World Mental Health Day: Nurturing Employee and Personal Mental Wellbeing

Today is World Mental Health Day so let's kick that can around a bit before inevitably shoving it aside for the next 364 days until October 10th next year.

I first wrote about the importance of remembering to take care of ourselves and others on World Mental Health Day three years ago. A lot has changed since then, but when it comes to the importance of mental health, much remains the same.

Nearly two years after the pandemic ended and the world is quite honestly no less chaotic or stressful, nor have we fully recovered from the mental scars the pandemic has left us with.

More recently we've also been dealing with massive inflation, layoffs, forced return to offices, political turmoil, Russia's war of conquest against Ukraine, and now the war in Israel after the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks.

It's... a lot to deal with.

Particularly in the midst of a national (and international) mental health crisis .

We can shut things out here and there, but it can be nearly impossible to avoid everything.

Throw into the mix all of the things we deal with on an individual personal level as we go through our lives and career, and it can (and does) take a toll on our mental health.

And it can be tough to focus on moving our careers forward when we're not in a great place mentally.

What we can do about it

When we get up in the morning to work day in and day out, or even when we're looking for work, we carry our stress, anxiety, depression or whatever it is with us whether we admit it or not.

There's a variety of ways to address recognizing and improving upon mental health from both a company and individual level.

So here's some ideas for nurturing mental health for your employees or for yourself as an individual.

?? For companies

Employers can actively offer quality mental health support

While I think this is a pretty obvious suggestion, actually implementing it can be a challenge, particularly for SMBs. Case in point, I personally know of one company (not any of my most recently worked for companies) that offered such a service, but when a few of the employees tried to use it, they found it completely unhelpful and insincere.

So not only must a company offer such support, they have to ensure it really addresses employee needs and is of a high enough quality.

As an employee, if your company offers such a service, it means nothing if you don't use it.

Ensure that what you're offering your employees actually is benefitting them. Otherwise you're just wasting money and employees time.

Offer a Mental Health Day to employees

Before the pandemic, the idea of a company offering a dedicated mental health day might have been looked at as a nice optional perk. During the pandemic, it was practically a requirement because of the high levels of stress people were dealing with across the board.

Today, wellness programs are a much more common place feature at companies, as they should be.

But companies should continue to offer time off in the form of mental health days as there's still good reasons to do so today as this time off can help prevent burnout, increase productivity, reduce healthcare costs, improve physical health, and boost morale.

Your employees are, even if they don't say so out loud, tired of burnout and will embrace mental health days .

Be a workplace of safety, community, and with a healthy organizational structure

Mind Share Partners puts out a biennial Mental Health at Work Report in partnership with Qualtrics to "explore the ever-changing landscape of workers’ experiences and perspectives around mental health, stigma, and work."

What they found in this year's study showed mental health isn’t improving in the U.S., though there are a few bright spots.

According to Mind Share, what workers increasingly want is mentally healthier cultures.

In the 2023 report, Mind Share asked respondents to rate how helpful the following were to their mental health:

• Mental health treatment
• Self-care resources for mental health
• A safe and supportive culture for mental health
• A healthy and sustainable culture of work

Their results showed that "among all respondents, a healthy and sustainable culture emerged as the clear winner, with 78% rating it as moderately, very, or extremely helpful."

There you have it. Give the people what they want.

Provide choice to employees in how, and where, they work

Are you a company forcing your employees back to the office with RTO mandates?

Let me echo the many voices of employees out there: We want options. Whether with our current company or when looking for a new role.

As Harvard Business Review reports on the 2023 Mind Share study, "...hybrid workers who had the freedom to decide where they work reported a shorter duration of mental health symptoms, a more positive impact of work on mental health, greater comfort talking about mental health at work, lower likelihood of leaving roles for mental health reasons, and greater pride and intent to stay at their current employer for two or more years."

At this point in the game, employees know what location and working situation works best for their lives and mental wellbeing, and they're going to seek it out much more actively than pre-pandemic.

Ensure managers are trained to support their team members

Career Coach Becca Carnahan comments, "How are you training your managers to support their team members? How much autonomy are they given to provide their employees with resources and help them set / keep boundaries? Managers play a huge and very direct role in helping employees manage their mental wellbeing and I find that employers who understand this and train / support / mentor managers accordingly give themselves a huge advantage."

