Mental Health

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    Linked: 5 Simple Ways to Do More for Your Employees’ Mental Health This Week

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    The reason I wanted to focus on this is that it can also be very easy to underestimate how much time people are spending on their work when the work is being done remotely, or in a hybrid situation. Even in the legal or consulting worlds where many of us are billing our time, or at least tracking time worked on projects, it’s not telling you the whole story. There is a lot of time spent on miscellaneous tasks that are getting lost in whatever tool you’re using to track the amount of time worked.

    It’s the 15 minutes I logged in to check my schedule before accepting a handful of meeting requests before heading to bed. The time spent clearing out the inbox over my first cup of coffee, or answering questions for a newer coworker, it’s all very likely to not show up in the “official” time because it happens, and then we forget about it.

    Do you know how much time your people work without considering it time worth tracking? Do you know how much those little interruptions add to the overall stress levels?

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    Linked: Employers Grapple with Surge in Mental Health Issues

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    Having HR professionals understand this is important. Having them try to influence the business leaders might help too. At the end of the day, though, this only gets better if the entire culture buys into it. Any individual manager who isn’t capable of making reasonable accommodations because they haven’t been trained or because the actual business practices create a roadblock for them only proves that this is all just talk.

    People who’ve struggled for years to continue working at the risk of their mental health deserve a lot more than talk.

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    Linked: How to Be a Mental Health Ally

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    It’s that first line that should grab your attention because so many people do not see mental health struggles as something that impacts them, or will impact them. But the numbers don’t lie. Someone you know, probably even someone very close to you, is dealing with mental health struggles as you read this. Someone you work with is doing the same themselves or supporting someone else who is.

    How great would it be if we all recognized that and provided a safe place for them to talk about those struggles instead of not welcoming their voices and causing more harm?

    I don’t think we can even imagine how helpful that would be because we see it so infrequently. It’s time for that to change.

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    Linked: It’s Time For Employers To Support Youth Mental Health

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    This is sometimes a missing piece regarding mental health and work. It’s not just the people who work for you, it’s the people who work for you with kids or other family members dealing with mental health issues. “Why do employers need to take a leadership role in addressing this crisis? For starters, young people…

  • Linked: How Loneliness Is Damaging Our Health

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    They also point out that whether being lonely causes that change or whether that DNA change makes someone more likely to feel lonely is unclear. What is clear, though, is that helping someone feel less lonely is a worthwhile goal. Helping someone feel like they are part of a community and have something to offer that community helps them. It’s one of the keys to suicide prevention too.

    If work gets in the way of this happening, if abusive relationships or stigma get in the way, it can have fatal consequences.

    As we consider what the future of our workplaces should be, we’d do well to remember that our people have lives outside of work and are better off when they can enjoy the people in their lives outside of work.

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    Linked: Mental Health America’s new Mind the Workplace 2022 Report:

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    Something to check out. Mental Health America’s new Mind the Workplace 2022 Report: An Employer’s Responsibility to Employee Mental Health seeks to answer the latest question on business leaders’ minds: “How can employers meaningfully support employee mental health in 2022?” Data in the report comes from the Work Health Survey, which measured the perceptions of…