Employees are making the call, but is anybody listening?

Because May is Mental Health Awareness Month, you’ll probably see platitudes about the importance of mental health in the workplace. But it takes more than well-intentioned sentiments to help employees at all levels of an organization prioritize their mental wellbeing.

While most leaders empathize with employees who may be grappling with difficult mental health challenges, empathy is different from compassion, which requires action to relieve someone’s suffering.

When mental health issues hit the C-suite

Let’s look at how this could play out, with someone we’ll call Jonah, a CEO of a large hospitality company. Jonah believed he was “doing everything he could” to support employees’ mental health needs, especially after the pandemic left his industry and employees drained, demoralized and depressed.

But Jonah — a well-intentioned, busy executive navigating the complexities of leading a multigenerational workforce while also remaining profitable and poised for expansion — admitted his concern was largely lip service to addressing mental health, as he figured employees just needed a long weekend now and then to deal with stress.

It wasn’t until Jonah landed in the ER with what felt like a heart attack but was acute undiagnosed anxiety that it started making sense: This is what my employees are dealing with too.

It shouldn’t have to take a C-suite medical emergency to realize that mental health is important. But often, it does.

Change starts when empathy becomes compassion

Through in-depth focus groups with employees, Jonah saw how pervasive mental health issues were across the organization. He enlisted the help of benefits and mental health experts to develop strategies tailored to his company through various functions and levels.

Jonah realized that providing an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) or on-site yoga isn’t enough, and he’s not alone. The issue is rampant throughout most organizations: In 2023, half of employees reported they are always or often exhausted or stressed, and about one-third felt irritable, lonely or depressed. Even worse, employees felt their manager didn’t care that they were experiencing these issues or that it wasn’t their problem.1

In fact, 30% of workers say they would not seek help within their workplace due to privacy concerns, stigma and insufficient information on what’s available.2 Such thinking perpetuates the myth that employees don’t want mental health support at work, potentially misleading the belief that mental health support isn’t valued or needed.

The HUB EDGE

Jonah joined in the companywide effort to improve mental health and wellbeing. By sharing his own experiences as a leader, he cultivated vital organizational buy-in; his honesty about his own struggles encouraged employees to voice their concerns and make suggestions about how to improve mental health support. A qualitative and quantitative deep dive into Jonah’s employee base revealed telling insights into employees’ wants and needs, their financial health and myriad other factors that contribute to mental health. This data analytics effort was essential to providing personalized benefits that included access to personal insurance, financial wellness tools and robust retirement options to enhance the employee experience. These benefits provide additional peace of mind for employees whose stress may be caused in part by financial insecurity.

Jonah’s company further strengthened benefits by adding other elements, including improved mental health care coordination with insurers, increased contributions to health savings accounts (HSAs), better access to telehealth providers, manager mental health training, and revised leave policies to support worker wellbeing.

Ultimately, the benefits transformation invigorated Jonah as a leader and made employees feel seen and heard. He also normalized taking time off to recharge and encouraged his team to follow suit. The result? Morale improved, turnover and absenteeism declined, productivity and profits increased — and even competitors took notice.

A few key questions can crystallize how your organization approaches mental health:

  1. Are we empathetic and compassionate?
  2. Do we personalize our employee experience — ensuring that the workforce receives the benefits they want and need — with the same care and precision as we do for our customers?
  3. Are we offering effective programs that are truly helping our workforce and their families, and do we have the right partners to help us to continue to identify solutions for our employees?

1 Harvard Business Review, “What New Managers Can Do to Support Employee Mental Health,” November 15, 2021.

2 American Psychological Association, “Workers appreciate and seek mental health support in the workplace,” accessed April 8, 2024.