Tackling mental well-being at work

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Shucks, we have a mental well-being crisis, and I don’t even know where to begin!

Mindful Revolution partnered with Mail & Guardian to host a webinar to discuss why every organisation should have a mental well-being strategy and to share a blueprint around how you go about designing, creating and implementing such a strategy for your workplace. The webinar coincides with October being mental health awareness month.

Leading the discussion, Refiloe Nyoni, Director of Mindful Revolution, set the tone of the current mental health crisis by revealing shocking statistics, such as the WHO data that 15% of the world’s population goes on disability leave due to mental illness. She said the “turbo-charged” rate of change over the past three years has had a profound effect on our collective mental health.

Dr Lesego Rametsi, Group Head of Wellness for ABSA, added that during the Covid-19 pandemic, around 50% of South Africans developed a mental health condition. In the post-Covid period, this has increased to 66%. Around 300 million people suffer from mental health conditions, mainly depression. Megan Grey, Co-founder at FurtureShift and Co-founder of Mental Wellbeing Partners, added that “the need to speak about mental health was not negotiable”, noting the rising suicide rates in our communities.

Key topics of the discussion included:

Why tackle mental well-being in the workplace?What tools can leaders and employees use in this regard?How do we maintain support networks in the workplace?The importance of work-life balance or harmonyHow do you sanitise your sanity?

Steve Teasdale, Chief People Experience Officer for Discovery Group, said that although it had become more acceptable to talk about mental health there was still a lot of self-deception or denial. He said early detection of “warning signs” — as with any illness — was crucial but that not enough is being done to translate this into the workplace.

Employers are responsible for protecting the mental well-being of their employees, said Grey, quoting the mantra “good work is good for people, done in the right way”. She added that treatment was perceived as being expensive, hard to access, entailed long waiting periods and is elitist. Platforms should be created, and sustained, in workplaces where mental health can be discussed openly.

“There needs to be psychological safety,” Rametsi said, explaining that this means that people will not be punished, humiliated or discriminated against when sharing their troubles. Encouraging compassion among colleagues also binds the team together, enhances employee engagement, fosters collaboration and creativity — which will benefit the company overall. “We need to know that it’s okay not to be okay,” she said.

Recovery, recognition and acknowledgement

The panel discussed recognition and acknowledgement as important tools, rather than only reprimanding employees. Teasdale used the example of athletes who train very hard but then also have a recovery period. So too do employees need periods of recovery — apparent in the post-Covid workplace. Recognition should be given for aspects outside of productivity, such as standing in to help colleagues, building resilience and empathy.

Nyoni reiterated the importance of resting before you get tired, saying we should not neglect self-care. “We are the most important resource. Not just for work but also for our families and the people who need us.”

Build support networks

Addressing the question on how to build and maintain support networks, Grey said we need to learn how to speak about mental health. Language also needed to be considered carefully as some words do not have the same connotations for everyone. For example, “stress” may be casually thrown in a conversation about what to wear, but does not have the meaning for someone who is stressed because they don’t know how to feed their family. Talking about giving your child “vitamins” rather than saying it is medication confirms that mental health is not spoken about openly, unconsciously reinforcing the stigma.

We also need to address why employees may be reluctant to share their stories — stigma, discrimination, humiliation, punishment, and so forth. Grey said it takes a lot of courage and emotional literacy to tell your story. Emotional literacy refers to having self-awareness and recognition of your own feelings and knowing how to manage them. She said we need to give others permission to feel such self-awareness and encourage them to tell their stories.

Sharing stories and creating a balance

Rametsi said she received an overwhelming response after sharing her personal story at a workshop she attended earlier in the week. Telling her story, as a leader, gave other women the courage to tell their stories. The panellists agreed that storytelling was a vital tool in mental health.

Another challenging issue was creating a balance between work and home life, an issue that came to the fore during Covid-19 when many people were working remotely from home, and again when they returned to the workplace. Teasdale said creating boundaries worked for some people but that there are also those who thrive and find harmony in the complexity of their lives — “a mix and match”.

Understanding others plays a key role in leadership. Leaders need to first sit down and work out what energises them and what doesn’t — and then work out how to manage it. Another tool he offered is to ask employees to rate how they are feeling on a scale to 10. If they say seven, ask how they can get to 10.

Nyoni asked Teasdale what his personal method of relaxation is, to which he answered meditation — “a space of nothingness” he can enter whether dealing with a crisis or during a quiet time — which “recharges my battery”.

Mkhuseli Madiba in the chat feed asked: “How do you initiate the conversation around mental health without being targeted by your employer?”

Rametsi said: “You need a conducive environment for someone to come forward with something as personal as this.” She went on to explain that a line manager or human resources person needed to be identified to lead the initiative and “make the change”. She also advised to start small — start the conversation, so that it eventually can become part of the company’s culture.

Post-traumatic wisdom

Nyoni brought up the concept of “post-traumatic wisdom” to describe how we learn to build resilience and have compassion for our past self experiencing adversity. It is important to know that through reflection we can learn from traumatic experiences.Rametsi shared a WhatsApp message she received: “It takes courage to relate your story. We always think that we are the only ones with challenges and you have everything put together. Thank you for sharing. We all have stories to share.” How we overcome adversity gives the next person hope and courage that they can also overcome adversity. “Our stories save lives,” she said.

To conclude the webinar, Nyoni asked the panellists to share their favourite quotes, her’s being from an African proverb: “Be wary when a naked man offers you a shirt” (we can’t give what we don’t have). Teasdale quoted Martin Luther King: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anaemic”, which “recognises the duality we face and somehow we have to navigate the soft and the hard in our lives. Grey said she holds onto the phrase “what would you do if you weren’t afraid?”

A lot of courage is needed to change the mental health trajectory.