Yahoo Finance How to promote good mental health in the workplace
Charlotte Fox Weber and Kelly Hearn are the co-founders of Examined Life, a collective of therapists brought together in 2020 to provide an innovative approach to the practice of psychotherapy. Fox Weber previously founded the School of Life Psychotherapy in 2015 and Hearn spent the first two decades of her professional life in the world of finance, before retraining as a psychotherapist.
Here, they share their unique insights into mental health and the workplace, and how to promote emotional wellbeing in both your own professional life, and those of your employees.
It’s about more than just workload- it’s about culture
‘Sometimes, as therapists, we can feel like we're bandaging up people and sending them back in to battle when they go in to work. Organisations themselves aren't looking at the conditions. That's not just hours, that's not just workload, it's also stability, it's also about respect and trust, and when they're lacking, they create a very stressful environment. That’s the catch-all of workplace stress, no matter what help you get, if the conditions of the office do not prioritise civility and dignity, your mental health will suffer.’
Don’t just talk the talk
‘Many companies profess to be really proactive about mental health issues, and prioritise emotional wellbeing, but it’s often just lip service. It seems to be all talk and no action. So, you will often see ‘mental health breaks’ implemented by companies that are then undercut by bosses emailing during them. For employers, you need to be embodying these practices, really following through on them. That inconsistency where we're talking something but you see the manager acting a different way. You need to have senior people walking the walk and getting that messaging out, so it's not just coming from HR, it's not just coming from some kind of mental health tsar, it's coming from actually a line manager who's taking this seriously and modelling it seriously in terms of setting boundaries, being respectful of time, civil tones, and manners. Otherwise, what this does, is it creates a sense of learned helplessness in your employees. They think; if my boss isn't endorsing it, what can I really do, I can't change anything? For employees, what we advise is: okay, you might not be able to manage up but how do you manage horizontally and down by leading from example? Often just by virtue of walking the walk yourself, it can promote change from within.’
Get realistic about boundaries
‘One of the most common work-based mental health issues is stress and burnout. The best way to prevent this happening, is getting very clear on limitations and boundaries. And again, here, I think COVID is has helped, because we don’t have these natural boundaries anymore and the feeling of being overwhelmed has become much more real. This means that there's a realisation now, that we can't sustain this level indefinitely. As a manager, and as an employee, you need to be taking this opportunity to talk about boundaries a lot more and get very clear on what your limitations are. This doesn’t mean you will be seen as a bad worker, more that you are creating realistic expectations with your employer and, in the long run, making yourself much more efficient. Push back a little bit and have more open discussions about this.’
Cultivate space
‘Right now, we're missing the transitional space between home life and work life. That transitional space of walking to the tube or cycling, going somewhere, was really psychologically essential in various ways. And so now, we have to cultivate that for ourselves in a new format. That can mean going for a walk, it can mean hiding in the bathroom, and deliberately, spending 10 minutes taking a shower. And just switching off again, it can mean doing jumping jacks, in the corner of the room if necessary. But I think doing something that separates you is really important because a lot of us just end up staying in the same space and feeling claustrophobic, not really knowing what we can do for ourselves.’
Know what you can, and can’t, control
‘Often a manager’s poor or erratic behaviour towards employees can be a major source of work-based stress. As an employee, the first step is just to have realise that this person is acting out of their own stress. That personalises it just a little bit and give a little bit of empathy. Then you need to know how to communicate effectively with this person and put boundaries in place. Say what you can and can’t deliver and ask: how do we work together a little bit differently so that I can I can deliver more effectively for you? Sometimes it might be too much of an uphill struggle to hope that a manager will change. You can’t always control them, so then it becomes more about us regulating our own reaction. You have to look at how you take care of your own emotional response to this behaviour in order to best manage your own mental resilience.’
Ask if everyone is ok…and mean it
‘As a manager you need to be asking your employees this as much as possible and- more importantly- genuinely meaning it. Genuinely is the key part. It can be such a throwaway question, but if you follow it up with making space to find out if people are struggling, it becomes effective. Don’t worry that you can’t necessarily fix everything but know that truly checking in rather than checking boxes goes a long way. This is especially the case when most employees are now working from home in silos, what they are missing is feedback from managers, checking in time. It’s hugely important.’
Make space for mental-health conversations
‘Once you have asked if your employees are OK, you need to be creating a way for them to communicate how they feel. This sounds obvious, but many employees don’t know how open they can be at work. One way to reassure them is by being as open as you feel comfortable being, about your own struggles; owning up to your own feelings of overwhelm, or your own difficulty juggling. There's something really humanising about that and it invites other people to share a bit more freely.
Next is about designing a template for workplace appropriate vulnerability. Some offices do one-word check ins like the traffic light system, where you're going around the room at a meeting and say green, yellow, red in terms of how overwhelmed you are or stressed. So, if there's a big deadline, and we need extra manpower, someone who said red, they don't need to say ‘my marriage is struggling at home’- they just need to say red.’
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