top of page
Roadblocks
... to doing the (organisational mental health) work.
It occurs to me more and more that many organisations are walking away from organisational mental health work, or not engaging with it fully and are therefore losing hope and momentum. There are myriad potential reasons that have come up in conversations with leaders and HR teams over the years which I will attempt to address here in practical terms. However, I don’t want to lose sight of other organisational realities that take focus away from this work such as cost pressures, compliance demands, and system and process constraints that are becoming more the norm, and ironically in many cases are the cause of mental distress. However, when neglected for too long, health problems can grow below the cultural surface and ultimately emerge to threaten a business' in many ways.
I try to keep in mind the similarities between a corporation (derived from the Latin for body), and our individual human body. We often neglect our self-care and health checks because of more pressing external demands, meanwhile illness or disease can be growing in our own cells (in this metaphor the cells would of course be employees), and then one day, seemingly suddenly, a tipping point is reached and a potential threat to our health or survival is rears up. Therefore, in the same way we need to check in and look after ourselves, a business regularly needs to do the same.
The reasons I hear most against doing this mental health work in organisations are those listed below but maybe some of these are also the ones that we give in relation to not doing our own personal work?
-
It’s just too hard.
-
Don’t know what to do so we don’t start.
-
Tried it but it’s not making a difference.
-
We’re only in it for the tick box/image exercise.
-
Things are getting worse despite our best efforts.
-
It’s too expensive.
-
We don’t have enough resource.
-
Competing priorities.
-
Revolving door personnel/strategies.
-
Prioritising the urgent over the important.
-
We’re fatigued and saturated with all the “mental health noise”.
-
Don’t believe in “mental health”.
-
Mental health has no place in the workplace.
-
We don’t know who should be responsible for it.
-
The subject scares us, what if we get it wrong.
Do any of these sound familiar? Probably. Because these aren’t unique to organisational mental health, they’re classic roadblocks to many organisational culture change initiatives (and individually to doing our own self-care).
Whilst I can’t give all the potential organisational solutions to these as the uniqueness and complexity of individual circumstances would require a much deeper conversation and exploration, I will give a few initial and generic counters and viewpoints to each of these, with the objective of stimulating some renewed curiosity as to what you could consider doing next.
Before that though, here are three principles around organisational change that ought to be foremost in your awareness:
-
An organisation, once established, should be looked on as more of a living organism that is complex, enigmatic, prone to mood swings and erratic decision making, and will do anything it can to survive. Organisations are a bit like us humans who are hard to truly understand, make mistakes, have good times and bad, and only really change if we must or are met with a significant life changing event.
-
Culture change (like personality change) can take years, and many organisations focus on short term, financial periods, linked to bonus pay outs and budget cycles. Essentially focussing on the micro not the macro. Culture change might span many years and day to day change is imperceptible. In organisations with high turnover of staff, there might be too few people around who know what it was like a few years before. Like transient humans, the people in their daily lives only know the current version, they have no historic frame of reference. Only when the person returns to a an earlier or childhood home do people notice how they’ve changed.
-
If there are no cataclysmic life changing events for a business, then culture change happens best:
-
By changing structural aspects of the business. These changes disrupt the way people behave because they must interact differently with the new structures, and over time this evolves the culture. Take IKEA for example; if you’re a customer you will know how the IKEA culture is clearly maintained and reinforced by the placing of walls, escape routes, bargain bucket placements etc, and how these structures make the IKEA experience very different to conventional shopping experiences.
-
Through role modelling and consequences, less by show and tell. So don’t expect training in itself to make much of a difference. It is the role modelling and holding people to account after the training that will make the biggest difference. Be consistent with this. Be the change you want to see in the world (and hold people accountable for their part in it)!
-
With these principles in mind let’s now turn our attention to some of the potential reasoning for why this organisational mental health work might be struggling:
-
It’s just too hard.
-
I first heard this over a decade ago in relation to what questions to include in a global employee engagement survey. The argument went like this. “If we ask the question, and the answer is unfavourable, then we must do something about it, and we don’t know how, so we won’t ask the question. P.S. we think we know the answer already, and it is unfavourable.”
-
Making a change is hard, whether it’s a change in our private worlds, our professional worlds, or organisationally. But is this a reason not to try? There will be trip hazards, wrong turns, and ultimately, we might end up somewhere we never could have anticipated. But if the current situation isn’t a good one, then a first step towards better must be taken. A path is better travelled with a guide or mentor, and in life we don’t have to go it all alone.
-
-
Don’t know what to do so we don’t start.
-
Unless you’re following a recipe or building a Lego set the chances are there are no obvious starting points or paths to follow. This is more like drawing outside the lines. There are frameworks, building blocks, and paths well-trodden, but they might not work for you. As above, a first step needs to be taken away from the status quo, this will need a named intention and resource, even if the resource is the energy to make a change (sometime this energy comes from anger, sometimes fear).
