Linked: How To Spot Anxiety In Your Employees

This first paragraph is sad. How do you call yourself a manager of people and leave them feeling like this?

“Let’s face it, noticing changes in employees can be hard, especially with so many people working remotely. And that’s leading many of our workers to believe their companies don’t really care about their well-being. In the Ginger survey, two-thirds of workers reported that their company could do more to support their emotional and mental health, and 22 percent said their company’s response has been “barely adequate,” “a disaster” or “non-existent.” Yikes.”

Let’s start doing something different, shall we? This is a pretty good start, though the rest of the article gets into more details:

“For managers, the best way to begin spotting anxiety is to make it normal for team members to talk about mental health issues so they don’t have to hide what they are feeling. That might mean leaders need to display some vulnerability themselves, for instance talking about their own stress or anxiety—i.e., “I’m worried about my kids going back to school,” or “I’m having a hard time in this remote world.” It also means leaders must be willing to engage in sensitive dialogues with their people about concerns.”

It has to start at the top. If management talks about, and displays actions, that indicate that the mental health of everyone who works at the company is important, that would go a long way. We can’t just ask all of our direct reports if they are depressed, but if we create an atmosphere of caring about people beyond them being a cog in our machine, and prioritizing doing things that are good for our mental health, including therapy when appropriate, maybe no one we work with will answering a survey about your company response as “a disaster”.

I wouldn’t feel very confident about employee retention if that is how people feel about your response in the midst of a global pandemic.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adriangostick/2020/09/21/how-to-spot-anxiety-in-your-employees/

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