WORKPLACE MENTAL HEALTH APPROACHES IN ENHANCING EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY IN RIVERS STATE

Workplace mental health approaches play a pivotal role in boosting employee psychological well-being. This study investigated workplace mental health approaches in enhancing employee productivity in Rivers State, Nigeria. A descriptive cross-sectional research design was adopted for the study. The population for the study consisted of 64,691 civil servants in Rivers State with a sample size of 437 selected using the multi-stage sampling procedure. A purposive sampling technique was used for the study. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire titled: “Workplace strategies in enhancing employee productivity questionnaire (WSEEPQ)” with a reliability coefficient of 0.87. Data were analyzed with the aid of Statistical Product for Service Solution (SPSS V-27) using descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation (SD) as well as regression statistics set at 0.05 alpha level The result of the study showed that, the workplace mental health strategies adopted were: psychological counselling (1.67±0.62), stress management training (1.78±0.63), work-life balance program (1.57±0.42), and relaxation spaces in the workplace (1.60±0.60). The result further showed that mental health strategies adopted contributed 83.7% of the variance in the employees’ job satisfaction (r = 0.91; R2 = 0.837). The result revealed that the grand mean of 2.69±1.44 was less than the criterion mean of 3.00 indicating a poor level of satisfaction. The findings of the study revealed that there was a significant relationship between job satisfaction and mental health strategies adopted by human resource managers [f(1,414) = 2125.77, p<0.05]. The results showed that more of the respondents were within the age range of 30-39 years 246 (59.3%), 40-49 years 86 (20.7%), 20-29 years 81 (19.5%) and 50 years and above (0.5%). More of the respondents were males 208 (50.1%), and females 207 (49.9%). In conclusion, adopting mental health strategies such as psychological counselling, stress management training, work-life balance program and relaxation spaces in the workplace could enhance employee productivity. It was recommended among others that, the government should adopt and implement mental health strategies for civil servants and make the adoption of such strategies a continuous activity. Also, the government should make provision for the mental health stability of workers by providing funds for recreation, relaxation centres for workers and mental health training of the employees to enhance their job satisfaction