From February 2020 to February 2022, Google searches for same-day mental health services and centers for workplace mental health each grew by 1,300% and searches for \u201chow to ask for a mental health day\u201d grew by 1,000%, according to marketing platform Semrush. Searches for mental health strategy increased by 133%, mental wellness by 52% and emotional well-being, 23% during this same pandemic period.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These numbers show \u201cthe after-effect of people working extremely hard over the last couple of years, dealing with huge amounts of change,\u201d said Nick Taylor, clinical psychologist, CEO and co-founder of Unmind, a London-based workplace mental health platform. “As they serve others, a lot of people relegate self-care. This is often fine episodically, but prolonged periods of neglecting self-care can turn small issues into more serious problems, which require serious help.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For HR professionals and business leaders, this means understanding the added dimensions of mental health unique to the workplace, including among working parents of young children.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mae Singerman was director of operations for an organization that worked to expand the social safety net for long-term care. She ran almost every meeting she attended, supervised staff and consultants, tracked and managed a $6 million budget, rolled out new policies and helped to facilitate organizational changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI also had started to work late at night, was eating at 10 p.m. I was worried and anxious about work all the time, even outside of work hours. I stopped moving,\u201d she explained in an email to HR Dive. Contemplating her future back then, Singerman said, \u201cthe last thing I would want to do every day would be to work this job. I just knew I was done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Singerman, who lives with her husband and “the chaos of a 4- and 6-year-old”\u00a0in a small New York apartment, is caregiver both in and out of the home \u2014 coordinating care for her mother in Florida and traveling to be with her for a few days each month. Though she had considered leaving her executive role for some time, ultimately it was a series of family and health-related events that prompted the decision.\u00a0After her own appendectomy and a false alarm about cancer \u2014 a scare heightened by the fact her father died of cancer when she was 11 \u2014 Singerman said, \u201cI just realized, I wanted a change and to live differently. I don\u2019t want to grow or train right now. I just want to be.”<\/p>\n
Since fall last year, Singerman has served as administrative project manager at Showing Up for Racial Justice, a national organization that encourages White people to fight for racial and economic justice. \u201cI’m basically a glorified administrative assistant,\u201d she said, and overqualified for the job.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m still the kind of person who is looking for validation through work,\u201d she said, but \u201cI cannot imagine going back to a job with high stress levels anytime soon,\u201d not even for the positional power she had before. \u201cI\u2019m really happy with the change. I was able to add a lot more structure back into my life. … I now work out in the morning. My overall health and mental well-being is better.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\nkupicoo via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Mother of two, Rachel Skybetter, works in ed tech communications. She said there\u2019s a disconnect in the workplace between business leaders and employees. \u201cMy daughter just turned 4 and my son just turned 8 months,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen they are both home, it\u2019s a tornado, and my attention is split in 100 different ways. \u2026The deadlines aren’t changing, and the meetings aren’t moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Skybetter\u2019s experience echoes findings of The 2022 State of the Workplace report from workforce analytics platform ActivTrak, which showed collaboration tools interrupt employees an average 70 times per day<\/a>, accounting for 21% of distractions. It\u2019s \u201cwork about work<\/a>\u201d \u2014 the incoming notifications generated by email, meetings and productivity tools and responses to those things \u2014 that can bring a sense of running in place, especially for workers already in a cycle of catch-up, feeling a sense of underperformance and overwhelm.