Overview
The traditional stigmas and near silence in the workplace regarding mental health is giving way to increased acceptance and focus on benefits and options as the country moves past the major hold of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent survey information suggests that employees are more willing to talk about their mental illness at work and that employers are more open to ensuring services are available. The U.S. Surgeon General released a report that provides a framework for true organizational change regarding the approach to employee mental health. The framework is built on the same foundations as the work of employee engagement. The real opportunity of the current situation is a true culture change in the workplace that understands the connection of mental health and employee engagement.
Mental Health and the Workplace
Mental health and mental health treatment have traditionally been uncomfortable topics for many people, particularly when the discussion occurs in the workplace. According to a 2019 survey by the American Psychiatric Association, more than one in three people feared retaliation or being fired if they sought mental health treatment and roughly half were not comfortable talking about their mental health in the workplace. This was supported by the Mind Share Partners’ 2019 Mental Health at Work Report, which also reported in the 2021 report that nearly two-thirds of respondents had talked to at least one person at work about their mental health.
Why the change from 2019 to 2021? The prevailing thought is the impact the COVID-19 Pandemic had on so many aspects of life in our country. The American Psychological Association’s (APA) 2022 Stress in America poll revealed that 63% (nearly two-thirds) of adults said their life has been forever changed by the pandemic. The changes in life included decline in mental health, around four in ten adults reported an increase in symptoms of anxiety and depression during the pandemic. They also reported a decreased physical activity, an increase in unhealthy habits (such as substance and alcohol abuse), and issues with sleep. These issues accompanied isolation and loneliness, job loss and financial instability, illness or fear of illness, and grief. It is no wonder that 90% of U.S. Adults believe the country is facing a mental health crisis according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey.
A potential positive benefit from the disruption and trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic may be the start of the normalization of the discussion, treatment, and impact of mental health in the workplace. In his brief “States Address Mental Health Stigma and Employability”, Sean Slone from Council of State Government notes data from the 2021 Mind Share Study. He points out there was an increase in respondents’ willingness to hire or work with someone with a mental health condition (2021 – 58% – 2019 – 46%) and believe an employee with a mental health condition can be just as productive as one without one (2021 – 55%, 2019 – 52%).
The Mind Share Partners’ 2021 Report suggests that more employees are talking about mental health at work. One suggested explanation is that in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic a great deal of focus was placed on the need for mental health services. Many times, this messaging was being delivered in conjunction with updated instructions about dealing with the coronavirus. There seems to be thought that some of the stigma, and resulting fear has been reduced because some general acceptance of the use of mental health services to deal with the mental health impacts of the pandemic. In addition, mental health services suddenly became much more available to individuals via telehealth services.
There is also an upward swing in the perception about organizational culture. The Harvard Business Review notes in its article referencing the Mind Share Report that 47% of respondents believe that company leaders were advocates for mental health at work, up from 41% in 2019. The change in organizational perception and interoffice perception sets up a platform for genuine change in the approach to mental health in the workplace.
Mental Health in the Workplace
It is estimated that we spend around 90,000 hours of our life at work. That is a considerable amount of time to exist in an environment with “good” mental health. If an individual is experiencing mental health issues of any kind, those hours at work each week can be daunting.
According to a Gallup survey, 20% of workers rate their mental health as “poor” and these workers report four times more absences due to mental illness. The result of these absences is $47.6 billion in lost productivity. These numbers don’t consider individuals who reported fair or good and have mental health issues that affect their daily work and personal lives. In fact, the Mind Share Partners’ 2021 Mental Health at Work Report tells us that 76% of respondents reported as least one symptom of a mental health condition in the past year, up from 59% in 2019.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reports that mental illness cost the economy about $200 billion last year. The impact of mental illness is not as direct as lost productivity, as indicated by the Gallup survey. Mental illness certainly reduces the productivity of employees, but as Dr. Patti van Eys, Vice President of Product for Pathways at Work points out in her article Workplace Mental Health: The True Cost to Employer, there are more ways it impacts the workplace. In addition to productivity, mental health issues can lead to:
- Unsafe work conditions created by employees who are distracted and not performing at their best. These unsafe work conditions can result in injuries to employees or the public that result in significant financial impact.