?? For individuals

Recognize signs of anxiety

Knowing what to look for in the long list of signs of anxiety is worth at least being aware of. You can't properly address the problem unless you know what you're dealing with.

I know for a fact you're Googling symptoms when you get sick, what's the harm in doing the same around anxiety?

Keep things in perspective

Career Consultant Colleen Paulson comments "For me, it’s important to keep things in perspective. Work can be so stressful for so many different reasons. And job loss is a Top 5 life stressor. My advice: Make sure that you schedule in-person activities that you enjoy to keep life fun and maintain perspective on what’s important to you. You’re not going to love every piece of your job, but if it’s affecting your mental health, you need to start making plans to go."

Connect more with others through listening

Even nearly two years after the pandemic many people continue to work from home, and one of the main challenges of doing so is maintaining close connections. I'm a full time remote worker still, and can identify with this challenge of remote work.

Connections are everything, according to author and interview-show host Kelly Corrigan , who adds that meaningful bonds drive happiness. Corrigan says the key to better connections is the ability to listen , a skill which has a tendency to decline with decreased social interaction.

Listening can be a simple thing such as whenever you ask the question, "How are you doing? " there's the honest and true intention of hearing out the answer and not just asking as a form of greeting.

Bounce back from stress with exercise

A recent study showed that mental health is as important as physical health.

Fortunately, the two do go hand in hand as it's long been known that exercise can help people bounce back from stress . The real kicker here is having the time, opportunity and motivation to exercise.

What triggers somebody to exercise is different from person to person, so there's no way I can be the one to tell you what to do, only that it's important.

It's easy for me to sit here at my desk as I eat a bag of chips and say, "Exercise is good for you!" knowing full well I shouldn't eat that next chip.

Then eating that next chip...

Take a break

There's a reason why you'll see posts pop up in your LinkedIn feed with people talking about how they had to take a break from work to focus on their mental health.

And conversely, posts on how taking that break helped them get back to a place where they could function at their top level again.

It's hard to step back, even once you've recognized that you really ought to. We have a multitude of responsibilities (more on that below) that we need to take care of in order to support our families, careers, financial health, and everything else.

"Taking a break" might seem like you're reneging on some or all of those responsibilities, but if not taking a break results in getting fired, burning out completely, or causing a health issue... then what's worse? Taking the time off to head those off at the pass or waiting to crash and burn?

You know your situation best. If you need a break, plan it out. Assess what you can or cannot do based around what the bare minimum is required to uphold your responsibilities and work from there.

Then lean into your support network.

Ask for help.

There's no absolutely zero weakness in asking for help in a time of need, and you might be surprised at who comes through for you.

?????? Parents, take care of yourselves too

As a dad, I know the priority is always, always the family and the kids. Dads and parents in general sometimes might have a tendency to ignore their own mental wellbeing because of that sense of responsibility towards the family.

Unfortunately, if as a parent I'm not in a good place mental health-wise, that can manifest in my interactions with my family, which then in turn defeats the whole purpose of "family first" because of the negative impact.

?? For individuals AND companies

Be generous and kind

Author or "Feed a Billion" Nicole F. Roberts writes for Forbes that, "Research has shown that individuals who regularly perform acts of kindnes s, without expecting anything in return, tend to have higher levels of life satisfaction and experience more positive emotions."

Being kind and generous can actually be difficult when struggling through something as there is a need to focus on self. But if focusing on generosity and kindness towards others actually helps improve the self, it couldn't hurt to make an effort even if we're not "feeling it".

A company can be generous in granting time off to employees, with raises and recognition, or support for employee causes. Kindness and generosity is not a weakness for leadership, it's a key strength .

?? And one last thing...

These are only a few suggestions and ideas on how to address mental health in the workplace and for individuals. But there's a wealth of easily found and excellent information out there in Internet Land or even on LinkedIn Learning with courses like supporting your mental health while WFH or dealing with grief, loss and change as an employee . If there's any day of the year where it might be worth a little of your time to seek it out, World Mental Health Day is as good of a time as any.