The New World of Work
The US Surgeon General’s 5 Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being Essentials
April 22, 2023
Written By:
Kelly Pallanti, CEO & Founder, Mentally Fit Workplaces
Tiffany Castagno, CEO & Founder, CEPHR, LLC
COVID has forever shifted the way we see work and the Future of Work. Nothing will ever be the same and workforces have had to shift to follow these changes, among which are: Added levels of flexibility and Empathy required from Leadership and organizations, and a more intentional focus on employee health and well-being. That includes Mental Health. According to Gallup, “Unfortunately, only three in every 10 U.S. employees agree that their opinions count.” Employees want to be seen, valued, respected, and appreciated. When this is the case, they are engaged, and you retain them. When it is not, it has detrimental impacts to employees’ Mental Health, to teams, and to the organization.
Workers are refusing to go back to pre-pandemic work cultures that embraced the stigma of mental health-that forbidden topic that affects every human. The idea that mental and physical health are not connected is an outdated concept in a workforce that wants employers to care about their total well-being. The alignment between creating a psychologically safe environment, mental health, and DEI is evident in their mutual goal of giving individuals the opportunity to bring their whole selves to work (whatever that may look like for them) so that they can use their time, energy, and creativity to advance themselves within the organization. When the focus is centered around supporting individuals and giving them the tools to perform at their best, companies will not only see increased innovation and growth, it will also impact other areas of operations including recruitment, retention, absenteeism, and costs associated with poor health such as healthcare and disability claims.
Once the goal of supporting total health at work is established, the big question comes next, “How do we get there?”. Although the pandemic has shined a light on the need for mental health safety at work, there was a gap on how to implement practices that will move companies forward, until October 2022 when the US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy developed the Five Essentials for Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being a new framework for developing psychological health and safety practice. The Five Essentials identifies key areas of workplace support and highlights two human needs including:
1. Protection from Harm: Safety and Security
2. Connection & Community: Belonging and Social Support
3. Work-Life Harmony: Autonomy and Flexibility
4. Mattering at Work: Dignity and Meaning
5. Opportunity for Growth: Learning and Accomplishments
The 5 Essentials is designed to aid every industry and size of organization to develop policies and procedures that will change the workplace culture and strengthen overall success. Let’s dive into the core elements and actionable objectives organizations can take to advance mental health at work.
1. Protection from Harm: Safety and Security
When we envision protection from harm in the workplace, physical safety comes to mind. US organizations have long been bound to the regulations under OSHA to maintain workplaces that are free of hazards that can potentially cause physical harm. In an office space there can be simple prevention practices such as removing cords from the middle of a walkway so that employees don’t trip and fall. But what does the equivalent look like when companies commit to safeguard mental health? There are no physical objects to remove, therefore the reliance falls to workplace relationships that are supported by an inclusive and equitable culture and reduce psychosocial hazards. Safety Culture Content Specialist Roselin Manawis accurately defines psychosocial as “the relationships between humans with their thoughts, behaviors, and social environment. It is a term that refers to how mental health, or psychological factors, work with social factors and how they can affect a person. A psychosocially safe workplace is a workplace that is more encouraging to work in and can help foster better connections between employees.”
“Creating the conditions for physical and psychological safety is a critical foundation for ensuring mental health and well-being in the workplace. In order to promote practices that better assure protection from harm, workplaces can:
- Prioritize workplace physical and psychological safety
Action: Business Owners and the C-Suite make the commitment to elevate mental health safety by including objectives in the organization’s strategic plan; connect the Mission, Vision, Values of the organization to create Shared Meaning for employees; consistently communicate their personal commitment to advance total worker health practices; dedicate budget to the professional development of people managers so that they can effectively protect the mental health of employees.
Action: Create psychological health and safety policies that match and are equal in the impact of existing physical health compliance and best practices.
Action: Develop a part-time full-time, or external consultant Mental Health Safety Director role that collaborates with the departments of People Operations/Human Resources, Learning and Development, and Health and Safety Compliance.
- Enable adequate rest
Action: Promote the connection between rest and the prevention of mental illness.
- Normalize and support focusing on mental health
Action: Demonstrate Empathy; actively promote and support that humans have a need to belong; reduce the stigma of talking about mental health at work by consistently including supportive language of well-being in all communication to staff related total worker health.
- Operationalize Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) norms, policies, and programs
Action: Update DEIA policies and programs to include language that supports mental health safety at work; communicate to all staff; create a shared language around DEIA and Mental Health.
