait , I said we're just followers on all our socials , mindfully to michelle , of course . Uh , I am broad dollar on all socials and you get the details of how to register .

You can also connect or just click on the links , and other links below will lead you to how to be part of a fight for life . Because you matter . You matter , all right , thank you very much . Love yourself , love your neighbor , love your country . Above all of this , love God . He is the essence of your being . We'll get back to talking to men next week .

All right , stay curious , thank you .