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Key points
- Clinical mental health experts should be workplaces' go-to experts for ongoing mental health needs.
- Mindfulness training helps reduce stress, enhance well-being, employee engagement, and job satisfaction.
- Industry-wide, the average utilization rate of EAPs is only between 3 and 5 percent.
The mental health of employees is a core component of any business's success. While employers now recognize that they need to support employees' mental health and cultivate a culture of psychological safety, they struggle to do so most efficiently and effectively.
In a Gallup poll, U.S. workers with fair or poor mental health were "estimated to have nearly 12 days of unplanned absences annually compared with 2.5 days for all other workers." That missed work cost the economy $47.6 billion annually in lost productivity.
What's the Best Way for Employers to Address Mental Health in the Workplace?
Normalize the idea of therapy by taking a proactive approach to dealing with mental health. To encourage more use of the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and create a healthy work environment, employers need to remove potential barriers to care by destigmatizing mental health issues. Showing a video on mental health in occasional lunch-and-learn sessions is not enough.
Instead, bring in a licensed mental health professional who is a speaker/trainer to bridge the gap. Many people have never met a therapist and have misconceptions about them. Mistaken beliefs prevent many from accessing potentially life-changing mental health support. The reality is that therapy can benefit anyone dealing with life challenges.
How Licensed Therapists Can Help Remove Mental Health Stigma
Employers have an opportunity to normalize therapy by inviting therapists into the workplace as an introduction to therapy. Learning psychosocial and coping skills in such sessions can help employers and employees reframe their thinking about therapy.
Employees who once viewed mental health care as a painkiller—a last resort for when they are immensely struggling—can now acquire a new mindset. With a new mindset, employees can learn to see mental health care as a vitamin—something that improves health and wellness.
The positive group experience destigmatizes mental health care as something that promotes health rather than treats illness.
According to Mental Health America, over half of the people with mental health conditions do not seek treatment because they aren't familiar with how therapy works. Industry-wide, the average utilization rate of EAPs is between 3 and 5 percent. Employers can significantly improve this rate by hiring licensed therapists to speak to employees about mental health regularly.
Workplaces are the communities we live in every day, and they have enormous power to address the mental health crisis. Sophisticated and sustainable organizations recognize that investing in employee mental health saves their greatest asset and gives their staff the skills to move from being in crisis, struggling, or just surviving (which most people are today) to thriving and excelling.
Mindfulness and Mental Health
At a mindfulness training I conducted for a global Fortune 500 company, I worked with a department that dealt with social media. Because of the nature of their work, they needed to learn ways to unplug, even more than most people. Those who work in customer service or in roles that involve interpersonal conflict especially appreciate the tools and techniques taught in such training sessions.
After taking the group through breathing exercises and a short, guided meditation, I asked people to share what they noticed. Most people noticed the tension they had been holding in their bodies, how shallow and short their breathing was before the exercise, or how much better and more relaxed they felt afterward.
I was surprised by one participant's comment that she felt more connected to the team because it was an intimate experience to sit in silence together, with eyes closed, and breathe in unison. Even those who attended via video conferencing from around the world agreed. As a department, they decided to start all meetings with a short meditation to let go of any stressors and become synced and present to work together.
Organizations such as Target, Google, Aetna, Intel, Dow Chemical, and the United States Marine Corps have implemented mindfulness-based training programs with well-publicized success. Studies have shown that two-thirds of mindfulness training for organizations was helpful in reducing stress, enhancing well-being, increasing employee engagement, creating greater job satisfaction, and improving client outcomes.
Mindfulness at work increases motivation and job performance, positive affect and working memory capacity, problem-solving, work-life balance, focus, concentration, creativity, innovation, safety, and ethical decision-making, and it reduces absenteeism, risk of burnout, and unwanted turnover.
More Ways to Remove Mental Health Stigma in the Workplace
Besides mindfulness training, therapists can address the following topics to remove the stigma of mental health in the workplace:
- Psychological safety in the workplace, by which employees feel comfortable sharing personal and professional challenges with management.
- Use of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and other mental health benefits or resources provided at work.
In addition, they can
- Demonstrate care and concern for employee wellness to improve employee engagement.
- Improve company culture through promoting greater self-awareness, emotional intelligence, empathy, and effective communication and conflict-resolution skills.
- Encourage leadership to embrace a shared vision and sense of meaning and purpose for employees.
- Provide didactic skill building to improve communication and conflict resolution.
In 25 years as a therapist, I've seen how most people delay seeking mental health treatment until they are suffering significantly. Delaying treatment increases the severity of symptoms as well as the need for higher levels of intervention and care.
Just as companies have in-house counsel, it is time to have a clinical mental health expert on retainer in the workplace. There is a new need for group healing and shared recovery. We need new mental health language and a lens to heal, recover, thrive, and prosper collaboratively.
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