Why you should be talking about Mental Health at work

Why you should be talking about Mental Health at Work

The truth is your co-workers want to talk about mental health.  More and more people are valuing mental health as much as physical health.  In a recent study of 1000 employees, 62% of respondents said that having someone in a leadership role speak openly about mental health would make them feel more comfortable talking about it themselves. When we consider that normalizing conversation empowers employees to take action to better their mental health, it’s a win win to start having those discussions about mental health at work sooner than later. 

According to WPP creative agency , which conducted the research, only 26% of employees feel that any action is being taken to address mental health in the workplace.  However, companies today are still spending far more on physical health insurance coverage  than on mental healthcare.  So what do employees want?  Well, lets talk about it. I invite you to join the conversation in our facebook group , but in the mean time, it’s time to start talking about mental health at work. Let me share with you what my experience shows. 

Leadership is more than Management

I began my leadership journey in 2014 as a Senior Sales Representative. It was less of a supervisory role, and more of a training role. I became a go-to for the team I worked on for more than just product questions.  Many of them came to vent too.  I found that in those conversations a few obvious trends seemed to come.  Granted that was 10 years ago, but not much has changed in the championship and concerns of the teams and people I work with now. What was apparent to me in that time was that the people I worked with wanted to know that they were more than just a cog in the big wheel.

Employees want to know that their organization and leadership teams care about them as individuals.  Of course they want to be treated and paid fairly, have healthcare, and other benefits, but more importantly than any of that, people want to know that they are loved.  There are a varying range of opinions on the course of love and leadership and love is a subjective term, so let me define what I mean.  

To be clear, I’m not talking about romantic love, or even family love.  However, our teams that we spend large amounts of our days with are people who we grow to love.  Now, people show and receive love differently, so each individual team member that you have will have a different opinion of what love is, and how they want to be shown that they are loved. But a baseline demonstration of love is to care deeply about the success of each individual on your team.  

Heart Centered leadership 

Becoming a heart centered leader is about giving of yourself to see others succeed.  As a leader, giving time, energy, money, love, etc, on the off chance that our employees will grow to be happy, healthy, and successful is the meat and potatoes of leadership.  This also means ensuring that your team knows your boundaries, and has open lines of clear conversation to express emotions, share hopes and dreams, vent frustrations, and rise to the occasion of tasks or missions we give to them.  

Just like your family members and close friends, need support. The same is true for our teams at work.  When we foster relationships that set our teams up for success, investing into our teams, setting clear and concise boundaries, opening up lines of communications and inspiring our teams to rise to the occasion of whatever is in front of them… That’s love. 

Communication is a two way street for mental health at work

Employees don’t want to have meetings to share what’s going on with them, or to hear only about the new company policies, they want to know what’s going on with you too. When we open the lines of communication so that our employees have a place to grow, we must open them two ways.  Get vulnerable. If we aren’t sharing about ourselves, our employees are then left to wonder which creates anxiety and un-due frustration. 

We need to do more than just opening communication around the workplace, or even ourselves… but we need to open our mouths about mental health. Championing “mental wellness” time off, acknowledging the challenges and changes that could create triggering events for an employee, discussing workplace burnout and encouraging your team to take time off and ask for support. Even just speaking about the company’s EAP program help employees to feel compassion and validation. Struggling to start these conversations? Your EAP program can help with that too. We can too!

Lead with integrity 

Employees want your organization to do what, in their eyes, is right, and they want to see leaders who are as frustrated as they are when things aren’t going their way. Listen, it’s not always easy to talk about policy changes that you don’t agree, or to talk about why you had to lay someone off, and it’s not always appropriate to talk about other things that could be impacting your mental health, at work. However, transparency about where you stand with things, what you’re working on or championing when it comes to change, and sharing information that aligns with you as a leader, all of that goes a long way towards trust.  Being vulnerable gives power to you as a leader, and allows others to connect with you on a deeper level. 

It’s important to ensure you know where you stand, and to not just communicate that to your team, but to check in with them daily – working to understand how they are and communicating where you are.  Taking action that stands in integrity with you and your team will grow interactions and create a healthier and more productive workplace. This is where I work with clients on aligning their leadership with their values. Start Now, if you haven’t already, by downloading the thrive guide.

The ROI of mental health action 

A recent University of Chicago analysis highlighted that for every $1 invested in targeted mental health actions brings a return of $4 in benefits realized through decreased absenteeism, improved productivity, and reductions in workers’ compensation claims.  Imagine if the same were true for every minute we addressed challenges and concerns rather than avoiding them.  If you know of a study that’s been done on that aspect, let me know.  

The truth of the matter is the ROI is immeasurable.  Our current statistics in the United States call for us to take decisive action as leaders, regardless of what the ROI is.  In 2021, suicide was the eleventh leading cause of death, before homicide, which means if you’re doing active shooter drills at work, you have a higher chance of having to deal with a co-worker’s suicide than to put that active shooter practice to work.  I respect the premise behind being prepared for an active shooter. And we can’t keep pushing mental health to the side and ignoring its importance in our workplaces.

Compassion is king

Beyond anything, employees who are going through a hard time, or who have made mistakes in the workplace want compassion.  We all understand policies and procedures, but at this point we all know that those policies and procedures are there to protect the company.  Employees want leaders who can act with compassion when they mess up. Your employees will mess up.  Employees come into work late, miss deadlines, get frustrated with co-workers, fire off emails without re-reading it first, and miss important details in reports. It happens.  Your employees want to know that you’re going to support them even when they have really had a hard time.  Reassure your team that they aren’t putting in a ton of work now, just to be thrown out onto their rumps if they mess up.  Create the culture of compassion and innovation through allowing for mistakes.

Policies that discipline employees first, rather than investigating, seeking to understand, coaching, and supporting, harm your workplace culture and damages the relationships that employees have with their direct supervisor. 

What’s first?

The first step to change is acknowledgement.  If your company has been silent on mental health issues so far, the most important thing you can do right now is start acknowledging that mental health and wellness should be a priority for your organization and your leadership team.  Once you’ve acknowledged then we can help with supporting your leadership team in educating them on how to help. 

Here are my Top recommendations for a positive workplace mental health and wellness culture:

1. Invest in an EAP program.
2. Institute an amendment to your attendance policy that dedicates more bareavement, and introduces time off for mental health and wellness. Also, stop asking employees to report why they’re not at work and actively discourage them from telling you.
3. Create an ERG or focus group to discuss and find solutions for barriers to mental wellness at work. 
4. Implement 360 surveys for feedback
5. Encourage leaders to be dedicating a significant amount of their time to their team and development – delegate the rest. (Hire more people if you need to.)  
6. Train, coach, and support your leadership teams on mental health and wellness and creating a positive work environment (That’s where Perspective Shifters can help, feel free to book a free consultation to discuss what we can do to help.) 
7. Align your mental health and wellness efforts with your company mission and announce your commitment to change to both internal stakeholders as well as external stakeholders.
8. Track your data!  Take data and information now and again in 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24 months to get a clear understanding of the impact to your organization. 
9. Commit to these changes for yourself. Change starts with us. We lead by example whether or not we mean to. If you implement changes and policies that you don’t agree with and you aren’t on board with, no one else in your organization will be on board.   This means that not only should you be modeling this new behavior, but so should your leadership teams. Need support in this area? Join the Perspective Shifters Hub!

For more reading on this subject check out this article in Forbes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/denisebrodey/2019/10/15/62-of-employees-want-leadership-to-speak–openly-about-mental-health/?sh=6b0ea63f65ac