Healthcare environmental services (EVS) is like no other type of commercial cleaning. EVS technicians are often exposed to unpleasant sights, sounds, and smells unique to hospitals and other healthcare settings. They must be prepared physically and mentally to deal with situations including sickness, injuries, blood, emergency department accidents, and patient deaths.
Experiencing these situations can take a mental toll on EVS workers, leading to burnout, declining health, family problems, anxiety, depression, and other physical and mental disorders. Often, these conditions creep up slowly, accumulating over time before the individual realizes it.
To help EVS employees maintain a healthy mental state, Servicon has launched a mental health training and support program for EVS workers. The program aims to better prepare them to cope with the possible physical and emotional repercussions of working in a hospital or other healthcare environment. The program is considered the first of its kind in the EVS and commercial cleaning services industry.
“We think mental health is extremely important and want to focus on ensuring our staff’s mental well-being,” says Servicon’s Director of Safety, Carlos Janer. “Our EVS workers are on the real healthcare frontline. One of our clients is a major hospital in LA where about 250 of our employees work in different departments, including the ER, where a lot of gunshot wounds and other traumatic events go for treatment. Our teams work in other super tough departments, where patients have terminal diseases, including young children, and in psychiatric wards. Seeing these things, blood and sick kids, hearing families in agony , all of it can take a toll. To help our teams we are providing basic mental health training to help them stay mentally fit. We want to create awareness and help them process these experiences to prevent them from negatively impacting their personal lives.”
Mental Health Safety Toolkit
Servicon recently added a Mental Health Toolkit training program to its library of employee safety training toolkits. The kit includes about an hour of online work as well as in-person on-site training. The training is designed to make employees aware that what they feel in these situations is natural but also to provide them with coping strategies.
Deteriorating mental health can have far-reaching consequences.
“Where the mind goes, the body follows,” says Janer. “If team members aren’t focused and paying attention to their work, they can be injured. And if they aren’t in the right frame of mind from work, it can hurt family relationships. Our goal is to let them know it is OK to feel what they feel in these situations, to provide support and help them process it so at the end of the day, they leave it at work so it doesn’t harm their mental health or interfere with their family life.”
Employee Assistance Program
In addition to training, Servicon recently expanded mental health to its Employee Assistance Program (EAP). EAP is an outsourced outreach program overseen by Servicon’s HR department that provides employees with much-needed services, including mental health referrals and counseling.
“Now, employees who are struggling with a mental health issue have the ability to obtain up to 8 free counseling sessions, an increase from 5, as an added resource to help them,” Janer says. “Just knowing there is support available can be a relief as many people struggling with their mental health don’t know where to turn or are embarrassed or scared to ask for help. It is time to erase the stigma often associated with asking for mental health assistance. At Servicon, we believe mental is as important as physical well-being. We want our employees to understand this and reach out for help when they need it.”