-
But we can never tell where those steps might lead and what the consequences of each step might be, so we also need to have faith and hope, and be able to agile enough if the path taken is having detrimental consequences. That said, sometimes we need the detrimental consequences to show us a better way or teach a lesson we need to be able to move forward so ensure time for reflection in your journey.
-
-
Tried it but it’s not making a difference.
-
My questions here would be what have you tried, how did you measure it, and how long did you give it? A meal takes many ingredients, added at appropriate times, and time. The outcome of our time in the kitchen too will be subjective based on the tastes of the people eating the meal. Our first attempt is often not our best, so trial and error, continuous improvement is required.
-
Sometimes the difference is subtle but as many of us were taught as young children; if you take care of the pennies the pounds will take care of themselves. Culture change can take years. If you are measuring in business quarters or even an annual bonus cycle, then you’re probably in too short a timeframe for this work.
-
-
We’re only in it for the tick box/image exercise.
-
This sadly is very common. That said, I also find that this can be as valid a start as any intention out there, provided that it begins to snowball, and it takes on a life outside of this and begins making a real difference to people’s lives and the business performance.
-
-
Things are getting worse despite our best efforts.
-
This may be a good sign. Depending on how you observe “worse”. If more people are in distress, then either they are more willing to talk about it, which is a good sign, and therefore something to celebrate in a sense, and/or it could be a sign that things are getting worse more rapidly than you’re able to build defences against it.
-
The world continues to accelerate in its pressures on us so don’t be surprised if the external reality is causing greater harm to people than you are able to effectively manage. And remember work is a big part, but still only a part, of people’s lives and our mental health isn’t boundaried by whether we are at work, or at home. Think holistically and recognise the multifactorial reasons for someone’s current distress.
-
-
It’s too expensive.
-
Change extracts a cost.
-
The cost is not always financial, and it is not always quantifiable. Change is organic, messy, and most often uncontrollable. There is no perfect outcome, just continual evolution.
-
There will be cost for expert guidance, there will be cost of time and energy of people involved in the work, there will be cost to change structures including policies and processes.
-
This needs to be weighed against the cost of lost time, absences and presenteeism, the cost of providing medical support and the cost of recruiting temporary cover. There will be a potential cost of reputation if you don’t handle it well, and there may ultimately be the cost of loss of life. There is the cost of managing difficult relationships, and the almost inevitable performance and conduct issues.
-
If the costs of change outweigh the costs of the status quo, then of course do nothing, but this is not a net zero exercise. Research repeated regularly by Deloitte highlights that prevention is a much more cost-effective option than intervention and post-vention activities. It is worth adding that if the expert guidance or materials you are buying don’t have an impact or don’t work, reflect, and then alter course.
-
-
We don’t have enough resource.
-
Like the cost argument, resource can be bought and paid for. But ensure it is the resource you need for the task at hand. The right tool for the right job. If though you are using multiple human resources someone will need to coordinate and communicate well with them all. On their side, they must be operating with the greater good in mind and not for ego, status, or financial gain alone.
-
There are increasingly jobs available in house for wellbeing managers, but often these are mid-level roles without meaningful authority, without impactful access to leadership, with limited resource, and answerable to managers with other demands for which they will be much better recognised and remunerated. If these roles can step out of, or avoid these shackles, then they have a greater chance of success.
-
-
Competing priorities
-
I have yet to come across an organisation that in parts isn’t trying to do too much, with too little resource, in too short a time frame, and with systems and processes that hinder rather than enable. Many teams are working on multiple projects and spend more time answering demands from other teams’ projects than their own.
-
These realities put huge stress (demands outweighing resources) on people, and the critical judgements from the business can be the final straw in the precarious haystack of someone’s mental wellbeing. It should be common sense to focus on one or two business priorities and put all the resources to these, but that’s not the case sadly.
-
-
Revolving door personnel/strategies.
-
An organisation where people and direction are constantly changing causes chaos and distress to employees, especially those who need structure and control to feel safe.
-
Where leaders and line managers are constantly being replaced or moved on, employees are often left immobile, seeing no value in making any further effort if the new manager or the new strategy throws out the old. The natural stress reaction here could be one of freeze. For others they will become aggressive and intolerant (fight reaction) or vote with their feet or become more unavailable (flight response).
-
In any event, not a place where the seeds of change will fall favourably on fertile soil. In these instances, work is needed to stabilise the ground before any planting begins or else it will all be washed away and wasted.
-
-
Prioritising the urgent over the important.
-
We will all have experienced colleagues, in fact may even recognise this in ourselves, where we are so busy that we really get very little meaningful work done. We’re on a treadmill of emails and meetings going nowhere, whereas others have taken their metaphorical run outside and made progress.
-
There are enough books about efficiency, and the better ones in my opinion talk about the futility of it all. If you can focus on what really needs to be achieved for the safety, security and sustainability of the world, the business and its people then do that.
-
-
We’re fatigued and saturated with all the “mental health noise”.