2. Create Culture of Inclusion and Belonging
Fostering positive social interaction and relationships in the workplace supports worker well-being. “Belonging can be defined as the feeling of security and support when there is a sense of acceptance, inclusion, and identity. It is correlated to Inclusion and allows for someone to feel they can bring their authentic self to work.” According to Gallup, “People feel most comfortable and uninhibited with their best friends. This is why having a “best friend” and “someone who cares about you as a person” at work matters so much for engagement and belonging. Having deep relationships at work means there is a higher level of trust, comfort, and care. Work becomes a place you want to be because of the people you get to interact and connect with. Such an environment fosters a higher level of care for the work you do and those around you who are impacted by it. For example, if you truly care about those you work with, you may be more likely to take time to correct an unsafe situation, help someone in need, make someone feel valued by recognizing their achievements, or simply do the best work you can to ensure the team wins.”
Cultivate Trusted Relationships
Trust is foundational to the Engagement and Retention within an organization, to the Employer Brand, and to an employer’s ability to attract talent. Meeting employees where they are, giving employees a voice to share concerns, and practicing active and empathetic listening creates and fosters trust. Leadership should be accountable to Role Modeling the behaviors that lead to growth and development and fostering environments of trust and safety. Giving clear and consistent feedback supports employee growth and learning and builds bridges in the relationships that employees have with managers and with the organization as a whole.
- Take action with the information you gather and ensure appropriate systems are in place for Remote and Hybrid workplaces to support employees with feeling connected
Action: Carve out space in your employees’ one-to-ones and have ongoing Performance conversations; update tools and technology as necessary; poll employees to ensure they have the tools and resources to perform their jobs
2. Accept and understand that everyone has unique and different, but important perspectives
Action: Be aware of and acknowledge Bias; be present and engaged in conversations; assume positive intent, and practice Active Listening; ask Curious and Clarifying Questions.
- Create space in the day so employees feel heard
Action: Take enough time to pause in the agenda and be ok with shifting it as needed; meet people where they are at, check in without an agenda, and allow for flexibility over rigidity.
3. Work-Life Harmony: Autonomy and Flexibility
As workplaces evolve, so does the way workers approach achieving results while reducing stress that can spill over into their personal lives. This was originally referred to as work-life balance, a way to make sure time was split between work and home so that one or other didn’t suffer from neglect and cause mental harm. As social and work structures progressed many employees adopted work-life integration, which blurred the lines of work and home so that tasks could be woven in and out without setting strict barriers to when work occurred. And now, the pandemic has shown workers a new path to advancing one’s career and living their best life, it is referred to as work-life harmony. If we first break down the definition of harmony, we can see how this approach promotes overall happiness, it is “a relationship in which various components exist together without destroying one another”. Work-life harmony is about energy and how it is invested to make one’s life more fulfilling. When passion is aligned with profession, the focus is more on the “why” than the “how”, which makes goals more feasible because it opens the door to increased collaboration and innovative thinking to achieve success.
Professional and personal roles can create work and non-work conflicts. In order to promote practices that better assure work-life harmony, workplaces can:
1. Provide more autonomy over how work is done
Action: Build trust exercises into employee engagement strategies with the goal of proactively reducing conflict between people managers and employees.
2. Make schedules as flexible and predictable as possible
Action: Implement flexibility work strategies that can be customized to roles and individuals.
3. Increase access to paid leave
Action: Adopt paid leave policies from sources (global, state, or local) that have evaluated and measured their effectiveness on recruitment and retention. Like the saying goes, “There is no need to reinvent the wheel”. Research what has been successful and customize those programs to complement your organization’s industry; commit to evaluate paid leave at least every two years to keep up with workplace trends.
4. Respect boundaries between work and non-work time
Action: Advocate for company leaders to role model personal and professional boundaries that promote disconnecting from work on time off and at the end of the day.
Action: Evaluate workloads of roles and identify areas that can improve the amount of time spent on tasks.
5. Mattering at Work: Dignity and Meaning
People want to know that they matter to those around them and that their work matters. Knowing you matter has been shown to lower stress, while feeling like you do not can increase the risk for depression. In order to better assure a culture of mattering at work, workplaces can:
1. Provide a living wage
Action: Review compensation structures at least annually; review benefits provided to ensure they are equitable and competitive; Internal and External Equity; determine whether you will pay employees based on their geographical location or on an overall market salary band.
2. Engage workers in workplace decisions
Action: Allow for creativity and autonomy in individual roles; help people feel that their voice matters; allow for embracing mistakes without punitive measures and seek out opportunities to embrace learning opportunities together; ensure that employees understand the Why of Organizational Change initiatives
3. Build a culture of gratitude and recognition
Action: Create a safe space for employees to share; create space in meeting agendas and one-to-ones for expressing gratitude; know your team’s recognition preferences (public or private); survey employees on recognition preferences and experiences.
