Episode 176: Mental Health Awareness Month: Identifying Indicators of Distress and Ways Employers Can Help

Welcome to the Workplace, a podcast by Cal Chamber. I'm Matthew Roberts, Labor Law Helpline Manager and Employment Law Council with the California Chamber of Commerce. Hello listeners. Well, if you tuned into our last podcast, you learned that among the many themes of May is Mental Health Awareness Month. And on our last podcast, we went over some of the ways that employers can create a better work environment for mental health. Now, building on this theme today, we have invited Amanda Gibson to come on to further discuss mental health in the workplace and help provide further guidance on how employers can detect signs of mental distress in employees in the workplace. Amanda has worked for over 15 years in clinical and leadership roles in nonprofit organizations specializing in helping people survive traumatic life events. Amanda currently teaches at California State University, Sacramento. Go Hornets. I'm a Hornet alum and the University of California at Davis. So, Amanda, thank you so much for for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. I'm so excited that more and more people are wanting to talk about workplace well being and mental health.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, businesses today are grappling with a lot of challenges from the economic to the operational, such as supply chain issues, increased costs and regulations, as well as either labor shortages or, as we've started to see over the last few weeks, too much labor in the workforce. But one factor that can significantly impact a company's success or failure really is the mental wellbeing its employees. On our last show last week, we mentioned a pretty stunning statistic from 2021 that 76% of workers have experienced a mental health issue like depression or anxiety or the like. And a recent survey indicated that there's a significant generational gap in the way employees experience mental health in the workplace. The same research shows that millennials and Gen Z workers have a harder time with mental health compared to baby boomers and our Generation Xers. So Amanda, what do you think is behind this generational gap and what are some of the other trends that you've been noticing? Just overall?

Yeah, this is always so intriguing to look at the generational differences and I guess you know my reference points coming from being a therapist in the community and helping people who are grappling with these mental health related issues. And we really need to, I think, start with the fact that we just have gone through a traumatizing event, collective trauma of the pandemic and these studies that went on during these times I think were very reflective of what we were experiencing in the last three years. And in my anecdotal experience, what I'm hearing when I do organizational wellness workshops as well as with my clients, is that there's some unresolved trauma within workplaces and how the pandemic was managed by leadership and a lot of grief and loss with turnover, with the great resignation and people losing coworkers that they really cared for. And those people who stayed may have some unresolved trauma with that. And the new employees coming on board may not have a sense of the context of everything that went on during those three years. So I think that that's a big factor. And I think the difference in generations really has a lot to do with how we were socialized as children to talk about feelings. I think those baby boomers, Gen Xers, we didn't always get as much emotional intelligence and social, emotional learning that millennials and Gen Zs got in school. So there's a level of comfort about discussing feelings that the younger generation has that the older generation may not have.

Yeah, and I think that's a really important distinction because our workforces are very diverse at this point. We've seen a lot of the studies. Sure. You know, Millennials, Gen zers are starting to become more and more of the workforce because that's just how time works. Right. Our older workers fall off and our newer workers come in, but it's really stratified. Like, we have a lot of baby Boomers, we have a lot of Gen Xers, we have a lot of Millennials, and. And we're starting to get a lot of Gen Zers. And so that idea of how people were socialized or how people just react to the particular topics, I think is going to be really important for HR professionals to kind of understand who was the audience that we're talking to, what is their experience coming into this kind of topic? So what we see, really for businesses and the thing that we hear a lot on the helpline at our seminars and just from members in general, is that, you know, mental health issues can lead to absenteeism, can lead to low productivity, especially turnover. And that's why this is something that we think is critically important that employers and HR professionals start working on destigmatizing this, especially, like we say, for the older workers, because the newer workers, the younger workers have come in, as you said, have been kind of taught this from an early age. So it's really important for, I think, HR professionals to start with, what are the specific signs? So, Amanda, are there any specific signs, behaviors that indicate an employee may be struggling with mental health issues, but they're trying to hide it? If an employer suspects this, what are Some kind of soft skills, ways that they can approach those situations.

