Why leaders need to shift their approach to workplace mental health in 2021

On behalf of Mental Health Innovations.

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The global pandemic has brought our longstanding mental health crisis right into the spotlight. More than ever business leaders and managers are wondering what they can do to better support their people. We thought we would take a moment to share some of our leadership’s insight into what they foresee for workplace mental health, as we move through the New Year.

For this purpose, we had Leslie Bennett (LB), partner and human capital innovator at MHI interview Stephane Grenier (SG), our founding partner and CEO on this very topic. What he shares here is very revealing and profoundly shifts how many leaders have been approaching workplace mental health for decades now.

LB:

Before we turn our attention to the new year, what have you found to be the biggest shift in business leadership priorities over the past eleven months?

SG:

Well, from my perspective, I think the pandemic has shed a light on a problem that you and I, and many business leaders had noticed many, many years ago. The pandemic may have become the impetus that was needed for leaders to actually move from a stage of just talking about mental health, to a place where they're actually taking tangible, sustainable action for the mental health of their people.

Now more than ever, we are realizing the impact people can have on each other through connection and those simple micro moments that we used to have in the analog workplace before everyone went virtual.

All of this has been kind of a perfect storm of realization for business leaders to do more. And what they decide I think in the next little while, in the next couple of weeks and months is going to be critical.

LB:

Let's say you had to paint a picture of mental health in the workplace as we move through 2021. What do you foresee and how would you describe it?

SG:

Well, you're asking me to paint a picture, so I'm going to do just that. I'd ask all the business leaders to just go with me here. I think we have it all wrong.

“If business leaders really look at what their organizations have been telling people to do all these years, it has essentially been, ‘If you’re struggling, call this number,’ or ‘If you’re unwell, do this or that.’ While most services aimed at supporting employee mental health are well-intentioned, what we have to keep in mind here is when people are unwell, they have a tendency to isolate and not want to do the very things we are asking them to do. No one is getting the help they need this way.”

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