As I write this, our team is out of the office to acknowledge and celebrate World Mental Health Day (which is on Monday), and make space for joyful activities that replenish and rejuvenate them. (By the way, we now have shiny new photos for Selwyn and Jodie here after a lovely team week together last week in London).
We have seen the topic of mental health come firmly to the fore in our work with companies as well as our conversations with peers. In our safe space conversations with colleagues from around the world, we have seen mental health in the workplace become a salient human rights issue for a vast number of companies—from their own workforces, to their contractors and vendors, to workers in the supply chain.
The workload is ever present, and increasing; resilience is low following the COVID pandemic; and stressors are high – costs of living, inflation etc. And people are sharing with us their frustration when their employers speak about ‘wellbeing’ and ‘work-life balance’, all while increasing the list of to-dos, creating shorter and shorter deadlines, crafting leaner and leaner teams, and designing strict performance indicators.
Measures such as yoga memberships, or counselling apps, or even flexi-work, can only go so far, if companies are not meaningfully considering the working environment, the work culture, and the way the business operates – and how these impact mental health. We discuss more what we are seeing on this topic in this insight here.
In short, this is a time to talk about mental health - so let's talk about it.