Yes, that's a great question. I would say that bringing in normalizing, talking about mental health and well being is really important. As a community of coworkers having that access to mental health therapy, understanding the health benefits that you offer and the differences between EAP versus health insurance versus private pay. There are a lot of trainings that are offered from Mental Health America, nami, organizations like mine, the Counseling Collab, where we can go in and have these workshops and normalize discussing well being and wellness and mental health in the workplace. Because there is still a lot of stigma. And the stigma with the older generation I think is greater for sure. And in terms of what to look for, if you see someone who's highly reactive, one of the things that I work a lot with is trauma, like we talked about earlier. So if we see someone's reactivity to a stressor that's really heightened and intense and maybe a little different than what you're used to seeing, that could be an indication they're struggling. They could be very reactive in terms of going into a fight response.

Fleeing response, wanting to like leave the meeting or shut down, freeze response. I often look for what's happening in the nervous system with people and you can pay attention to that too. As a HR professional or a co worker, you're noticing muscle tension in the person you're talking to, shallow breathing. And then if people are talking about having poor sleep, that's very important. That's usually something people are comfortable sharing. You know how, oh, I slept like really bad last night or I'm being woken up multiple times a night because I'm caring for a small child or an older adult or a pet. Even poor sleep is an indication of depression, anxiety, both of those things, chronic illnesses as well. And I think specifically coming out of the pandemic, something that I've been noticing is that we were in this resistance phase of stress for such a prolonged period of time with great uncertainty, that if you manage to get through your job and maintain now that things feel like they're shifting and we're in a new phase of the pandemic, maybe even some would say it's ending where it's normal now that then our bodies have the opportunity to say, oh, it's okay for me to actually get sick. So I've been noticing with my clients that they're starting to have more chronic stress related illnesses coming up and needing to miss more work.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think that idea that you can see these physical manifestations of stress as you talk about it. The nervous system stuff gives rise to the idea that something's going on. And we always talk about, from the compliance perspective, from the attorney's perspective, of course, we have all these disability rules and these things like that. And while we're not trying to pry into specifically, like, what is your depression or what is your anxiety or how many panic attacks, it's really, are you okay? Like, how can we help you? And so I like this. For members, there's a difference between prying and opening a dialogue with it. And so we have to feel comfortable, I think, opening the dialogue without going too far into, you know, the compliance issues. But I think that's really important. If you see something, say something. You know, we see that in the workplace context now. We've talked about the pandemic, We've talked about the labor shortage that kind of happened after that. And a lot of pressure and stress was put on some workers. Burnout, right? Burnout among a lot of workers is a serious concern. And that's definitely something that can directly affect an employee's mental health. And you know, you're lying to yourself if you haven't experienced a burnout stage where you're just like, God, I don't want to get, get up and go to work the next day. I mean, we all have. Amanda, how can employers foster a culture of work life balance? Preventing this burnout, keeping the employees getting up and saying, hey, you know, I'm ready to go back to work today. I'm not dreading that phone call. I'm not dreading that meeting. What kind of things can we look for? What kind of things can we put in the workplace to help prevent burnout?

Yeah, you. You named some signs of burnout very well there. That exhaustion and depletion and a lack of connection to the work and feeling like it's meaningful. Or you'll hear people say, even if they've been achieving things are productive, they're not really feeling that they are. They're not as connected. They will perceive their productivity as lower often. And that distance from their meaning and purpose at their job can really be a big indication of burnout. And there's some great resources and tools that I wanted to point out to your listeners. They already know about them, but the US Surgeon General just put out a framework for workplace mental health and well being. They spoke specifically. I really like the document because it talks about universal human needs and what workplaces can do to provide those. So instead of work life balance. It talks more about work life harmony, which includes autonomy over the work that you're doing, flexibility in your schedule, access to paid leave, and this one I really like as a therapist. Boundaries. Boundaries between when work starts and stops and your personal life starts and stops. And if we have still quite a bit of remote work going on, that boundary can get very blurred. And I think we've all, all dealt with that. And lack of boundaries will lead to burnout, resentment, those kinds of things. Yeah.