\u00a0<\/p>\n Essentially overnight, lines blurred between our work and home lives, leading to longer hours and difficulties with establishing boundaries,\u00a0said Megan Smith, vice president and head of HR, North America, at SAP. \u201cOur kitchens became our offices, family rooms turned into day cares,\u201d Smith said, \u201cand this shift, in some cases, was permanent. It\u2019s impossible to completely compartmentalize stress\u201d \u2014 especially when there\u2019s just no time to \u201cpunch out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The ActivTrak report shows the spiraling effects: \u201cDeep work\u201d is compressed to 14-minute sessions on average, and tasks requiring extended focus are pushed outside regular work hours<\/a> \u2014 to times meant for family and recuperation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Skybetter described what has been the futility of time off. \u201cWhen I take days off, I’m not going on vacation. I’m not doing anything relaxing. I’m actually probably looking forward to working, right? \u2014 because it means my kids are at day care, and my house is quiet.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Splitting child care responsibilities with her husband who also works from home, Skybetter said they\u2019re privileged to have advantages that many families don’t. \u201cBut it bothers me that I have an 8-month-old strapped to my back, and I’m trying to work.\u201d When she first spoke with HR Dive in January this year, Skybetter hadn\u2019t slept through the night since March 2021.<\/p>\n Rachel Skybetter working from home with 8-month-old son and 4-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n For many workers, especially parents of school-aged children, these issues have come to a boiling point. The ActivTrak report indicates increasing work-life balance, and yet \u201c34% of employees continue to be overutilized<\/a> at work, spending more than 75% of their time in this state.\u201d Smith said there\u2019s no denying the realities and struggles of worker burnout as significant contributors to the drop in employee engagement and the rise of the Great Resignation.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a recent update, Skybetter said COVID-19 had hit her household, and \u201cgosh, I mean, you think you know fatigue and then you have COVID, have to work, AND handle two littles at the same time, without being able to leave the house. Even just for Starbucks or something. It\u2019s physically draining, yes, but the mental anguish is tough. I felt hopeless some days \u2026 and it felt like it would never end,\u201d said Skybetter.<\/p>\n But it did. \u201cI took a few half days. Worked some nights. Here I am two weeks later”\u00a0\u2014 days ahead of her son’s first birthday \u2014\u00a0“and it feels like a blip.” She said she’s in better place, and “lucky to have unlimited PTO, but I do wish I could specify it was for COVID leave.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither Skybetter nor Singerman want to villainize their employers, and both offered advice to companies interested in supporting the well-being of employees and their families.\u00a0<\/p>\n Skybetter said, when \u201ca parent is out for both COVID and simultaneous caretaking duties,\u201d there\u2019s no way to specify the type or reason for thetime away from work. Pointing to her husband\u2019s employer who lets employees differentiate types of leave, Skybetter suggests other employers expand system capabilities to do the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n Singerman offered three suggestions to help workers deal with stress and mental health issues:<\/p>\n Whole office shut-downs. \u201cI think one of the best things employers can do is offer multiple times per year when the whole office shuts down. Everyone is tired and overwhelmed. Everyone wants a break.\u201d When everyone is off at the same time, employees will appreciate \u201cnot coming back to a mountain of work.\u201d These closures can lift morale and become occasions to plan around with happy anticipation, she said.\u00a0 These problems are intertwined and present a positive opportunity to rethink work as a first step, Rep. Ro Khanna of California said during the recent Workers and the Corporate Values Revolution conference, hosted by From Day One, a conference series and media outlet.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou don’t need the 9-to-5, or staying long hours just for face time,\u201d said Khanna, who wrote the book \u201cDignity in a Digital Age.\u201d These actually may not be the most productive ways to work, and beyond that, there\u2019s a need to prioritize greater workplace flexibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n Conference speakers agreed the pandemic has prompted increased transparency, better language and more discussion in the workplace around mental health. But employee well-being<\/a> is closely tied to employee experience, and employee experience can comprise highly individualized elements of race<\/a> and age, parental and marital status<\/a>, gender identity, paid leave, and more. It became clear during conference sessions that the nuances of employee well-being require a specialized approach.\u00a0<\/p>\n -aniaostudio- via Getty Images<\/p>\n A July 2021 survey from The Conference Board that found employees who were apprehensive about returning<\/a> to offices had also \u201cexpressed greater concerns about mental health, stress, and burnout.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a University of Phoenix Career Optimism Index<\/a> released in February revealed that 62% of respondents who were \u201cnot hopeful about the future of their career were actively looking or expecting to look for new jobs.