I want to be considerate of my employees mental health. What are some things I should be thinking about?

A question submitted to our Ask Me Anything sessions.

Barak: Mental health is a nice big picture topic. It gets into aspects of law and policy but also culture and how we're thinking of our employees holistically. So the question here is, "I want to be considerate of my employees mental health. What are some things I should be thinking about?". Let's have Marta to kick us off.

Marta: Yeah. Well, mental health is my favorite topic and I think it's a favorite topic of a lot of people these days. I think mental health is needed, whether a company is doing good or whether a company is not doing good. We all need good mental health. In the workplace, it helps with improved productivity, retention, attracting talent. Any topic is related to mental health, you know?

Depending on the size of the company, obviously the strategy that you're going to implement is going to be different.

Let's just say you are a small company. You're like, "What is this whole thing? The buzzword of mental health? What do I do?". I just say to these people: Don't be afraid to start small. You can just start by having one-on-one interviews. Within one-on-one interviews, just asking "What are the things you need?”. Do an analysis of your workforce to understand the needs of the company. Every company is a little different, not only in size but also the population. Do you have a young population in the workplace, more millennial? All of those things you're going to have to keep in mind. So that's the first thing.

Look at your resources. Sometimes you might even already do some things related to mental health that you don't even know that you're already doing. For example, if you are a small company, you're not yet offering benefits. Even if you're just providing an employee some PTO, that's kind of related to mental health. You might already be doing that. You maybe don't call it a mental health day but you're giving them additional time off. So that could be a good thing. When we talk about resources, it could include an employee assistance program. We can go on and on, on this topic.

Then, start to have a conversation about the stigma of mental health because everything starts with that–open communication and conversation. Once you assess where your company is at, then you can start to decide and implement a few things. You can take baby steps. Maybe you want to implement one thing a year, and then from there you can measure those things and report and see what you're finding.

Barak: Let me just make sure I got all that. So we're talking about considering who is in your employee group: What are their demographics, what are their needs? Some of that's just making sure you're contextualizing some of these solutions to the actual people in front of you as opposed to treating this like some template from some professional services organization and applying it indiscriminately.

I think the good news I heard in what you said is that there's actually lots of really accessible things you can do to support mental health, some of which you might already be doing. That was a helpful reframe, just now, to be thinking about this not just as a buzzword with a list of things attached to it but to think, "How can I truly serve my employees' mental health?" almost regardless of tool or program. "What might I already be doing?" So that was the good news.

The third thing I heard you say was, involve your employees in the solution. As a leader, start communicating your own intention to serve this part of your workforce. You can start that conversation and help your employees identify what's already in place to support that and open communication for them to make suggestions or tell you how it's going. Marta: Absolutely.

Barak: Elena, you want to add anything to that? Elena: Yeah, Marta actually talked about stigma and I think that that's probably the biggest barrier to creating a positive and healthy mental environment for your employees. I think a lot of times we look at people who come forward as not great performers but, in all reality, 92% of employees have experienced mental health challenges that have impacted their work. Another study by the American Psychological Association said 80% of workers are looking at that with regards to their job opportunities. So they're using that as one of the criteria for saying yes or no to jobs. So it's here. It's a fact. The good news is, creating a psychologically safe environment doesn't necessarily cost a ton of money. It's that authenticity. And, like Barak said, the intent behind it. Marta: Yes, I totally agree with you. Barak: Well, that reminds me of something you said at the top, Marta. If you think about the life cycle of an employee and the efforts that exist to support each of those phases, you're going from staffing planning to talent acquisition to employee engagement and retention, mental health awareness really speaks to all parts of those process. Not just, "Hey, you're getting paid this salary. We get happy hours on Thursdays. Oh, and by the way, we subscribe to a mental health app". It would be easy to think that that's just what we're talking about, that we're thinking about this as a benefit that has to do with total rewards and compensation. But you're saying that this actually informs how you're facilitating your entire employee experience and life cycle. Do I have that right? Marta: Yes, exactly. To offer the incentive and some of the benefits–everybody likes that. But I think mental health is bigger than that, you know? The number one reason people have to take time off these days is related to stress and anxiety. So all of those things are things are not going away. Also because of the way we work these days. Since the pandemic and COVID, there was a huge spike of mental health issues. We were totally out of our comfort zone and then we were working from home and then we all had to pack our things and work remotely. So it changed a lot, the way we work. I think this is why this is a bigger topic because people now want to feel comfortable in a company where they can have this conversation and it's not a taboo like it was before. Like if you are sick and you go to the doctor, everybody is like, "Oh, I hope you're doing well…". But if you need a referral to see a specialist for something related to mental health, we're not as comfortable and open to discuss those things. But that is something in the workplace and we have to support our employees. Elena: Yeah. So you add it into your policy, and you hold leaders accountable for supporting their teams. You have to keep it alive. So it's not, like you said, they're offering an app during onboarding and saying, "Hey, here's this app. You can log in and do mindfulness or meditate". It's about incorporating these points into all aspects of your work, whether that's your processes, your hierarchy, your benefit plans. It's to keep it alive and blended into everything that you do.

Marta: Yeah, its in the whole employee cycle. You need to keep this in the whole employee cycle. Even in the recruiting stage, when people are applying for jobs, they are going to say, "What is your stance as a company on this topic?" And they're going to ask you those questions. So it's a good thing to be prepared for that.

Citations: * Workable ** American Psychological Association Disclaimer:

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