A question to ask ourselves this World Mental Health Day (and every day, really)

Earlier today, Harvard Business Review published a riveting new post about the future of mental health at work. I know - it's an overused tagline but this article, I'm telling you, is one of the best articles I've read on the topic in quite awhile. 

The future of well-being at work, the article goes, and I quote "Won’t be an emerging technological renaissance or a transformation of hybrid work. The future will be a recommitment to core human needs. It will be safety, community, and a healthy organizational culture. It will be sustainable work rooted in equity and workers’ voices. The future of workplace mental health will start with exactly that: work itself."

The future of well-being and supporting team mental health comes down to the basics, then. See what I mean? Excellent.

This World Mental Health Day, rather than add to the overly saturated conversation about self-care, my post is about the workplace and how it is we can bring this year’s theme to life within our workplaces. The theme being: Mental Health is a Universal Right.

As we look to the future, the workplace mental health movement will ultimately need to go “back to basics.” Workers no longer want frivolous perks to distract them from work. They want stable employment to mitigate financial anxiety, recognition to know they matter, sustainable workloads to prevent burnout, a supportive community to find belonging, the flexibility to decide how work works for them, and the autonomy and voice to feel respect, agency, and ownership over their work and their lives.

- Harvard Business Review

Workplaces and leaders alike can get started by agreeing to agree that supporting well-being is a result of a myriad of workplace factors. There are 13 specific factors if we consider the framework developed by the Mental Health Commission of Canada. It’s a fulsome list that when examined carefully, it’s apparent just how practical and pragmatic each factor is to address. Look closely, and you’ll see how much they make sense. It just takes a concerted effort to keep the pace.

Recent comments from Emma Codd, Global Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer on LinkedIn point out that 6 in 10 Gen Z and Millennials cite heavy workload, poor work-life-balance, unhealthy team cultures, and an inability to be their authentic selves at work as contributing to their stress and anxiety. For some workplaces, the issues may be deep-rooted in culture and ways of working.

Addressing how work gets done amongst human beings, beings with a multitude of priorities and things happening all around them, takes time and focus. But what’s the alternative? Missed commitments, lowered morale, voluntary attrition, impact to the customer experience, missed targets, increased illness due to long-term chronic stress? No thank you, indeed.

I recognize that it takes a consistent effort to change workplace culture – team norms take time to diffuse throughout an organization and new behaviours require daily practice before they become long-term natural habits. I do firmly and wholeheartedly believe, however, that workplaces can and need to be engines of human sustainability. More simply, people can do their work, feel good about it, can manage through periods of high intensity, and still feel mentally healthy and motivated to keep doing more for themselves and others.

If we consider this year’s mental health theme – that mental health is a universal human right – in the context of the workplace, we can make a difference in helping achieve this global aspiration.

Mentally healthy employees equals mentally healthy community members, better friends, more considerate and thoughtful family members. Organizational commitments to team well-being very much have the potential to drive systemic change for good. And it starts with all of us – all workers – to consistently consider this one question:

“Am I, or how we work, a source of negative impact to the people whom I work with or know?”

Let’s all work to find the answer by posing the question and then listening to what we’re told.

If the answer is no, then that’s great. If the answer is yes, start working to eliminate the risks with thoughtful planning and consistent actions. People want to do meaningful work, be compensated well, and kept mentally healthy while doing it. How we communicate, offer flexibility, and show understanding, is the difference between a decent work experience and a superb one, every day. Not just on World Mental Health Day, which mind you, is a day to spark thoughtful reflection on what we can do going forward.