Harare- Kuvimba Mining House (KMH) celebrates World Mental Health Day by launching a wellness beyond generation (WBG) initiative this week, which comprehends a fitness programme aimed at improving the health and well-being of the group’s employees and their communities.
Mental health is a vital component of overall well-being, and it is critical to recognise that caring for one’s mental health is just as important as caring for one’s physical health.
During the launch of the WBG Kuvimba HR manager Pelle Karengesha stated that this initiative stems from the realisation that a healthy worker is a productive employee and that they must recognize that their employee is a human being with physical, social, mental, and social needs that must be met for him/her to be productive.
“As Kuvimba Mining House, we are striving to ensure that we take care of our employees. We are striving that as we create an employer-of-choice brand for the organisation, we look at all facets of the human being who is going to be working for us and who is going to be producing for us, but at the end of the day, we achieve our mandate of the organisation and we achieve the objects that we have set ourselves to achieve as a company,”
Employee productivity and performance will improve as a result of such activities because mentally well individuals are more likely to be productive and perform well at work. This is because they have a better ability to focus, concentrate, and make informed decisions.
WoMentally healthy workers are less likely to miss work and are more likely to stay with their business, lowering absenteeism and turnover. This is because they are more satisfied with their jobs and are less likely to burn out.
Speaking at the same event, ZimAlloys Managing Director Deric M. Dube stated that mental health is something that affects us not just monthly or weekly but daily and that they want to create a space where people can feel comfortable sharing their mental health issues within a confidential environment and one that will treat the information that they give to whatever power system that will be delivered to them in a non-discriminatory confidential space and daily.
“So as KMH, we have seen it effective to launch this wellness beyond generation (WBG) programme to be able to raise the awareness that is needed to say that mental health is very important for us as a group because it underlines things that our employees, who are like all the operations, deal with daily. No one knows what’s happening in people’s houses.
“But what we are saying is that we want to create a space where people can feel comfortable sharing their mental health issues within a confidential environment and one that is going to treat the information that they give to whatever power system that is going to be delivered to them in a non-discriminative confidential space.
“What we want to do is not to make this a once agenda but to make it a regular affair because as much we are targeting productivity-based business behind all those targets, behind the machines is the people and people are driven by mental health awareness. If you have one job and you have to do hard rock mining, but your mind is not mentally there, you are not mentally ready to be in that position, and you are feeling a bit suppressed mentally, you are not going to focus on that job,” Dube said.
According to the World Health Organization’s local office in Zimbabwe, mental health issues at work cost the country up to US$163 million each year.
