We Have a Workforce Mental Health Crisis. What Is Your Organization Doing?
Did you know that May is mental health awareness month? The observance couldn’t be timelier, coming on the heels of several recent studies, all of which paint a deteriorating picture:
ADP Research Institute’s People at Work 2022: A Global Workforce View finds that mental stress has reached critical levels, with 67% of workers experiencing it every week and 53% believing their work is suffering as a result.
Zippia found that 83% of U.S. workers suffer from work-related stress; 25% say that their job is the number one stressor in their life.
In a study commissioned by Modern Health and conducted by Forrester Consulting, 28% of non-managerial employees and 34% of managers reported leaving one or more employers to preserve their mental health within the past five years.
Mind Share Partners found that 76% of U.S. workers reported experiencing at least one symptom of a mental health condition, up 17% from before the pandemic. This included burnout (56%); depression 46%; and anxiety (40%).
Mind Share Partners 2021 Mental Health at Work Report
“Mental health refers to our emotional and social well-being and impacts how we think, feel, and behave. It plays a role in connecting with others, making decisions, handling stress, and many other aspects of daily life. Everyone has mental health, and it deserves your attention just as much as your physical health does.”
Why Leaders Need to Respond
Clearly, the surge in mental health decline can be traced to the COVID-19 pandemic which created unparalleled uncertainty and disruption. This begs the question, what is your company doing to stem the resulting fallout of poor mental health (low satisfaction and engagement, turnover, burnout, reduced productivity, etc.) The good news is that employees would be more willing to stay if employers cared according to Modern Health’s study.
Unfortunately, that’s not the perception according to Gallup’s tracking. They found that fewer than one in four U.S. employees feel strongly that their organization cares about their wellbeing -- the lowest percentage in nearly a decade. Gallup found increases in manager burnout in 2021 and declining employee engagement.
Percent Who Feel Employer Cares About Their Wellbeing Plummets
“Foremost, workers are [making] decisions to leave based on how their employers treated them or didn’t t treat them during the pandemic. Ultimately, workers stayed at companies that offered support, and darted from those that didn’t.”
How Is Your Organization Responding?
Most leaders don’t fully appreciate the role of emotions in building the right culture. In their research, Barsade and O’Neill found that an organization’s “emotional culture” influences everything from employee satisfaction, burnout, and teamwork … to financial performance and absenteeism. When leaders don’t understand emotions at a personal, team, and organizational level, they fail to understand what makes organizations tick, and their companies suffer as a consequence.
In an article entitled “Mental Health in the Workplace: 4 Questions for CEOs and CHROs to Consider”, Stephen G. Patscot suggests leaders need to ask themselves about how they are addressing mental health in their organizations, including understanding the mental health issues specific to their organizations, expanding access to mental health resources, examining potential leadership behaviors that negatively impact employee well-being, and lastly, exploring ways to minimize the stigma. There are some great resources on the Mental Health America to check out (see Reading & References below).
Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy argue that building teams that can weather uncertainty and change will demand creating systems for support and dialogue. Based on the research and interviews they conducted for their new book, Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay, they propose five actions leaders can take to create a workplace that supports resilience.
Lastly, Kelly Greenwood and Julia Anas present a summary of what they learned in “It’s a New Era for Mental Health at Work” along with their recommendations for what employers need to do to support their employees’ mental health.
Key takeaways from the research suggest a culture that supports employees is essential to increased well-being and productivity. Key actions to consider include:
Get a pulse on well-being in your organization. Many organizations with whom we work have seen significant turnover, but leaders may not know the extent to which mental health plays a role in attrition. Consider surveying employees to take a pulse on mental health and well-being, leveraging organizations such as Vitality.
Adapt policies to address employees’ specific work-life situations. Remote working increases productivity but for many employees, it does so at a cost to their work-life boundaries and well-being. Some employees have different preferences when it comes to where they work, preferring the flexibility of remote. Remote, hybrid, or in-person policies should be flexible and tailored wherever possible.