-
There is a lot of noise, and I for one get overwhelmed by all the “Buy me. No, buy me” and the “Do these 10 things”, and the “this is what mental health really is and everyone else is wrong” messages. Whilst there are a lot of levers we can pull and a lot of keys for a lot of locks. What works for one person may or may not help another.
-
Much of the work is based in pathology of illness, disorder, and disease. Much of the work is based in diagnosis (and for good reason; diagnosis is where the money and the systemic aid comes from). Much of the work is based in training and awareness.
-
What is missing is a systemic long-term view, a view which looks at things curiously, and which allows people to take permission to be vulnerably and imperfectly human with each other. The professionalisation of human interaction has done a lot of harm and needs to be readdressed.
-
-
Don’t believe in “mental health”.
-
Maybe not as uncommon as you’d think. Unless you’ve experienced mental distress yourself or in your close circle your frame of reference might come from movies or the media. Until recently movies took a dim view of mental distress, and sadly the media continue even now to push negative messages about mental distress. You may be from an age where mental health meant only the extremis of being in a psychiatric hospital or care in the community.
-
In contemporary language mental health is a broad continuum which even at the more positive end would include periods of life where sleep, nutrition, relationships, physical health are all disrupted for a time. This would not require a diagnosis but would require time, support and understanding to move back into a full green part of the continuum. It is reported that a significant proportion of adults are struggling with stress, and this of course impacts many aspects of their lives and can be made better, or worse, by their workplace.
-
We don’t all carry a 100% perfect personal life into work every day and we most certainly don’t carry 100% perfect work back to our loved ones at the end of each working day.
-
This is a human condition and needs to be accepted as such.
-
-
Mental health has no place in the workplace.
-
We all have mental health, like we all have physical health and social health. These three “healths” combine to give us our overall health. When one aspect; physical, mental, or social is “good” or “bad”, this will impact our overall health.
-
More often this comment is directed outwards with a message that people are here to do their job and that the business should not pick up any additional external costs of supporting their mental health. There is some sympathy with this argument as the costs of private medical insurance, employee assistance programs, and other initiatives continue to climb. However, in the real world, primary care support is limited, access to therapies can be expensive and lengthy, and lifestyle changes now recommended though GP surgeries as ‘social prescribing’ might require time, money and intrinsic motivation in the person who is currently deeply distracted, exhausted and in distress. Therefore, if an employer wants their employee to return to work as quickly as possible and as well as possible it will need to take responsibility to cover the shortcoming of support outside of work.
-
The workplace though does need to appreciate its responsibilities, both protective and detrimental to overall health so needs to be as best educated and responsive to physical, mental, and social needs of its employees. It also needs to remember its legal obligations under various Acts that require a duty of care and non-discrimination.
-
-
We don’t know who should be responsible for it.
-
Senior leadership has certain key responsibilities:
-
to ensure the survival of the business,
-
to keep employees safe,
-
to provide strategic direction, and
-
to provide the resources that the business needs to achieve all this.
-
-
Therefore, the argument consistently made that “this work needs to come from the top” sits within these leadership responsibilities, but the actual day to day work needs to be done by the whole business.
-
Those in the business delivering the tactical activities that deliver the strategy, need to put aside ego, power differentials, and “my job/not my job” mentalities and work together. It really does take a village.
-
-
The subject scares us, what if we get it wrong.
-
This is a fair call out as many of us have been brought up to fear this human condition, this state of “unreason” as it has been described. However, when you can change your viewpoint to one of curiosity rather than one of fear, it becomes a much more approachable topic. Be aware that there are many who will speak from place of dogma, of right and wrong, but remember that the medical profession hasn’t been around long in the scheme of things, and psychiatry even shorter. Science, often attributed to Newton’s development of the Laws of Physics, is only around 300 years old so there’s so much still to learn and discover.
-
Viewpoints and approaches are changing quickly, and ideas of chemical imbalances and an elusive mental health pathogen are losing favour. Genetic factors are being replaced by epigenetic factors which are more adaptive, and we are now working towards much better trauma informed work, with courses being led in trauma informed leadership.
-
If you start the work then of course there will be times of discomfort, of challenge, and you may stumble or be clumsy, but these are all part of the learning journey and a better place to be than with a head in the sand hoping it will pass you by, chances are it won’t.
-
There will be other reasons, and I have attempted to only give a light touch response to these ones in the hope of stimulating your curiosity around this work and what might be getting in the way of taking that first step to better.
We all need a sense of structure, recognition, and stimulus in our lives. A project plan provides structure, and the ability to tick off tactical activities gives a sense of recognition and achievement, and having a direction and enough to do provides us with the stimulus and purpose we need to do the work. However, we need to hold all these loosely, and seeing the innate similarities and challenges of organisation and organism change, and honour and respect the years it can take even for small wins. In this sense, the work around organisation mental health is fundamental to the survival of organisations and should have the same standing as financial health, compliance health, product/service health, customer health and all other functions that ensure the continued existence of a business.
bottom of page