\u201d A greater share (69%) responded \u201cif things would change at my job, I would consider staying,\u201d but 1 in 3 employees said they would quit their current jobs without securing another.\u00a0<\/p>\n Taylor, the clinical psychologist,\u00a0said because of \u201cthe reactive nature of traditional employer-provided mental health resources \u2014 like EAPs and occupational health \u2014 people end up not seeking care until symptoms have become overwhelming. And because the topic of mental health and illness is still taboo within many company cultures, many employees struggle to ask for help.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust seeing<\/em> your employees\u201d is a type of employee recognition that\u2019s urgently necessary in today’s atmosphere, said Gabriela Mauch, vice president of Productivity Lab at ActivTrak.\u00a0<\/p>\n She discouraged the often rote, unilateral traditions of leadership that don\u2019t recognize people as individuals.\u00a0<\/p>\n Addressing employee burnout, she suggested managers rely on tools that alert them when employees are working well over their typical hours or through the weekends.\u00a0<\/p>\n This will help managers to facilitate the right conversation at the right time, said Mauch, and to step out of “the robotic nature of ‘hey, how are you doing? Okay, good. What are your tasks today? That\u2019s putting someone in a cadence. That’s what you want to avoid. When we’re spending all this time thinking about how we can train and develop our managers to listen, we need to think about the other side of the equation, which is how we can empower employees to speak, perhaps by simply asking \u2018Are you okay?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n SAP’s Smith said that while it may seem obvious, \u201cit\u2019s so critical to devote time, resources and budget to get an accurate read on how employees are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s an important link between workplace compassion and workplace competition. \u201cYou certainly don’t want to facilitate a cutthroat workforce\u201d as an inadvertent consequence of benchmarks and rewards, said conference moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s that platinum versus golden rule,\u201d said Sarah Bartas, vice president, HR corporate at Stanley Black & Decker. \u201cThe golden rule is to treat others as you wish to be treated, but it’s really [about] the platinum rule \u2014 treat others as they<\/em> wish to be treated. Meet them where they are. Are they someone that is introverted, where you have to create a different kind of space for compassion versus \u2026 that vocal person in the room, and you’ve got to find a different space for them? It’s common sense, but it’s not common practice.\u201d<\/p>\n Scott Nycum, vice president for inclusion, diversity and giving at General Dynamics Information Technology, offered what he called a hack \u2014 as \u201can optimist but also an incrementalist.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHacking innovation-compassion could look something like this: When someone has a success, the debrief is naming who helped you. It gets the brain to [acknowledge] \u2018I didn’t get here alone\u2019 and it changes the tone and tenor of culture on a team. We ask that question no matter what.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Even in situations of apparent failure, Nycum said the question is asked: \u201cWho helped you to get back up when you failed?\u201d Though he called it a small thing, Nycum said he\u2019d rather have every team at General Dynamics make this 2% shift in focus \u2014 a move he said could help build trusting workplace relationships and re-energize teams, wherever they may be in the world.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Not just during May \u2014 Mental Health Awareness Month \u2014\u00a0but everyday, mental health and workplace well-being demands awareness, sources say.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important,” Smith added, \u201cthat employers do not view mental health as a check-the-box exercise when approaching solutions. Addressing mental health in the workplace should take a multi-faceted and integrated approach.\u201d<\/p>\n Correction: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect timeline for Singerman’s personal loss.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This item was originally posted here: Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nCost-of-living adjustments. \u201cI think COLAs are really important for employee mental health. It shows [employers] are committed to the whole workforce.\u201d
\nMessage schedulers. Singerman said managers working at night should schedule messages for delivery the next morning. This will alleviate pressure employees feel on receipt of \u201cemail, text messages and phone calls from senior leaders after work hours, or at all hours on weekends.\u201d Acknowledging this could be difficult for organizations with a workforce across different time zones, she said most supervisors should nonetheless “be aware of their employee’s schedules and respect them.\u201d<\/p>\n