- Employee morale that is impacted by mental health. The concern here is low morale that leads to turnover. There is significant cost to hiring, onboarding, and training new employees. In addition, employee turnover can create an experience vacuum that is not easily filed with new employee. The inexperienced worker maybe costly to the company’s bottom line.
- Absenteeism and Presenteeism are the other concerns that cost the business and ultimately the economy money. Absenteeism obviously leaves the workplace short staffed and without individuals to perform vital functions of the company or organization. Presenteeism is almost as bad in that that the employee is at work, expected to perform the functions of their job, but is not really present in the work.
Employee Engagement
As mentioned, the cost of employee mental health issues for organizations and the economy can be quite high. Employers are always looking at ways to impact the company performance and improve the bottom line, including ways that improve and help their employees. It is from this that the concept of employee engagement became a popular topic in human resources and leadership circles. It is estimated that employee disengagement costs the U.S. economy $350 billion per year, therefore making engaged employees of interest to U.S. companies.
Employee Engagement can be defined as the level of involvement and commitment an employee has towards their organization and its values. It can be further flushed out as the employee’s willingness to contribute to the company’s success, contribute extra time, and put discretionary effort toward the company’s success.
The methods of employee engagement focus on real involvement with employees, not token efforts that show little interest or investments. There is evidence that it works. A Tower Perrin study of 85,000 employees found that 84% of highly engaged employees believed they could positively impact the quality of their company’s products, compared to 31% of the disengaged. The same result was found when asked about customer service, 72% of the highly engaged employees believed they could positively affect customer service, compared to 27% of the disengaged.
A discussion in the HR and leadership circles is how to increase employee engagement. There is a myriad of approaches taught and suggested, the reality is that employee engagement, just like employee mental health, must be a priority of the organization.
Mental Health and Employee Engagement: Surgeon General’s Framework
The U.S. Surgeon General called workplace mental health and well-being a critical priority for public health, that has a cascading impact for the health of individual workers, their families, organizational production, the bottom-line for businesses, and the U.S. economy. He released a report in 2022 entitled The Case for Workplace Mental Health and Well-being that contains five essentials for Workplace Mental Health and Well-being:
- Protection from Harm: Safety & Security
- Opportunity for Growth: Learning & Accomplishment
- Connection & Community: Social Support & Belonging
- Mattering at Work: Dignity & Meaning
- Work-Life Harmony: Autonomy & Flexibility
The report comes in the aftermath of the pandemic and recognizes that putting mental health at the center of workplace policies is more important than ever given current financial stressor and the shifts in workplace culture caused by the pandemic.
The Surgeon General’s plan is a “whole person” approach that recognizes the complexity of the person. It accounts for the need for the individual to seek services, demand respect, expectation to be included, and have safety prioritized. This approach the looks remarkably like the approach to employee engagement. It can be argued that adopting this framework, and perhaps cultural shift within organizations, would lead to greater success for employees and their mental health and companies with employee engagement.
Here are some of the suggestions from the report that organizations can do to improve employee mental health (and improve employee engagement).
- Prioritize workplace safety.
- Normalize and support mental health.
- Operationalize Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) norms, policies, and programs.
- Create cultures of inclusions and belonging
- Foster collaboration and teamwork
- Provide more autonomy over how work is done
- Make schedules as flexible and predictable as possible
- Respect boundaries between work and non-work time
- Engage workers in workplace decisions
- Connect individual work with organizational mission.
- Offer quality training, education, and mentoring.
- Foster clear, equitable pathways for career development
- Ensure relevant, reciprocal feedback.
Conclusion
Poor employee mental health and disengaged employees cost the U.S. economy over $300 billion annually. Companies have worked to address employee engagement but have struggled to properly address mental health issues until recently. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the conversation on mental health in the workplace. As a result, there is real potential for employers to embrace cultural change within their organization that not only redefines the conversation on mental health, but also on engaged employees.
The framework provided by the U.S. Surgeon General provides guidance into fundamental changes and essential steps that companies can take to improve the environment around mental health, the dialogue about mental health, and the actual mental health of its employees. The framework also mirrors the fundamentals of employee engagement. It can be argued that cultural change to address mental health will impact the engagement level of employees. Organizations that embrace the growing calls for mental health reforms in the workplace, if they take the Surgeon General’s advice, could find themselves with a healthier, more engaged workforce.