Addressing the mental health crisis in the workplace
First, we need to let employees know that we acknowledge and recognize that this has been a difficult time.
There is a mental health crisis happening today. It’s happening in society, schools, and in our workforces. Without a doubt, the past two years have taxed our employees’ mental health. What started as two-week quarantine of working from home, or thinking about our safety daily, turned into two years of sickness, ups and downs, stops, starts, mask mandates, social distancing and office closures. Those constant changes and other pressures outside the workforce drained our employees’ mental health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25% during the pandemic.
Related: Employer medical claims likely miss 75% of employee mental health issues
As many companies start to bring their workers back into the office either full-time or in a hybrid model, now is the time for employers to step back and evaluate all that we are doing to care for our employees’ mental health. We need to send a strong message that we care and are here to help.
3 steps employers can take to address mental health
As many employers begin to bring workers back to the office either full-time or in a hybrid model, now is the time to address the mental health challenges your employees faced, and continue to face, in the new dynamics. The world as we knew it has forever changed so we must think and act differently.
First and foremost, we must acknowledge there is a mental health crisis. We need to let employees know that we acknowledge and recognize that this has been a difficult time filled with tremendous stress. Simply saying it’s ok not to be ok is a first step. When the pandemic began, employees, especially essential workers, were in a sprint, and society was all in this together. However, pressures and expectations continued to increase and so as many of us became burnt out. Society is tired and divided and the pandemic has felt more like a marathon than a sprint.
Secondly, we must make time for our people. This doesn’t mean just holding recognition events, we must also carve out moments for professionals to take a physical and mental break at and from work. We need to check in on our people and open a door for help. This is an especially important action for people leaders. We must ensure that supervisors and managers are creating space for their employees to speak and to think. Then, we must provide supervisors the tools and knowledge of what to do when an employee does open up about their mental health needs. Giving them the tools necessary to have open dialogue is a first step toward healing.
Understanding the challenges employees face, we as leaders of our companies have a responsibility to help. That’s why during the pandemic, we at Cardinal Health, launched a series of benefits to our more than 40,000 employees, many of which are essential workers, vital to the health care system that could not work from home. To help them navigate the challenges and enable them to focus on their mental health, we launched “Mind Matters,” which is our employee assistance program to enable to our employees to get and give support and help they and their families get access to mental health resources.
Finally, we need to build an inclusive and supportive culture for our people. We must remove the stigma around mental health. We need to let our employees know it’s ok to not be ok. We, as leaders, truly make a difference. Being a vulnerable, transparent and empathetic leader can create an open and supportive culture founded on the holistic definition of mental health by the World Health Organization, and inclusive of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services dimensions of psychological, emotional and social wellbeing. We can communicate mental and physical health parity to our people. From the top down, we can encourage our people to use resources and to get help, just like we have in our lives
I’ve been very lucky during my time at Cardinal Health to be surrounded by a great leadership team that believes in cultures, creates an environment where employees can thrive, and invests in mental health. The vital step of leaders acknowledging the challenges and letting their teams address their mental health is not only the right thing to do, but it also builds a culture of inclusiveness and honesty that employees want and need.
As we are hopefully emerging from the pandemic phase, now is the time to prioritize mental health and make it integral to your return-to-work plan. This is the time for leaders to step forward, acknowledge the challenges and build the infrastructure that takes care of their team’s mental health and continue or create time for employees focusing on themselves. There are long-term impacts to improving mental health, including retention of our people, increased quality of life and better morale. While the issues of the past two years are fresh in our memory, now is the opportune time to make these changes.
It will not be easy. It will take some dramatic culture shifts, but once made, it will be a welcome change that will hopefully improve mental health outcomes for future generations of professionals.
Ola Snow is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Cardinal Health, a distributor of pharmaceuticals, a global manufacturer and distributor of medical and laboratory products, and a provider of performance and data solutions for health care facilities.
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