2022 Employee benefits & workplace predictions: A mental health revolution

After 18-plus months of talking about stress, burnout, isolation and mental health, in 2022, we can expect to hear… more about stress, burnout, isolation and mental health. Experts have been warning for months that the impact on Americans’ well-being will linger long after the COVID pandemic itself has ended.

Employers have already started to recognize their role in assisting employees with accessing mental health resources. But that’s just a part of the problem. We’re also starting to get a better picture of how the transition to remote work is blurring the work/life boundary, and how a lack of interaction with peers and recognition from managers are impacting burnout rates.

Going into 2022, what new approaches to mental health can we expect to see?

Caring will be a crucial part of decisionmaking

Companies and employees are rethinking what they want out of work. What we’re seeing is that care is rising to the forefront and becoming the center of decision-making, reducing burnout and boosting happiness at work.

Our new data from Glint reveals that employees who feel cared about at work are 3.2x more likely to report being happy to work for their current company and 3.7x more likely to recommend working for their company.

And the inverse is also true: At companies that struggle with manager care, employees are nearly 50% more likely to apply for a new job. This means that managers will need to continue to adapt their styles and build soft skills to attract and retain talent in the future of work.

–Mark Lobosco, vice president of talent solutions, LinkedIn

A greater emphasis on mental health in the workplace

This past year, the pandemic, and resulting increase in employee burnout, opened the door to a long overdue conversation about mental health in the workplace. Employers need to acknowledge that there are people who are in a challenging spot and they need to come up with practical strategies for addressing mental health. There’s this meta-theme in the workplace right now which is that manager training, in general, needs to be leveled up, and that includes leveling up how managers invite people to voice mental health concerns and know how to respond.

You have to train and equip managers with practical tools that answer questions like these: How do we support everyone’s mental health and wellbeing? How do we approach people during difficult situations?

~Adam Weber, senior vice president of community, 15Five

Relationships at work will get more personal

No, we’re not talking about romance, we’re talking about making meaningful connections with your co-workers and building bonds that make teamwork more successful and work in general more bearable. The dehumanization of the workforce has crept into many organizations in recent years, increasing the need for a basic level of empathy and compassion amongst co-workers.

Taking the time to connect with employees about their lives outside of work is really important – grabbing the occasional coffee or having a team lunch may be a thing of the past, schedule video 1-on-1’s, or set up a fun virtual event for your team. Making these a regular habit will help your team form better relationships with you and each other, and will also benefit everyone’s mental well-being.

–Sammy Courtright, co-founder and chief brand officer, Ten Spot

Employers will take a “head first” approach to well-being

The biggest challenge facing employers in 2022 is to be able to predict and prevent employee mental health problems early—before they have a negative impact—and create a culture of mental wellbeing. Mental health problems are more pervasive than ever, and we must focus on people in the no-to-low acuity levels to both improve wellbeing and mitigate serious risk.

By taking workplace mental health seriously and working to predict who is at risk, we will see a payoff in improved work performance and a profound change in organizational performance. Increasingly employers will look to data-driven insights to understand the mental resilience of their workforce and address vulnerabilities proactively.

– Jan Bruce, CEO and co-founder, meQuilibrium

Mental health is THE workplace issue of the next decade

The next decade will be exemplified by organizations trying to stem the mental illness tide. To be successful they will need to get to the root cause. They will need to renegotiate the basic employer-employee social contract. They will need to equip their people with the tools of resilience. They will need to work on creating corporate cultures of resilience from top to bottom. The next twelve months will determine which organizations emerge on the right side of history and which do not.

–Andrew Shatte, PhD, chief knowledge officer, meQuilibrium

We’ve opened Pandora’s Box of mental health

The pandemic has led to a focus on mental health, including its role in the workplace, and there’s no going back. While some may be anticipating a return to “normal,” it’s much more likely that we will need to find a “new normal,” which hopefully includes easy access to mental health care, and work environments that support mental health. Unfortunately, we recently found that 60% of leaders plan to revert back to the mental health strategy used pre-pandemic. This potential disconnect between the needs of employees and the intentions of leadership, could cause a backlash in 2022 if leaders don’t acknowledge and listen to the needs of their employees.

In 2021, Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles prompted a global discussion about mental health and performance when they each voluntarily dropped out of championship sporting events. Since then, we’ve seen more athletes speak out publicly about separating themselves from the game in support of their mental health. In 2022, we may see this trend spill over into the business world. While 2021 saw a small trickle of CEOs publicly disconnect from their work for mental health reasons, we’ll hopefully see more executives acknowledge the need to care for their own mental health, whether that’s taking time off or simply acknowledging the support they need, which will, in turn, normalize caring for your mental health in the workplace.

We’re seeing more social media platforms make commitments to mental health, like Snapchat’s Headspace Mini, a mindfulness and meditation in-app tool. However, given the increased scrutiny on social media and many reports about its negative impact on mental health, these companies will be forced to answer tough questions about their commitment to users. In 2022, I hope they’ll be held accountable to show metrics around how they are addressing mental health and the true mental health impact of their platform. That may mean that social media companies need to rethink some of their core metrics – away from time spent on the platform to the impact of that time. This will require an acknowledgment of the potential negative impact of social media and without doing so these companies may be called out for being performative and inauthentic in their desire to support their users’ mental health.

–Dr. Myra Altman, vice president of clinical care, Modern Health

The prevalence of depression and anxiety in the population will continue to be high

Businesses will start to have a greater focus on effectiveness of ROI in their mental support as they begin to unpick the initial approach of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. We will all continue to struggle to have discussions about mental health, although the stigma will continue to fall that won’t on its own make everyone automatically comfortable talking about their mental health.

–Oliver Smith, strategy director & head of ethics, Koa Health

Focus on getting away from the office

Following unprecedented burnout levels, employers will reconsider how they’re approaching PTO. The challenging events of the past few years – social unrest, pandemic and more – have resulted in a physically and emotionally drained workforce that’s desperately in need of a break. But 2021 showed us that people either aren’t using their PTO for the R&R they deserve, or worse, aren’t taking it altogether. It’s not enough to provide days of rest; employees today need to be shown how to rest. In 2022, we’ll see more employers incorporate company-wide training programs focused on work/life balance tactics and de-stressing techniques, and introducing perks (like travel packages and airline points) that encourage real time away from the office.

–Jordan Peace, co-founder & CEO, Fringe