CEO of Spring Street, a workplace culture consultancy. Performing artist turned MBA/15+ year business leader. IG @annejacoby.author.
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Leaders think they’re doing a good job at mental health, but employees tell a different story. How do we bridge the gap?
According to research commissioned by Modern Health and conducted by Forrester Consulting, 88% of C-suite executives think they’re doing a good job when it comes to mental health. But the same study found that employee well-being may be near all-time lows. Poor health negatively impacts retention, engagement and innovation. While employee well-being is potentially one of the biggest contributors to business growth, prioritizing it as a business objective is still relatively uncommon. Leaders are called to make well-being a strategic priority.
While many organizations have enhanced their mental health benefits, the potential of these resources can remain untapped if they’re not reinforced by the business culture. According to the annual State of Workplace Empathy report by Businessolver, a health benefits administrator, 59% of employees worry that reaching out about a mental health issue could negatively impact their job security. And while 87% of workers want their employers to care about their mental health, only 66% actually feel supported, according to the previously mentioned Modern Health/Forrester Consulting study. Furthermore, 28% felt their employer failed to support their mental health during the pandemic.
The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine highlights the importance of organizational culture to either support (or detract from) employee mental health. This includes leadership behaviors, policies and guidance documents, and common practices. Crafting a culture that supports well-being helps leaders address the challenge to retain and develop talent, as well as achieve business goals.
Leaders can consider a few practical steps to make a culture of well-being a bigger strategic priority:
1. Get a baseline.
To understand what needs to change, it’s critical to first know what’s working and what’s not. Leaders can gather baseline data on employee well-being from survey input, focus groups, stakeholder interviews and employee data like absenteeism metrics. Encourage employees to be honest about where they are and where they’d like to improve.
Part of this step involves personal reflection and self-assessment. Well-being is not one-size-fits-all. Invite individuals to define and personalize what well-being means to them, and regularly offer ways to support these strategies. What environments or activities give you the most energy? When do you feel drained? What helps to recharge your batteries and how could you protect that time? This active reflection provides a fuller picture of the baseline from which to build.
2. Set clear goals and experiment.
Much like any goal-setting process, being specific and realistic is a good place to start. Well-being goals should feel achievable and have the commitment from leaders to track progress within a prescribed timeline. Examples of effective well-being goals might include:
- A higher perception of leadership’s support around well-being.
- Increased use of mental health benefits.
- Less unused and accrued vacation time.
- A higher percentage of time spent on deep, meaningful work versus busy work.
Experimenting with new well-being practices is an important part of goal pursuit. While many companies are now taking bold moves like four-day workweeks, spot bonuses for using vacation time, well-being stipends and synchronous Inner Work days off, it’s important to consider the downstream effects of each decision. This may include potential inequity if not every team member is able to tap into or value the defined benefit. For example, when one of my clients experimented with giving employees spontaneous days off, many working parents struggled with the logistics of last-minute planning. Again, one person’s well-being perk may not be another’s.
3. Reinforce new cultural norms.
Support the creation of new behaviors, language and cultural norms, then celebrate and reward the adoption of them. For example, this might mean no meetings on Friday afternoons, mandatory vacation usage or reducing synchronous work time that is deemed wasteful.
Leaders can commit to transparently sharing progress against well-being goals with personal success stories, as well as highlighting learned insights about well-being. This action helps reinforce what’s working well, dispel previously believed myths about well-being and inspire others to try and adopt new methods.
Finally, the organization can quantify the benefits of well-being through metrics like reduced absenteeism and greater productivity and engagement. While getting these measurements accurate may feel out of reach, the process of tracking and measuring directional changes quarter over quarter is what matters.
Promote and celebrate well-being.
Above all else, leaders must continue to show up for their teams in their human interactions. Don’t be afraid of reprioritizing work, moving deadlines when necessary or recalibrating through load balancing mid-project. Stay adaptable. Talk about your employees’ well-being in addition to the progress being made against business objectives. Only then can a culture of well-being move from being a “nice to have” to a strategic priority.
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