Mental Health Starts at the Top

(Photo by iStock/Xesai)

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed the fragile mental health of our workforces and executives are seeing the need to take a proactive, humanistic approach to addressing it. Ignoring employee needs would be synonymous with ignoring the well-being of the company itself, since cultural and behavioral changes that address the mental health of their workforce are a pre-condition for growth. We are only just past the one-year anniversary of the pandemic, and many of the long-term mental health effects are still unknown. But a subtle change is already taking place in many companies’ cultures, increasing the focus on mental health and taking thoughtful, yet systematic approaches to become “mental health resilient.” 

Over the past year, Deloitte conducted a series of CEO surveys in collaboration with Fortune to gain insight into CEO perspectives on the pandemic and other recent events. In October 2020, CEOs were clear that employee well-being was a key focus area: nearly three out of four CEOs said they had been concerned about their own and their executive team’s mental health and well-being over the past six months, while 90 percent said they had taken action to support the mental health and well-being of their employees. In our most recent survey—fielded in the first two weeks of January 2021—98 percent of CEOs agreed that employee mental health and well-being will be a priority even after the pandemic is over.

What approaches would CEOs do well to consider? Becoming “mental health resilient” will call on the compassion and humanity of CEOs and their leadership teams, now and into the future. Some broad areas for leaders to consider, for organization-wide mental health, include:

1. Making it safe to discuss mental health (and otherwise destigmatizing the issue)
2. Putting the right people in place to oversee the issue
3. Creating systemic and cultural change to support a mentally resilient organization.

Make It Safe

How CEOs and other leaders talk about mental health plays a major role in creating an atmosphere of safety in the workplace. During the pandemic, we’ve seen effective leaders learn to ask very different questions of their people, to begin not by asking “Where is that report?” but checking in first with “How are you doing, and is there any way we can support you?”

However, while it’s incumbent on CEOs and other leaders to set a tone of safety and support, this isn’t always simple. As a Harvard-reviewed study showed, close to 60 percent of people with diagnosable mental health conditions don’t talk about it at work; of those that did, less than half said these conversations were “positive.” Mental health stigma—a form of prejudice and discrimination—is so prevalent in corporate culture that there’s a word for it: “sanism,” which the AMA Journal of Ethics describes as “an irrational prejudice against people with mental illness … of the same quality and character as other irrational prejudices such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic bigotry that cause (and are reflected in) prevailing social attitudes.” 

If leaders are to combat mental health stigma, the first step is the same they would take against any other form of discrimination: bring it to light, name it, and acknowledge it, to make it safe to talk about. Address the stigma openly, by creating a safe space to raise awareness and literacy around mental health. In other words, normalize it.

Mental health struggles are commonly depicted in the media as extreme, diagnosable, and visible behaviors that undermine an individual’s ability to function. It’s less commonly understood that mental and emotional struggles can stem from a broader set of circumstances that could affect any of us. Indeed, the pandemic has been a perfect storm for mental health triggers: grief over the loss of life—even for life as we once knew it—physical isolation, social unrest, and economic insecurity coupled with limited access to the usual social and institutional support systems people turn to—friends, family, neighbors, child care, schools—can all compound anxiety and depression. 

To signal their understanding of the gravity of this situation, CEOs and others in positions of leadership can open a door by modeling vulnerability. Sharing their own stories or even a simple admission that “I had a hard day” can go a long way toward normalizing the conversation, showing employees that no one is alone in struggling with these feelings. In our experience, employees tend to model the behaviors of their leaders and there is nothing more powerful than an authentic story from a CEO or senior executive.

Make It Systemic

While CEOs and their leadership teams start and lead the conversation and strive for widespread understanding of the importance of mental health, they must also institutionalize a culture that prioritizes and supports mental health. Leadership should examine the benefits and resources already available to employees to determine whether their offerings are both meaningful and appropriate for their employee population. A robust approach to mental health should address prevention as well as support for people who are already struggling.

CEOs might want to consider creating a new position specifically for this purpose, as Deloitte has done with the Chief Well-being Officer (CWO). The CWO’s responsibility is to create programs that help educate and destigmatize, urge employees to become literate about holistic and mental health, and design support structures and environments where people feel comfortable reaching out to ask for help. Visible support and investment from the CEO and the leadership team are critical to amplifying the CWO role. Though relatively novel today, we believe that more of these roles will emerge, in part due to the effect COVID-19 has had in bringing mental health to our attention.

