Punching out: The dire state of worker mental health | Dump Trucks Charlotte NC

But it did. “I took a few half days. Worked some nights. Here I am two weeks later" — days ahead of her son's first birthday — "and it feels like a blip." She said she's in better place, and "lucky to have unlimited PTO, but I do wish I could specify it was for COVID leave.”

Consider policy changes for employee well-being 

Neither Skybetter nor Singerman want to villainize their employers, and both offered advice to companies interested in supporting the well-being of employees and their families. 

Skybetter said, when “a parent is out for both COVID and simultaneous caretaking duties,” there’s no way to specify the type or reason for thetime away from work. Pointing to her husband’s employer who lets employees differentiate types of leave, Skybetter suggests other employers expand system capabilities to do the same. 

Singerman offered three suggestions to help workers deal with stress and mental health issues:

• Whole office shut-downs. “I think one of the best things employers can do is offer multiple times per year when the whole office shuts down. Everyone is tired and overwhelmed. Everyone wants a break.” When everyone is off at the same time, employees will appreciate “not coming back to a mountain of work.” These closures can lift morale and become occasions to plan around with happy anticipation, she said. 

• Cost-of-living adjustments. “I think COLAs are really important for employee mental health. It shows [employers] are committed to the whole workforce.”

• Message schedulers. Singerman said managers working at night should schedule messages for delivery the next morning. This will alleviate pressure employees feel on receipt of “email, text messages and phone calls from senior leaders after columbus oh dump truck company hours, or at all hours on weekends.” Acknowledging this could be difficult for organizations with a workforce across different time zones, she said most supervisors should nonetheless "be aware of their employee's schedules and respect them.”

These problems are intertwined and present a positive opportunity to rethink work as a first step, Rep. Ro Khanna of California said during the recent Workers and the Corporate Values Revolution conference, hosted by From Day One, a conference series and media outlet.  

“You don't need the 9-to-5, or staying long hours just for face time,” said Khanna, who wrote the book “Dignity in a Digital Age.” These actually may not be the most productive ways to work, and beyond that, there’s a need to prioritize greater workplace flexibility. 

Conference speakers agreed the pandemic has prompted increased transparency, better language and more discussion in the workplace around mental health. But employee well-being is closely tied to employee experience, and employee experience can comprise highly individualized elements of race and age, parental and marital status, gender identity, paid leave, and more. It became clear during conference sessions that the nuances of employee well-being require a specialized approach. 

Recognize employee apprehension about workplace settings

A July 2021 survey from The Conference Board that found employees who were apprehensive about returning to offices had also “expressed greater concerns about mental health, stress, and burnout.” 

Meanwhile, a University of Phoenix Career Optimism Index released in February revealed that 62% of respondents who were “not hopeful about the future of their career were actively looking or expecting to look for new jobs.” A greater share (69%) responded “if things would change at my job, I would consider staying,” but 1 in 3 employees said they would quit their current jobs without securing another. 

Taylor, the clinical psychologist, said because of “the reactive nature of traditional employer-provided mental health resources — like EAPs and occupational health — people end up not seeking care until symptoms have become overwhelming. And because the topic of mental health and illness is still taboo within many columbus oh dump truck company cultures, many employees struggle to ask for help.”

Find a new perspective on employee recognition 

“Just seeing your employees” is a type of employee recognition that’s urgently necessary in today's atmosphere, said Gabriela Mauch, vice president of Productivity Lab at ActivTrak. 

She discouraged the often rote, unilateral traditions of leadership that don’t recognize people as individuals. 

Addressing employee burnout, she suggested managers rely on tools that alert them when employees are working well over their typical hours or through the weekends. 

This will help managers to facilitate the right conversation at the right time, said Mauch, and to step out of "the robotic nature of 'hey, how are you doing? Okay, good. What are your tasks today? That’s putting someone in a cadence. That's what you want to avoid. When we're spending all this time thinking about how we can train and develop our managers to listen, we need to think about the other side of the equation, which is how we can empower employees to speak, perhaps by simply asking ‘Are you okay?’” 

SAP's Smith said that while it may seem obvious, “it’s so critical to devote time, resources and budget to get an accurate read on how employees are doing.”

Lead with compassion amid competition

There’s an important link between workplace compassion and workplace competition. “You certainly don't want to facilitate a cutthroat workforce” as an inadvertent consequence of benchmarks and rewards, said conference moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza.

“It's that platinum versus golden rule,” said Sarah Bartas, vice president, HR corporate at Stanley Black & Decker. “The golden rule is to treat others as you wish to be treated, but it's really [about] the platinum rule — treat others as they wish to be treated. Meet them where they are. Are they someone that is introverted, where you have to create a different kind of space for compassion versus … that vocal person in the room, and you've got to find a different space for them? It's common sense, but it's not common practice.”

Scott Nycum, vice president for inclusion, diversity and giving at General Dynamics Information Technology, offered what he called a hack — as “an optimist but also an incrementalist.” 

“Hacking innovation-compassion could look something like this: When someone has a success, the debrief is naming who helped you. It gets the brain to [acknowledge] ‘I didn't get here alone’ and it changes the tone and tenor of culture on a team. We ask that question no matter what.” 

Even in situations of apparent failure, Nycum said the question is asked: “Who helped you to get back up when you failed?” Though he called it a small thing, Nycum said he’d rather have every team at General Dynamics make this 2% shift in focus — a move he said could help build trusting workplace relationships and re-energize teams, wherever they may be in the world.  

Remember each day is a day for mental health

Not just during May — Mental Health Awareness Month — but everyday, mental health and workplace well-being demands awareness, sources say.

“It’s important," Smith added, “that employers do not view mental health as a check-the-box exercise when approaching solutions. Addressing mental health in the workplace should take a multi-faceted and integrated approach.”