The Economic Paradox Of Workplace Mental Health Care
The Economic Paradox Of Workplace Mental Health Care Jo Aggarwal, Forbes Councils Member
Jo Aggarwal is CEO and Cofounder of Wysa, a leader in conversational AI care for mental health.
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Many of us have lived through the era when talking about mental health in the workplace was taboo. Your emotional state at work was considered somehow separate from your mental health, and companies had an expectation that you leave problems at the door.
Today, with around 40% of employees suffering from symptoms of anxiety or depression, employers are realizing an undeniable truth: It’s in their best interest to acknowledge and support employees' mental health.
Despite the positive transformation in the way many leaders think about mental health at work, the question of the economic case for care leaves many hesitant to fully commit, especially as economic uncertainty demands guaranteed returns for any investment. Yet Deloitte has found that enterprise mental health support has one of the strongest returns on investment a business can make.
Solving An Invisible Problem
It’s easy to assume that just because there hasn’t been deafening chatter of employee anxiety or depression in HR reporting or throughout the workplace, there simply isn’t an issue in your organization, and thus you won’t see any return from addressing it.
Today's data is clear, however: Stress, burnout, depression and anxiety pervade the workforces of most organizations. The days of understanding depression or anxiety as a condition you categorically have or don’t have are long gone. Now, we understand that mental health is a spectrum that changes throughout our days, weeks and lives. Leaders can't afford to assume mental health isn’t impacting all corners of their organizations just because they don’t hear about it.
Effects On Turnover
According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average cost to replace an employee is 6 to 9 months of their salary, making a reduction in turnover a priority. Researchers from Lancaster University and the University of London also found that around 5% of voluntary turnover can be directly attributed to mental health concerns.
But problematically, it often isn’t until an exit interview or career progression review that managers find out an employee had been struggling. In my company's All Worked Up Report, four in 10 American employees screened positive for depression or anxiety. The fact is employees often don’t self-report issues of stress or anxiety until they are unable to function without help.
Absenteeism, Presenteeism And Productivity
The National Institute of Mental Health found that the leading cause of absenteeism in the United States is depression, with unscheduled absenteeism costing employers billions of dollars each year. But absenteeism isn’t a solitary issue. Presenteeism, which includes employees who come to work even when they’re facing concerns or illnesses that prevent them from being fully present and productive, is on the rise.
In either case, employees aren’t able to concentrate on work, and colleagues end up shouldering additional tasks to meet deadlines, creating a cascading effect of burnout and resentment.
The Paradox In Wellness ROI Cases
The paradox of calculating an economic case for employee wellness lies here. The pressure of productivity and outcomes is the very reason employees put their well-being last. There is always a crisis of greater immediacy than an employee’s personal struggles. Among my company's healthcare clients, we often hear that nurses with severe symptoms of depression and anxiety feel guilty about seeking support because they believe they are letting down a colleague or patient who struggles more than them.
And this perspective does not only exist in critical industries. My company's recently commissioned survey of over 1,000 U.S. employees found that lack of time (40%) and not feeling like their issue is serious enough (32%) are the leading reasons employees don’t seek help for mental health concerns.
While there is a strong case for ROI on true enterprise mental health support, we must begin to shift our approach to employee care overall. We need to ask ourselves whether we want to live in a world where 40% of working adults are distressed to the point of illness, regardless of the impact on productivity. We must start from a place of compassion and understand that the business benefit will always follow. Just like net promotor scores help gauge and address customer satisfaction, making employee mental health scores a key board-level metric can help combat the growing mental health crisis.
Tools For Addressing Employee Mental Health
Active Listening And Psychologically Safe Spaces
The most important first step your organization can take to improve employee well-being is to honestly assess the availability of channels and spaces for employees to be heard and share vulnerable emotions. It is equally important to consider the elements of workplace culture within the organization that may prevent them from doing so.
Creating a psychologically safe environment where employees can share feedback and be heard is the nonnegotiable first step to improving workplace mental health. Feedback must be welcomed, respectfully acknowledged and responded to when it is shared.
External Tools And Resources
Apart from fine-tuning the internal channels for employee concerns and well-being, external tools can provide an important separate space for employees to cope with work stresses. Often, employees deal with stress related to work outside of normal office hours, like middle-of-the-night episodes or weekend anxiety about the coming week.
By providing external tools employees can leverage outside of the traditional work hours and setting, you can achieve better relief outcomes for your workforce. However, whether it be a partnership with an accredited coaching website, use of a mental health platform, or utilizing another digital therapeutic resource, it's important to verify that the tools you choose are backed by clinical evidence and that they protect your employees’ mental health data.
It’s time that we stop measuring how employee mental health can affect the organization’s bottom line and start measuring the organization’s collective mental health and what the bottom line can do to improve it.
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