NOTICING YOUR EMPLOYEE MENTAL HEALTH LEAVE REQUESTS ARE UP? ASSESS YOUR ROLE.
In 2017 I took my first (and only) mental health leave.
At that time, there was zero playbook.
From addressing the need thoughtfully with internal/client communications, building an empathic team coverage plan, and managing expectations upon the eventual return…it was a process built entirely from scratch.
And goodness, did I want to crawl in a hole every step of the way.
Even though my plan was received graciously, and supportively, the corporate climber and driver in me felt like a complete and utter failure.
This piece isn’t about me though.
It is about a trend I’ve seen six years later:
employee mental health leaves have just about become the norm!
Which is a beautiful, reassuring sign of progress in more ways than I can count.
But what worries me?
These requests are getting clumped in with a similar sentiment akin to middle days of the pandemic:
*insert ordinary situation that was dysfunctional or delayed that was met with something like…
sorry we can’t take your call/respond to you/acknowledge you…it’s a pandemic thing!
Sure, those situations were 100% real for many workplaces and scenarios.
There were, however, many capitalizing on the message as an excuse to marinate in inaction, too.
That’s what this piece is about.
This is a love letter to leaders (including Board Members) who are responsible for org development:
I know you want to care for your employees in the deepest, most pragmatically enterprising way possible. In that quest for care, if you see your employee mental health leave numbers soaring, I ask you to please confront those numbers with your fullest, most compassionate, most dignified curiosity.
It’s not lost on me that you’re tired too. Just like the rest of us.
But unlike most of us, you wield significant power to steer towards post-pandemic recovery in an incredibly impactful way.
Here’s some initial stuff in priority order to confront when you’re ready:
Sincerest gratitude by the way if you have made it this far, I know this might feel like another should on your should do-list.
Are the bulldogs still employed? You know, the ones that are incredibly high business performers usually at the expense of those around them. You likely have a long list of people who have made formal and informal complaints, but you haven’t been able to justify why they need to go because they bring in so much cashflow. This is a safety hazard. Stressors, oftentimes from the bulldog type, negatively impact employees' mental health. Addressing workplace bullying and promoting respectful micro and macro cultures are essential for maintaining employee mental well-being. Said differently, it blocks creativity, innovation and growth which is just bad for business.
Are your leadership teams ambassadors for benefit usage? Offering employee assistance programs (EAPs) and promoting work-life balance through flexible work arrangements, paid time off, and stress management initiatives are great. But there’s still a trepidation for the average employee in taking advantage of them. Ask that your leaders make it real for their teams by modeling benefit usage and integrating policies into the day-to-day. Hold people (lovingly) accountable accordingly.
Is workload balanced for people or robots? Because you’re working with real numbers like cost of doing business, it’s likely that time of task over energy and mental space for task is prioritized. While workload distribution and/or monitoring employee capacity are important they don’t tap into what separates us from robots – our brain and emotional capacity. Have more individualized and team-wide conversations to understand what drives creative freedom. Connect that to business drivers.
There’s plenty more to add to this list but I don’t want to overwhelm you. Truthfully, if you try to talk about workplace mental health without getting your controllable house in order on the above…you might start dealing with a wider retention issue.