4. Connect individual work with organizational mission
Action: Create a shared language in the organization; provide Role Clarity, tools and resources for Professional Development, and allow opportunities for collaboration across the organization.
5. Opportunity for Growth: Learning and Accomplishments
The language we use around learning and development and how we define success and growth at an individual level as well as collectively contributes to the type of work culture we set and whether people feel they can thrive, or whether they even feel they can survive in the workplace. Learning and development is often understated as we think about Mental Health at Work. How we see ourselves, how we define successes and accomplishments, and even how those measures of success are rewarded or recognized in the workplace matter a great deal to our Mental Health.
When organizations create more opportunities for workers to accomplish goals based on their skills and growth, workers become more optimistic about their abilities and more enthusiastic about contributing to the organization. In order to promote practices that better assure opportunities for growth, workplaces can:
1. Offer quality training, education, and mentoring
Action: Dedicate learning and development budget to training people managers; give them strategies to support the mental health of their direct reports.
Action: Offer learning and education opportunities to all staff that will de-stigmatize mental health in the workplace; assign Mentors/Buddies when new employees join the organization and train the organization on good Mentorship.
2. Foster clear and equitable pathways for career advancement
The Jobs for the Future (JFF), a non-profit that has identified key areas that drives equitable advancement including:
Action: Build data and infrastructure practices to facilitate efforts to collect, monitor, analyze, and act on data to support equitable outcomes in pathways ecosystems.
Action: Develop partnerships and align strategic plans with local K-12 schools and local postsecondary institutions.
3. Ensure relevant, reciprocal feedback
Action: Update performance review practices that include additional opportunities to have consistent conversations around workload, job clarity, and improvement goals beyond the annual process; specifically incorporate monthly or quarterly manager-employee meetings dedicated to feedback; provide objective and quantifiable/qualifiable metrics so employee’s see how they are contributing to the team; avoid “This is how we’ve always done it” behaviors and language.
Bringing it All Together
The Future of Work is going to require a change of thinking from a reactive to a proactive approach to Mental Health. Think of an annual wellness exam with a general practice physician, all the checks that ensure one’s body is healthy and the steps that are taken to mitigate serious illness before it takes ahold of someone’s life. However, there is a difference between a wellness check at a doctor’s office and employee well-being at work and that is that the onus is not solely on the individual — mental health safety at work is a mutual agreement between the employer and employee that they will take responsibility for their role in protecting mental health for the people that they interact with daily that includes themselves, supervisors, coworkers, and yes even the C-suite.
Author Bios and Contact Information
Tiffany Castagno, CEO & Founder of CEPHR, LLC
CEPHR, LLC is a Human Resources Consulting Firm based in Pittsburgh, PA that supports Small to Mid-sized Businesses to build a strong Employer Brand and Culture. Tiffany is passionate about creating safe workplaces and Communities under DEIB principles. Her Why is building more psychologically safe Cultures to support the people and processes in organizations and to create safe and equitable spaces in our Communities. Tiffany is Co-Author of a Children’s Book, “Can a Zebra Change Its Stripes?” that teaches children about embracing difference and uncovers the importance of acceptance and what it means to make diversity our strength. Tiffany enjoys serving her Community and believes that together is better. She was recently presented with the prestigious, National Jefferson Award for her Volunteerism, Leadership, and Service to Community.
The best way to connect is to e-mail tcastagno@cephrconsulting.com or phone (412) 990–1361. Follow Tiffany on LinkedIn!
Kelly Pallanti, CEO & Founder of Mentally Fit Workplaces
Mentally Fit Workplaces is a Workplace Mental Health and Well-being Consultancy that takes a wholistic approach to finding employee wellness and employer safety practices that fit your workplace culture. Our consultants bring their expertise in Psychological Health and Safety from around the globe and collaborate with your team to reduce hazards that cause mental harm while building a culture of mental health and safety. Kelly is a senior HR management consultant with an area of expertise in well-being at work and mental health first aid in leadership. Email kelly@mentallyfitworkplaces.com or text (219) 928–6900 to connect. You can find Kelly on LinkedIn!
Sources
What Drives a Culture of Belonging? (gallup.com)
https://safetyculture.com/topics/workplace-hazards/psychosocial-hazards/
https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/workplace-well-being/index.html
https://diversity.cornell.edu/belonging/sense-belonging
What Drives a Culture of Belonging? (gallup.com)
