Kununu
25/07/2024

Why mental health is a strategic issue

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“I can't take it anymore.” It's been a year and a half since an employee came to me with those words. I am the boss of 140 people at Kununu and have been in management positions for over 20 years. Yet this was the first time I was confronted with a colleague's mental health in my immediate professional environment. What does this say about our working world? After all, mental health problems are not an exceptional situation – they are an everyday burden for many people in all kinds of professions.

Since my colleague approached me so openly, I've been thinking a lot about the issue and learned a lot. For example, the importance of openness – not only on the part of those affected but also on part of the companies: They need to understand mental health as part of their strategy for running a modern business.  

The strategic importance of mental health

I was born in the United Kingdom. There, the social media buzzword ’mental health‘, which is also used in German-speaking countries, is not just understood as a purely private issue, dealt with by coaches and mediators, and sometimes with an esoteric flavour. The term also has a social and therefore business dimension: people's mental health has a major influence on – and is also determined by – how well they feel at work. In other words, physically and mentally healthy employees are much more productive. It is therefore in the interest of all companies to include mental health as part of their strategy, for example, in the form of an understanding of corporate and feedback culture, or in how salaries are negotiated and what training is offered. When mental health is not taken seriously, it hurts everyone.

I am convinced that the change towards more openness depends on managers and their openess to the issue. It is also a generational issue: managers – especially those in senior positions – are still relatively old. They come from a different era, and openness towards employees is often unfamiliar to them. Yet one of the most important tasks of managers is to be open and honest with their colleagues. You often learn things you didn't know: that the parents aren't feeling well. That the drill in the house next door has been going off at 7 a.m. for weeks. Or that the partner lost his job two weeks ago. Quite normal stories – but they have an impact on our emotional state and ultimately on our work. And they have to be considered when our professional performance is assessed.

The new demands of Generation Z 

Generation Z – those born between the late 1990s and early 2010s – are questioning many aspects of working life taken for granted: they don't want to choose between a career and a work-life balance, they want both. Is this laziness? I don't think so. Gen Z wants to achieve, but they are asking very different questions than previous generations: What is the raison d'être of a company? How do businesses contribute to or mitigate climate change? How do they address their specific situation? Good answers to these questions are invaluable to Gen Z. It requires companies to engage with these issues. 

Why don't companies think more about what they can do for their employees? Companies spend weeks, months, and years thinking about market strategies and refining their services to customers. But at the end of the day, it is the employees who work with the customers and represent the company to the outside world. When companies invest as much in internal perception as they do in external perception, success usually follows.

Mental health is more than a trend 

The will to change will pay off in the future. Mental health is not a trend that will die out any time soon. The studies are clear: absences due to mental illness have been increasing for years and are lasting longer – especially among the younger generation. Companies and managers urgently need to consider how they want to deal with their workforce to remain attractive to employees in the long term. The job market will always (have to) change, and that's a good thing. 

That is why I advise all candidates to ask about mental health in the job interview. The answers reveal a lot about the employer: Is the company concerned about the issue at all? Do they take it seriously? Can I feel mentally safe there? Candidates have nothing to lose by asking such questions; if they react strangely, you should stay away from the company.

Being open about mental health is the best thing employees and companies can do. The story of my Kununu colleague I mentioned at the beginning is a good example. I don’t share it because I think I did everything right – but because it offers a lot of hope: In our conversation, we agreed that she would take an immediate break from work and take all the time she needed to get well. After a few weeks, she slowly returned to work. That really impressed me: She literally put herself out there and told her story to the whole company. She is a real role model and an asset to Kununu – where she still works today.

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