Your Employees Are Probably Not Okay

For the first few months after employers sent workers home last March, one theme emerged again and again in our conversations with CHROs: Everyone was doing great. Productivity was up. Engagement scores rose. Previously skeptical CEOs were converted overnight into believers in remote work. The whole notion of the office was up in the air (I even wrote a blog post about it).

But as organizations shifted from crisis response to a state of normalcy that promises to stretch well into 2021, CHROs have their eye on a different potential problem: Employee mental health. In an Evanta pulse survey, 64% of CHRO respondents told us they were worried about employee burnout, and 61% were concerned about employee morale. “You can’t overestimate the importance of mental well-being right now,” said the CHRO of a global clothing brand.

They are right to be concerned: A host of research shows that employees are facing serious challenges to their mental and emotional health. Over 54% of workers report being more emotionally exhausted than before the pandemic. Nearly 70% of employees felt more stressed in 2020 than at any other point in their careers – a remarkable finding given the fact that we experienced a global financial crisis just a little more than a decade ago.

This is, of course, unsurprising. Depending on their situation, employees face an unprecedented number of stressors, potentially all at once: Worries about job security; more demands due to colleagues being laid off; the blurring line between work and home life; the demands of childcare and schooling; the isolation of lockdown and remote work; concern about health risks while working on-site. The list goes on.

Remote work by itself, despite many well documented benefits for both employer and employee, comes with a host of potentially negative impacts on mental well-being. The hazy boundary between work and home life can lead to a feeling of being “always on,” which for one-fifth of employees can lead to mental exhaustion. And additional research has shown that employees who work from home when they have no other choice – as is the case with many of today’s remote workers – are significantly less motivated than those who can work in an office setting, leaving them feeling aimless and without purpose.

To make matters worse, one of the main stressors facing employees now – isolation – also makes mental health struggles harder to identify and address. Colleagues and managers no longer have the chance to notice that someone might be struggling. Employees lack the spontaneous interactions that might allow them to share their problems with friends at work.

The challenge facing Human Resources leaders today is to help their employees endure: Few of the pandemic-related challenges facing workers will go away soon. And while employee engagement may have bounced back after a recent historic drop, volatility will likely be the norm for an extended period. In addition to being a human challenge, addressing mental well-being is a business imperative: In a survey, 62% of workers reported losing over an hour a day on productivity due to COVID-19-related stress, with nearly a third losing more than two hours per day. In the long run, the stakes are no less than employee engagement, productivity, and retention.

Early efforts to prevent and address employee mental wellness focus on three fronts. First, leadership must set the tone. If top executives acknowledge that things are stressful, or aren’t afraid of having their own children crash video calls, it signals to employees that they aren’t alone in their struggles. For example, the CHRO of a financial services organization admitted on a company town hall a few months ago that things were hard for her sometimes. Afterwards, she heard an outpouring of gratitude from employees. “That created a lot of credibility for leadership with employees,” she said.

Second, managers will have to be on alert for signs of burnout, stress, and disengagement. Human Resources leaders today have been encouraging managers to have regular check-ins with their direct reports to see how they’re doing. But more proactive measures should include training managers on how to engage employees on their personal well-being and how to lead teams remotely, as well as to carefully track employee sentiment, productivity, and absenteeism.

Third, CHROs will need to take a careful look at their mental health benefits offerings, beyond the EAP. Says one HR leader: “Traditionally, our role has been pretty limited here. But our mental health offerings are going to have to be more robust. That’s not just more mental health counseling sessions on the EAP. I’m going to push our partners on this to see what additional role we can play there.”

As organizations settle in for the long haul of waiting on the pandemic, CHROs will be leading the charge in helping their workforces cope with the unique stresses of the moment. It’s just one more example of how HR was thrust to the forefront of the most important decisions that businesses made in 2020 -- and into 2021.