And it's almost like you're clairvoyant on where we're going. Here to conclude the episode really is the rise of remote work and virtual teams and hybrid situations that create its own unique challenges and opportunities. And I think boundaries, obviously, as you said, is the first good one I had said on the podcast last time. Even when I'm home on a walk at lunch, I have my work phone and I'm checking it. Like, why? If I'm at the office, I go for a walk around the Capitol. I don't have my phone. I'm not checking it. I'm going for a walk around the Capitol. But there's something about being home. You feel disconnected and you want to feel more connected. Are there other ways that we can address challenges? Are there other challenges you've seen beyond just boundaries for employers to address with the remote work and the virtual environment?

Yes. This is also included in the Surgeon General framework. Connection and community are really big, basic human values that we all have and need. And workplaces can be great places to meet that things like having a culture of inclusion and belonging are important. Cultivating trusting relationships and fostering collaboration and teamwork. And if you're going to have people come into the office, making sure that there is something that you're doing around connection and community while you have everyone together and that you're not. I've heard of a lot of places that are sort of just forcing. We're all going to come to work on Mondays, but then they're still doing the work that they could do remotely from home. And the frustration and the lack of, like, feeling like it, you know, this idea of meaning and connection can get really frustrating for people. It's like, okay, well, if I'm going to come in, I want to really have these moments that I really miss from before of, like, the. The water cooler, the lunches, the walks, the jokes, the inside jokes, just the connection between the people you work with. I mean, we spend. Some of us spend more time at work than we do at home. And it can be incredibly healthy for our mental health to be there. And I think employers do a lot to create that. The other thing too is to have gratitude and recognition be a part of that so the employees feel valued. And if you're remote only, I think there are some cool things that you can do to still have those water cooler break room moments by having just open times where people can gather in a zoom room and chat about their family in the weekend and having meetings that only last 50 minutes instead of 60 minutes. Because that's one of the things that's so crazy about this remote work, is that you go from thing to thing without any breaks and we start to lose the connection to the basic human needs of taking our breaks, using the restroom, getting a snack. And then those moments of, you know, you're walking together through a large office building with your coworkers, you don't do that when you're remote working. So actually keeping meetings shorter and more purposeful so that you can have maybe the room open for the chatting or that people can actually just go take care of themselves and get up and stretch because we're, we're sitting so much more environment as well as man.

I think that's fantastic advice because I can think back several times where I had three meetings. They're all an hour ends, you know, 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4. And I'm just, I'm in this chair, in this meeting for like three hours and I've done three different things, but I've not gone anywhere. I've not gotten up, I've not done anything. So I think that's fantastic. Before I let you go, the US Surgeon General's framework that you've been missing, I think would be a fantastic resource for our listeners. How can our listeners access that framework?

You can Google US Surgeon General.

Framework for Workplace Mental Health and well being. They have an interactive website as well as a downloadable PDF. Really impressed with it. And you know, another thing I'll say that I've seen some organizations do really well is actually bringing in the mental health professionals to maybe look at the framework and work with you in your HR department and kind of assess how well are we doing? And then can the mental health professionals from your community come in and give workshops about these topics so that again, we're normalizing the conversation and we're destigmatizing getting help when our employees need it.

That's wonderful. Amanda, thank you so much for your time today. I know you're busy seeing clients and helping organizations so we really appreciate you taking a moment to have this discussion with us here on the podcast.

Thank you so much. It's great to be with you and.

Thank you listeners for joining us here on the Workplace. As always, please comment, share and subscribe to Cal Chambers Podcast podcast by visiting calchamber.com.