The impact of mental health on packaging management: a key resolution for 2025
By Sarah Elmoubarak Grenet
Growth Director at MyMediaConnect
(All verbatims are real, collected by Sarah during conversations with potential clients).
The start of a new year invites us to reflect on the working practices we want to maintain and those we need to transform. In the day-to-day work of packaging management, where accuracy is essential and deadlines are inescapable, employees live a contradictory reality. While executives and leaders claim that everything is "under control", those who work directly on the projects face a daily pressure that deeply affects their mental health.
"Every day I go to sleep thinking I'm going to get fired."
Testimonials like this reflect a level of anxiety that is not only alarming; it also reveals a structural problem that goes beyond individual performance.
2025: a year to prioritise mental health and efficiency
The past year has made it clear that mental health problems resulting from inefficient processes are not isolated cases, but a worrying trend. Recent studies point to an increase in stress, anxiety and burnout, affecting not only employees but also the sustainability of companies.
Packaging, an essential element in the pharmaceutical industry, is no stranger to this problem. A marketing employee puts it clearly: “Everything is an uncontrolled control, communication is complicated by email and Excel, this generates anxiety. It's not good”.
For this new year, the challenge lies not only in meeting deadlines and regulatory standards, but also in ensuring that processes are sustainable for both companies and the people who execute them.
The trap of manual processes
"Everything is done by email, PowerPoint, Excel and Teams, we need more visibility and traceability on projects."
From strict regulations to coordination across multiple departments and countries, workflow must be seamless to avoid costly mistakes. However, manual, scattered and non-transparent processes get in the way. This reliance on traditional tools leads to situations like the one described by another employee: "If I'm gone for half an hour, my inbox fills up with 50 more emails, it really stresses me out.
The consequences of this chaos are not limited to the individual impact. Errors in packaging design, incorrect versions or delays can lead to serious problems with regulatory authorities, jeopardising the ability to export products. As another testimonial points out: “Up-to-date packaging is essential to sell abroad and avoid problems with the authorities”
When volume grows, mental health suffers
Stress reaches critical levels in the context of mergers or expansions. One worker describes it this way: “Now that my company has just bought another company, the volume of labels has grown so much, it's exponential and overwhelming. It's too much”.
The lack of adequate tools makes human error unavoidable. One employee shares: “I want to speed up the process of identifying errors and changes so that it's not all manual and by email”. And another admits: “All the project management and control is on me, I want to sleep better at night.”
What lessons are we taken to 2025?
Mental health at work is not just a matter of individual wellbeing; it affects the whole organisation. Employees under chronic stress are unable to perform at their best, which, ironically, can jeopardise the very projects they are trying to protect.
Leaders have a crucial role to play in bridging this gap between perception and reality. While it is encouraging to hear that "all is well" from the top, the figures for stress, anxiety and burnout tell a different story. As we head into a new year, companies need to consider how to avoid repeating the same mistakes and what measures to put in place to ensure that team wellbeing is a priority.
From manual management to intelligent optimisation
In this context, platforms such as MyMediaConnect offer a strategic solution for 2025. While not the only way forward, adopting tools that enable traceability, automation and visibility can make the difference between chaos and calm.
One employee sums it up: “We have different latest versions between Marketing and Quality, we want to know which is the latest version”. These seemingly small inefficiencies escalate in an environment with 100 or more simultaneous projects. As another employee puts it: “I have 100 projects to manage within one initiative. And I need order to see where they are.”
Building a healthier future
2025 has the potential to be the year when mental health in the workplace is prioritised as a key pillar of business success. Sustainability is not only measured in financial results, but also in the well-being of the people who make those results possible. Mental health in the packaging environment should not be an isolated concern or an inevitable consequence of working in such a demanding industry.
With the right processes and tools in place, it is possible to ease the emotional burden on teams, improve productivity and, above all, build sustainable working environments. The solution lies not in asking for longer hours or more sacrifices, but in changing the way we work so that everyone, from the executive to the operator, can sleep soundly at night.
