How Are You, Really? 5 Steps To Address Mental Health At Work

According to recent studies, 75% of employees report at least one symptom of a mental illness, and up to 41% more are talking about their mental health at work than they were in 2019 (Mind Share Partners, 2021). I recently had the privilege of hosting a conversation between two compassionate leaders to discuss mental health in the workplace. Emily Rosado-Solomon, an academic, and Amy Gilliland, President of GDIT, offer 5 steps to guide leaders in how they might facilitate conversations with their teams that lead to better outcomes for their mental health.

Emily Rosado-Solomon is an assistant professor and researcher at Babson College, a small private college in Wellesley, MA that focuses on entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial thought, and experiential learning. Rosado-Solomon has her PhD in Human Relations and Industrial Relations from Rutgers University. Her work at Babson centers around research about mental health and mental illness in organizations, the intersection of mental health and work, and how people relate to each other more broadly in the workplace.

Amy Gilliland is the President of General Dynamics Information Technology, a company that delivers IT and professional services to the United States government in areas like Artificial Intelligence, Cloud, and Cybersecurity. Gilliland manages a company of 30,000 employees, ⅓ of whom are veterans and about ½ have national security clearances.

Our conversation began by discussing a new campaign launched at GDIT under Gilliland’s leadership called “How are you, really?”. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gilliland saw the toll that this global change and traumatic event was taking on her employees. Her workforce was stressed and anxious, and after losing an employee to suicide, it became stunningly apparent that people were not okay. Leaders at GDIT saw that “How are you?” couldn’t be a perfunctory question anymore. It needs to be taken seriously. So, “How are you, really?” was launched, and GDIT began to host conversations around mental health and illness in the workplace and to provide resources for the wellness of its employees.

Emily Rosado-Solomon’s research explores how mental health and illness relate to people’s working lives. She explains that for people with mental health challenges (anxiety, depression, burnout) or chronic mental illness (major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, etc), work can give meaning, heal, increase self-esteem, and be a restorative function. Workplaces that value and prioritize the health and wellness of their employees are necessary for flourishing.

Emily Rosado-Solomon and Amy Gilliland put their heads together and recommended these 5 next steps for leaders of companies and organizations that want to lead with compassion and provide a healthy culture around mental health and illness in their workplaces:

1. Understand the difference between mental health and mental illness. Compassionate leaders seek education on the difference between mental health and mental illness and the various challenges that may arise with both realities. Knowing your employees and understanding their particular needs gives you the information to provide the necessary tools for them to flourish, be productive, and enjoy their work.
2. Train leaders to be comfortable with hard conversations. In order to change the culture of your company around mental health and illness, conversations around these topics need to be made acceptable. Leadership teams must be trained to be comfortable with these conversations and to pay attention to signs of burnout. No leader should feel the need to be personally involved in a coworker’s mental health challenges. Still, they should be comfortable knowing how to connect them to the proper support and resources.
3. Prioritize role clarification. A straightforward way to alleviate burnout and stress in the workplace is to write comprehensive and clear job descriptions. When employees have clarity in their work, it empowers them to focus on their particular responsibilities and openly communicate.
4. Create employee resource groups. People are looking to find connection in a world that is more isolated and filled with anxiety than it was before COVID-19. Employee resource groups create space for particular communities within a workplace and offer good content and discussions. By providing spaces of connection, employees can find specific support and resources they need to thrive in their work. For example, your company could form a veterans resource group, a women’s resource group, or a young professionals resource group. As a leader, the more you encourage in-person connection, the better!
5. Offer benefits that make counseling available to everyone. For many, the cost of counseling and other health-related care is too high to make it accessible or sustainable. Companies can offer benefits to provide financial support to employees so that they can afford counseling. Companies can also offer flexibility in employees’ schedules so that they can attend an in-person or virtual counseling session during their work day.

Emily Rosado-Solomon and Amy Gilliland have been nominated for the 2024 Compassionate Leaders Circle Awards for their groundbreaking work around mental health in the workplace.