Assess the implications for your corporate culture. As hybrid models evolve, creating a culture of inclusion and belonging for everyone will help to mitigate the risk of remote work inequity. The in-person environment is no longer the norm and leaders are clearly grappling with strengthening the corporate culture in our ‘new norm’.
Provide tools and resources to help employees cope with stress and increase well-being. Some organizations have invested in their employee assistance programs, wellness apps, and other tools. Digital mental health apps can be fun and engaging and are attractive to millennials in particular.
Finally, consider getting your organizations certified through the Mental Health America (MHA)'s Bell Seal for Workplace Mental Health. This national certification program recognizes employers committed to creating mentally healthy workplaces.
Reading & References
The Research
“2021 Mental Health at Work Report-The Stakes Have Been Raised.” Mindshare Partners, in partnership with Qualtrics, Servicenow, and Morrison Foerster, 2021. This is a follow-on study from a 2019 Mental Health At Work Report report, offering a pre and post-pandemic comparison.
Harter, Jim. “Percent Who Feel Employer Cares about Their Wellbeing Plummets.” Gallup, 18 Mar. 2022.
Mazur, Caitlin. “40+ Worrisome Workplace Stress Statistics [2022]: Facts, Causes, and Trends.” Zippia, 23 Jan. 2022. This comprehensive list of workplace statistics reveals that 83% of US workers suffer from work-related stress, with 25% saying their job is the number one stressor in their lives. The main causes of workplace stress are workload (39% of workers), interpersonal issues (31%), juggling work and personal life (19%), and job security (6%).
Morgan, Kate. “The Great Resignation: How Employers Drove Workers to Quit” BBC Worklife, BBC, 1 July 2021.
“Shifting Tides: A Report on the Changing Attitudes About Mental Health Care and the Workplace,” Modern Health. Sept 2021. Based on a commissioned survey by Forrester Consulting.
Stepanek, Martin, and Shaun Subel. “How Shifts in Remote Behavior Affect Employee Well-Being.” MIT Sloan Management Review, 18 Apr. 2022.
Zetlin, Minda. “A Third of Employees Are Considering Quitting ‘for the Sake of My Mental Health, Survey Shows.” Inc.com, 24 Sept. 2021.
The Resources
Greenwood, Kelly, and Julia Anas. “It's a New Era for Mental Health at Work.” Harvard Business Review, 4 Oct. 2021.
Fosslien, Liz, and Mollie West Duffy. “Stop Telling Employees to Be Resilient.” MIT Sloan Management Review, 25 Apr. 2022. Five actions leaders can take to create a workplace that supports resilience, based on the research and interviews the authors conducted for their new book, Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay.
Mental Health America (MHA) is the nation’s leading community-based nonprofit dedicated to addressing the needs of those living with mental illness and promoting the overall mental health of all. MHA’s programs and initiatives fulfill its mission of promoting mental health and preventing mental illness through advocacy, education, research, and services. Tools and resources to lead a healthy life. Free toolkits cover a wide range of topics, from how creating an effective mental health strategy to creating an employee resource group for mental health.
Mind Share Partners. This non-profit aims to “change the culture of workplace mental health so that both employees and organizations can thrive”. Scroll to the section offering “Resources For Mental Health At Work”. Included are training and advising to equip employees with the key knowledge, skills, and strategies to create a mentally healthy culture; free toolkits on a range of topics, from how to create an effective mental health strategy to creating an employee resource group for mental health; and on-demand learning on workplace mental health through self-directed, on-demand, and bite-sized learning.
Modern Health. Resources for employers to provide tools employees need to build resilience, proactively engage in their mental health, and get the clinical support they need when they need it.
Patscot, Stephen G. “Mental Health in the Workplace: 4 Questions for CEOS and Chros to Consider.” Spencer Stuart, 22 Apr. 2022.