Your people won’t always open up (and that’s perfectly OK)
To take a big step forward in proactively supporting employees before their mental health issues cause problems, take a step back.
On the one hand, we have this: The pandemic in combination with all of the other social, political, and cultural upheavals of 2020 brought the importance of being proactive about total well-being and employee mental health to center stage.
Although it’s true that stress and anxiety among employees dropped in December and January from their record highs during the pandemic, employees still struggle with their mental health at much higher levels than before the pandemic. Risk of depression is 71% higher than before the pandemic, and attention span is 27% worse.
Related: How to meet the growing needs of employees’ mental health
Meanwhile, the value of supporting employee mental well-being is undeniable. A study reported in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that nearly 86% of employees reported improved work performance and lower rates of absenteeism after receiving treatment for depression.
On the other hand, we have this: Many employees still find it incredibly difficult to talk directly with their managers about anything regarding their mental health. It’s a sad fact that is undeniably preventing too many employees from getting the support and help they need to combat everything from the effects of isolation to the stress of learning to adapt to a new way of working to the uncertainty of what the future of their lives even looks like.
Why the focus on managers here? Because managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores, according to Gallup research.
Yet despite the challenges we’ve all faced since early 2020, and no matter the increased and still growing adoption of all sorts of apps and solutions to help employees ease stress and anxiety, 33% of employees say that in the last year, they’ve actually had fewer conversations with their managers about their mental health and well-being. That’s one of the stark findings from a recent survey of over 1,000 employees by Unmind and Welcoa.
Of course, it would be easy to point a finger at managers and conclude they aren’t doing enough to reach out to and connect with their team members. Or we could blame the increased gap in manager connection on an obvious reality: As many as 70% of people are now working from home, compared with about 20% before the pandemic.
But there’s a bigger truth at play, a truth that has nothing to do with COVID-19, working remotely, or culture wars: Mental health is simply hard to come to grips with — for everyone.
Even as many employers are committed to making progress in mitigating the stigma associated with mental health, it’s a long road ahead to providing care for every employee. But rather than give up and settle for only reaching some of your people — or only supporting the 1 in 5 U.S. workers who say they have mental health concerns — attack the stigma from a different angle. To make a big step forward in proactively supporting employees before their mental health issues cause problems at home or work, take a step back.
Reduce the pressure on managers, boost the options for knowledge and self-care
Rather than focus on conversations to get employees to open up or try to overcome the stigma of mental wellness, think about giving every employee access to clinically backed resources to manage their mental health themselves. In other words, take your managers and HR leaders out of the driver’s seat, at least as an option. Instead, empower employees with a way to manage their mental well-being continuously, easily, and privately. When you do this, and if you’re supported by the right mental well-being partner, the path forward is suddenly brighter — for your employees and the business.
By opening up a preventative-focused path for employees, you:
- Offer a way forward for any employee, regardless of where they are on the mental health spectrum (and we’re all somewhere on the mental spectrum, just as we are on the spectrum of physical health)
- Help your organization achieve a vision of care for employees, with support and total well-being
In addition to removing the barrier that the stigma of mental health still creates, an underlying truth about employee benefits in general also argues in favor of a mental well-being solution that is easy for employees to understand, engage with, and empowers them to navigate their own path. That truth is that even before employers started adopting a more holistic benefits model, employees were confused and often unaware of the value of their benefits at all. For example, a survey from Voya Financial found that:
- 35% of employees don’t understand the benefits they select during enrollment
- 54% of millennials don’t understand their benefit selections
- 66% of workers want their companies to help them better understand their benefits all year, not only during open enrollment
- 78% of millennials want more communication about their benefits throughout 2021
Simplifying the journey toward better employee mental health for everyone
Let’s assume you agree with the belief we mentioned above — that everyone is somewhere on the spectrum of mental health, just as we’re all somewhere on the broad spectrum of physical health. If you adopt a clinically proven mental health solution that has the same North Star and that provides self-assessments, tools, and support for every worker, it’s suddenly much simpler to promote the value of your employee mental health benefits and programs. Just as you’re removing the barrier of asking employees to talk with their managers or HR leaders about their mental health concerns, you no longer need to struggle to get engagement by trying to explain the value of treatment-based programs or the often-convoluted path employees need to follow to use those benefits.
Even better, you’re no longer limiting your focus to the 1 in 5 Americans with reported mental health concerns. You’re now reaching all of your employees, including the 4 out of 5 who may simply benefit from knowing more about the symptoms of mental health and how to recognize them in themselves and others. Or maybe they’ll benefit from learning more about how to stay mentally healthy during particularly tough or challenging times.
Maybe they’ll get the simple message that they don’t come to work alone, but as part of a wider ecosystem, an ecosystem that includes other benefits and support they can find value in. How does the optimal mental health platform do that? Through those self-assessments and tools we spoke of earlier. They’ll guide employees to other appropriate resources and programs that your organization is already paying for. In other words, the right solution will show employees the value of existing programs that you are already spending money on.
In the end, when you move from depending on conversations with managers and HR to get employees to open up or try to overcome the stigma of mental wellness and turn to a clinically backed program that helps every employee manage their mental health journey, you’re on the path to creating a culture of caring and a workforce that is more engaged, more present, and more productive.
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