How Can Managers Support Their Employees’ Mental Health at Work? | by Janine White

What is a manager’s role in supporting their employees’ mental health at work? Let’s first consider what we mean by mental health, and why it’s important in the workplace. We may respond intuitively to this question, but opening up this conversation provides the opportunity to articulate our values and assumptions to understand the differences in how individuals view these concepts. Part of my role as a Business Transformation Coach at Multiverse involves asking questions and supporting people to verbalise what is important to them. So let’s start by defining our terms and reflecting on why they matter. 

The World Health Organization talks about mental health as a state of mental well-being affecting how we think, feel and act. Mental health affects how people handle stress, relate to each other, and make decisions. It’s hard to imagine a workplace in which these three key components are not relevant. Moreover, they can often be tied up with each other, with positive or negative impacts. 

Mentally (Un)Healthy Workplaces
What does this look like in practice? When not working well, individuals may feel pressured and stressed to the extent that they struggle to think clearly, communicate with others from a place of anger or fear, and react with more emotional than rational approaches to decision-making. A climate of distrust and tension can negatively affect wellbeing such that individuals and teams are more likely to miss work, become less effective in their roles and even hurt their and the organisation’s performance. 

On the flip side, in a state of good individual and collective mental health, individuals feel energised, motivated, well-resourced and empowered to manage the inevitable challenges that arise in any workplace. They communicate and collaborate with their teams and make choices that enable them to deliver more effectively in their jobs and achieve impact in their organisations. This positive feedback loop builds a culture of trust and wellbeing that nurtures everyone. 

So how can workplaces, and managers in particular, proactively support mental health to build a culture of wellbeing at work? Where does a manager’s role start and end? 

You are a Wellbeing Expert
Regardless of where we sit in an organisation, we are each the experts in our own wellbeing. Managers can support wellbeing in teams, but ultimately it is each individual’s responsibility to take ownership of how to show up at work. Sometimes this means taking our own action as individuals, for example with regard to self-care, and sometimes it means asking others for help. Let’s explore how managers can create the conditions to foster this balance between encouraging empowerment and providing support.

As mental health affects all of us, as a manager, it’s important to start with yourself. How do you attend to your own and other’s wellbeing? First, reflect on your own values regarding wellbeing. Then think about how you communicate to your team about this. Communication takes place not only through your words but also through your actions. We look to our leaders at work to identify what is important, what we should prioritise and how it is appropriate to spend our time at work. Mental health and wellbeing is not an issue that can be addressed once; we all experience ebbs and flows throughout life as a result of changes in our internal states and external circumstances. So how are you attending to your employees’ wellbeing, and modelling how you look after your own?

Pause, Pay Attention, and Listen
We’ve arrived at the ‘top tips’ section, but rather than suggest five different things you can do, I’m going to share two tips: carve out time for self-reflection and invite conversations with your team members, so the actions can flow from there. 

Here are five key questions you can ask, first to yourself and then to those in your team:

1. What enables you to feel well-resourced?

Sometimes it comes down to our basic needs: sleep, food, exercise. Take time to discuss how work environments and conditions support mental health and wellbeing, including providing opportunities to take a break when necessary. 

2. What blocks you from looking after your wellbeing?

The answer may again come down to a question of priorities. If you’re struggling to press pause and as a result are not looking after your needs, bringing awareness to this can help shift behaviours to enable us to work in a better-resourced and sustainable way. 

3. What detracts from your physical and mental health?

Beyond meeting basic physical needs, there may be other work-based challenges that negatively impact mental health. A complicated relationship with a colleague, an overwhelming workload - what can you learn from reflecting on and communicating about these very common issues?

4. What supports your physical health?

Think about the steps you take in and outside of work to feel physically healthy. How can you ensure you make time for these practices and learn more about what your team members need, so that you can encourage them to prioritise these activities and behaviours. 

5. What supports your mental health? 

While physical and mental health are intrinsically linked, it can also be helpful to reflect specifically on our mental states and what supports them. It may be quiet time or social time. Think about what works for you and model that behaviour, while also making an effort to understand what your team members need. 

Spending time in self-reflection and in conversation with each other is a powerful way to let yourself and others know what’s important. Pause, pay attention, and listen. Then the next steps will follow.  

Putting Wellbeing into Practice
The appropriate actions will likely vary depending on the size of the company, and the manager’s level of seniority. For example, while an employer (such as Multiverse!) can provide access to a gym membership or online therapy sessions, employees must actively use these resources. Managers can play an important role here in signposting their team members to ensure they are able to, encouraged and supported to use these resources, and can check in about how it’s going. If managers are noticing themes that different team members are raising, they can also escalate issues to higher levels of leadership, as they may extend beyond their ability to influence.

It’s important here to also recognise the line between mental health and what we are not talking about: mental ill-health. Managers are (probably) not trained therapists or counsellors, so the role in addressing and providing support for mental health challenges must also have its boundaries around the type of support that the manager is in a position to be able to provide. In cases where an employee’s mental health is impacting them at work, then the manager should signpost the employee to the HR team and any resources to access support from a trained professional. 

As a manager, reflect on where your boundaries are when opening up these conversations about mental health, and know where to kindly draw the line in providing a listening ear. We as employees also need to take responsibility for our own mental health and wellbeing - again, we are our own experts in knowing what we need and can use this inner guidance to help us access the right level of support, based on the issue that we may be facing. 

Building Well-Resourced Work Environments
Ultimately, self-reflection and conversation encourage us to practise what we preach. As managers, we cannot guarantee that our mental health and wellbeing will always be strong and positive. But we can take time to resource ourselves and be curious about what our team members need. We can normalise talking about how situations make us feel, and share our vulnerability in a way that enables us to both connect with our teams and set healthy boundaries. Paying attention enables us to know that none of us are in this alone. When we build positive relationships, starting with ourselves, we become equipped to handle stress and make decisions that serve our mental health and foster positive working environments. 

Janine White is a Business Transformation Coach at Multiverse.