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If you ask the average executive about their employees’ mental health, they’ll usually say something related to wellness, mindfulness, or “self care.” If pushed further, said executive will refer to the HR department, or perhaps to some sort of nebulous internal program to “help employees deal with the stress of a challenging world.”
The reason that they do this is because they don’t really know what’s happening in their company, but they also don’t really care, because if they did, they’d realize that you can’t use therapy to beat a shitty job.
Dave Whiteside, Director of Insights at YMCA WorkWell, shared some of his research around how companies could support their employees’ mental health, and the findings are incredible. Apparently, the biggest thing affecting workers’ mental health is…their work? What? Am I reading this right? You’re saying that the stress of work can be reduced by work being less stressful? NO!
I am, of course, being quite sarcastic.
In every single job where I’ve felt that I had any kind of mental health issue, it’s come down to a combination of lacking any meaningful support and working in a toxic environment. While bad situations from your personal life can bleed into your professional one, the inverse is far more likely — you spend hours at work, surrounded by…