Some companies are also considering “psychological first aid” training for management and even implementing mental health first responders in the workplace to help address the acute emotional needs of a workforce under unprecedented external stress. Psychological first aid is not a new concept—the approach was first deployed in government and nonprofit sectors during the SARS and Ebola epidemics—but its current relevance is testament to the extenuating circumstances of the past year.  At Deloitte, we offer Mental Health First Aid, a national program proven to increase people’s ability to recognize the signs of someone who may be struggling with a mental health challenge and connect them to support resources.

We also observe companies evolving their policies to include a broader view of what they categorize as mental health. Leveraging the widespread shift to virtual work and engagement, companies have also been able to explore a more varied, expansive toolset to support a workforce at risk of being more digitally connected but feeling more personally isolated. For example, companies have encouraged their workforce to make use of meditation apps that offer potential benefits of increased focus, reduced stress, and a positive impact on interpersonal dynamics. Multiple virtual exercise, dance, and yoga programs can help make up for limited access to more social exercise forms. In the health-care industry—where frontline essential workers have no doubt endured some of the highest, most persistent levels of stress—employers have offered the gamut from virtual classes in yoga, music, meditation, and art-centric hobbies to online peer support groups. Access to these offerings is easy and spans multiple platforms, from low-tech phone hotlines to dedicated email addresses, websites, and social media, all organized by staff whose specific job is to support the mental well-being of employees. But confidentiality should be the bedrock of any wellness program, even as it simultaneously focuses on honest and open conversation.

It All Comes Back to Culture

Needless to say, it doesn’t matter what resources you offer if people don’t feel comfortable making use of them. Destigmatizing mental health issues in an employee population ultimately requires addressing a company’s cultural foundations, and while culture shifts don’t happen overnight, key first steps are starting at the top with the CEO, opening the conversation with management, spreading up-to-date knowledge, and—perhaps most important of all—showing some vulnerability. 

The past year has accelerated a shift in the right direction: The pandemic has brought us a long way toward normalizing vulnerability, because we have all been made vulnerable. By removing for so many of us the artificial wall between our work lives and our personal lives, the shift to virtual work has actually opened the door to more genuine human interactions. It’s become more acceptable for CEOs and leaders to express real concern and care: to ask, “How are you,” truly mean it, and want to hear the actual answer. By the same token, failing to express that care and ignoring opportunities to forge moments of personal connection can have devastating effects under circumstances in which those moments matter more than ever for workforce morale, engagement, and well-being.

As former Chiefs of Staff, the simple question “How are you, really?” helped to keep our interactions with CEOs honest. The question evokes a favorite exercise courtesy of Brené Brown, best-selling author and research professor at the University of Houston. She suggests starting virtual meetings or calls by having all participants name two emotions they’re feeling, either that day or in the moment. This simple check-in allows employees to think about what they’re feeling, and it gives leaders and colleagues a way to understand where everybody is, emotionally speaking, without asking anybody to divulge personal details. If a team leader sees that people are down, they can pivot and have a different kind of meeting. If a leader sees one particular person is having a hard day, he or she can circle back and see if the person needs some specific kind of support. 

While time-strapped CEOs may often feel pressured to get to business, the benefits of taking a moment to check in this way with their executive team—or even inviting employees to share virtually via a chat function at larger events—can be well worth it. Compartmentalizing the various aspects of our lives can take a toll over time. When people are able to fully integrate their personal and professional selves, they feel more seen, more heard, and more accepted. 

A Final Call to Action for CEOs

Asking for help is a sign of strength. Consider making candid discussions about mental health a part of regular workplace communication, whether in person or virtual. Make systemic efforts to develop an action plan that can bring about personal improvements and by extension, long-term mental health resilience that permeates society and becomes embedded in the broader culture. We can work on preserving the safer, more caring, more compassionate workplace environments we’ve created and designed in the throes of the pandemic, for post-pandemic life. Let’s not let our struggles during this time have been in vain. 

And let’s not forget: CEOs need to take care of their own mental health as well. Heaped with expectations, responsibilities, and complexities, the chief executive role can be all-consuming even in the best of times, and it is not usually afforded much leniency when it comes to taking a break, or even taking a breath. The past twelve months have added a set of unprecedented business challenges, alongside a set of acute mental health challenges which any human being would have had to confront in some form. While there is no playbook for guiding a business through a pandemic, there is a wealth of knowledge about what it takes to address and support mental health and well-being. We challenge CEOs to lead the way. 

Read more stories by Jen Fisher, Heather McBride Leef & Kathy Lu.