What Leaders Can Do to Prioritize Mental Health in the Workplace

Prioritizing mental health in the workplace is key to team longevity, low employee turnover, and preventing burnout. As a leader, there are multiple ways to be proactive in the mental health space, especially with the support of your company or organization. Recent research suggests that nearly 59 million adults are impacted by mental health conditions, and yet, less than half of those who need help take the steps to get it.

Making it easier and less stigmatized to get help can have a tremendous influence on workplace culture. Here are three areas where leaders can make a difference.

3 Ways to Prioritize Mental Health in the Workplace

Influence through awareness

Mental health in the workplace isn’t something most employees feel comfortable talking about  –  unless you do. It’s not necessary to share all your proverbial dirty laundry, but you can open up during team meetings a little to talk about difficult topics.

When you share that you were nervous before a presentation or that you had to keep your cool while another leader took credit for work your team clearly did, it shows your team that you value them enough to be vulnerable.

It also creates awareness around emotions and how your workplace handles them. Instead of turning a complaint into a rant, you can mention turning to a corporate coach or a counselor. You might reference your company’s healthcare provisions for mental wellness. Bringing mental health in the workplace to your desk first shows your co-workers and employees that it’s welcome at their desks, too.

Another way to raise awareness about mental health is to ask questions that are related to mental health in your team meetings. You don’t even have to let your team know that’s what you’re doing.

For example, one leader begins each team meeting with a life update, which is where team members share something they’re celebrating, grieving, or transitioning from. Each week, team members know to expect this and recognize that these aspects of life are not only acceptable at work, but they’re expected.

Not a human alive gets through a calendar year without grieving something, celebrating, or going through a change of some kind. It might be that you’re grieving a child who left for college or you are celebrating a milestone anniversary with your spouse. Whatever these are, they tell the team that you’ve got life outside of work, even if you’re not shouting from atop a chair in the middle of the breakroom.

If you can raise awareness of mental health in your circles of influence at work, it’s worth doing. You can even raise awareness about mental health in the workplace around other leaders in your corporation. A simple reference to a child dealing with anxiety or asking if they’re okay on a day they look sad or frustrated is all it takes. Most people  –  leaders especially  –  don’t get asked about their lives and emotions nearly as often as they need to be.

Finally, asking questions about what your team already understands about mental health is key. Maybe you can send an anonymous monthly survey or ask your HR department to help you with this. Learning what the team’s perspectives are helps you learn how to shape the conversations in the future.

Change the culture

In our modern-day age, it can feel almost impossible to change any culture, whether that’s the workplace, the political scene, entertainment, or education. Changing the culture can start small if we remember that all change begins with one simple choice.

An example of a small shift is asking your HR department if you can host a panel of workplace experts on mental health during a lunch and learn. Not only does this show an investment in your team, but it also shows a healthy care for your company’s bottom line: retaining healthy employees.

If you can’t do that or your HR department already does something similar, consider attending what’s already offered, advertising it among your team, or asking someone else to attend with you.

Perhaps the dreaded human resources health meeting is coming up, and instead of complaining about it with your team, you choose one thing to talk about positively. Discuss a key mental health component, such as how AI or workplace culture impacts mental health and what can be done to mitigate those effects. Changing the conversation ever so slightly, from a negative to a positive, can shift perspectives to help others welcome mental health in the workplace.

Another way to change the culture is to make these conversations and resources available often. Offering one lunch and learn is a start, not an entire strategy. Ensure your department has resources that include websites, coaches, and counselors, along with a firm understanding of the healthcare plan, so they can find help when needed.

Recognizing when people need help is part of the third way you can prioritize mental health in the workplace.

Model work-life balance from your office

When leaders model work-life balance, it goes a long way to helping their team see the importance of finding the same kind of balance. However, this also means you are willing to pitch in when they are overloaded with project demands if you’re capable.

Another way to display this balanced approach is by enforcing a mandatory celebration or break time each day. It could be a song selection you play for 15 minutes that lets employees know it’s time to get up and go outside, grab a snack, or walk down to talk to their co-worker on the third floor instead of emailing them.

Maybe you encourage co-workers to spend half of their lunch break outside or let them come into work on a flex schedule so they can get a run in before their workday begins. Letting employees know that you’re flexible enough to value their balanced life means you care about their mental health.

On the other hand, if they hear you telling them to leave at 5:30 p.m. and see you staying well past that most nights, they may start to wonder. Similarly, consider the workload. If the workload can’t be completed in a typical forty-hour week, it may mean you need to hire another employee. It’s worth evaluating a restructuring plan so you can spread the work more evenly, hire someone else, or shift the project to a lesser degree until you can find a long-term solution.

No project or goal is worth burning out your best employees

You can talk about mental health in the workplace all day long, but if your team doesn’t see the value of it in their lives, they will not apply the principles to better health. So, how do you create an environment that helps them embrace the value of mental health?

First, make sure your employees hear often that you value mental health. Knowing that it’s important to you (and why) matters. It could be that you share a personal story about why it matters to you, or it might be that you’ve worked for companies in the past that valued it, and you learned from your experiences there.

Whatever your reason is, share it. You can even share that your company is working toward the overall goals of becoming a healthier workplace, such as aiming for the Bell Seal for Workplace Mental Health.

Second, learn about the “why” behind a team member’s performance or behavior. Instead of assuming they simply didn’t make the proverbial grade, reflect on what might be causing their hesitation, lack of confidence, or comparison syndrome. Maybe they’ve worked for supervisors in the past who berated them when they made mistakes, so they are afraid to speak up.

Finally, create a safe space. Make your team a safe place to fail. Maybe a team member has experienced co-worker bullying, where other team members made their ideas seem like bad ones. Encourage each person who speaks up that their ideas are valid, welcome, and heard.

Learning the “why” behind a person’s struggle and ensuring your team is one where it’s okay to say something are pieces of the cultural puzzle that your workplace is piecing together to tell a story of safety. When every team member feels safe, they also feel seen and free to share when they’re struggling.

Find support

There is help available. Whether it is for you as a leader or to share with your employees, counselors can provide support as you prioritize mental health in your workplace. Contact the office to learn more about the support counseling offers.