PREVIOUS STUDIES

From the article titled “Companies Should Take The Mental Health Of Their Employees
seriously” by Naj (Malaysian Digest), we gathered some of the important points:

 Employee that sent at client’s premises behaving violently can negatively impact the
company image
 Troubled employee that diagnosed with mental health problem should went through
counselling first. Next warning letter is issued before employee is terminated when
situation get out of hand.
 Occupational mental health is new among Malaysians as it can affect workers and
very costly to manage.
 Developing good mental health at workplace is crucial to ensure safe, healthy and
productive workforce.
 Malaysians are not prepared to talk about mental health issue openly
 Government should give bigger budget for all state,district and health office so they
can conduct more community mental health development programmes.
 Employees tend not to disclose their condition because of fear
 HR should have specific counsellor or psychologist to deal with employee’s issue
 If employer cannot handle the situation, proceed with termination
 Hiring process should be strict such as face to face interview, mental evaluation and
also personality evaluation.
Mental Health In The Workplace (September 2017)

 Negative working environment can lead to physical and mental health problems.
 Depression and anxiety have significant economic impact
 Harassment and bullying at work commonly reported problems
 Many effective actions that organization can take to promote mental health in
workplace.

 Risk to mental health :

1) Inadequate health and safety policies

2) Poor communication and management practises
3) Low levels of support for employees
4) Inflexible working hours
5) Unclear tasks or organizational objectives
6) Limited participation in decision making

 Creating a healthy workplace

1) Reducing work-related risk factor
2) Promote mental health by developing the positive aspects of work and
strength of employees
3) Awareness of the workplace environment and how it can be adapted to
promote mental health for different employees
4) Awareness of sources of support and where people can find help
5) Recognizing and rewarding the contribution of employees
6) Programmes for career development of employees
7) Learning from the motivations of organizational leaders and employees who
have taken actions
 Workplace Bullying in Malaysia: An Exploratory Study
By Ahmed Talib Sadiq Al Bir & Arif Hassan

 This study aims to investigate the prevalence of workplace bullying and its negative
impact to mental health.
 Bullying at work means harassing, offending or socially excluding someone excluding
someone or negatively affecting someone’s works tasks.
 Example of bullying at workplace:
1) being bullied by someone withholding information that affected their
performance (81.4%)
2) being bullied by someone spreading gossip about them (82.2%)
3) being bullied by given task with unreasonable deadlines (82.3%)
 some common features of bullying in organisations include :
1) there are multiple negative acts and repeated forms of abuse
2) the negative acts are frequent
3) the bullying occurs over a period of time of longer than a week
4) there is power distance or disparity between the bully and the victim
 Malaysians in the workplace can become targets for bullies if they :
1) Have at least vulnerability that can be exploited
2) Are different from others
3) Are quiet achievers, good at their job
4) Show independence of thought
5) Get more attention from other than the bully does
6) Have inappropriate social skills and have annoyed the bully
7) Have a dispute with the bully
 Due to dangerous effect that bullying to mental health of employees, organisation
and senior manager in Malaysia need to take action to confront this widespread
phenomenon