I think we can all see a lot of workplaces in this intro, so these resources can be very useful in helping us understand how to not let the stress of work ruin our health: “Work-related stress can get the best of us all. Emails, Slack messages, phones ringing off the hook, your co-worker dropping…
That’s why what happened today, and everything that has been leading up to it saddens me. The Republican Party has eaten itself. The QAnon conspiracy theorists couldn’t have done a better job of blowing up the GOP if they were literally working for the Democrats. (Maybe they were?)
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I think this is interesting in a couple of different ways. Clearly, workers are putting a much higher value on their own mental health, and companies that don’t get that, and support it, are going to end up having quite a bit of turnover.
But, the other thing that I wanted to think more about was what those specific reasons say about the mental health of Millennial and Gen Z workers. They seem to be dealing with a lot of stress around finances, and having that stress impact their mental health. Is that new? Or is it more likely that Gen X and Boomers have had those same stresses, but didn’t really identify them as mental health issues, like anxiety.
I think there’s something to that. Not to start talking about how things were “back in my day”, but I don’t recall anyone talking about anxiety in the same way we talk about it now. I suspect that many of us had anxiety around finances, we just didn’t call it that, and our solution to that anxiety was, of course, to work harder and longer.
And guess what? The next generations watched us do that, especially the Baby Boomers, and realized that it doesn’t actually work. Our mental health has sucked, for years, and we just didn’t admit it. They are willing to talk about it, and look for work that fits with lessening stress, especially stress that is related to finances.
Now, you would think that if they had more stress around finances, they would also just “work harder and longer”, but that assumes that the relationship between employers and employees is the same as it was 25-30 years ago, and it’s just not. Companies come and go now overnight. They run out to hire when things are growing, and rush to fire when things are not growing. Whole industries barely exist anymore. None of us live in the same work world that we grew up in any more.
I could see this being true, because we know there is a lot of stigma surrounding mental health issues in the workplace:
“New research from recruitment agency Hays claims that nearly a quarter (24 percent) of those who have or have experienced a mental health condition feel they do not have equal access to the same career progression opportunities as other colleagues. Similarly, 12 percent of those who have had or experienced mental ill health said they felt this had led to their chances of being selected for a job being lowered.”
You would think, after everything we’ve been through this year with COVID-19, racial justice issues, a dysfunctional election, and natural disasters, maybe, just maybe this wouldn’t still be the case, but I’m afraid for many workers, this is totally true: “In my opinion, productivity is given undue importance, while burnout is largely ignored in the…