I’ve been running two leadership programmes recently and the topic of mental health days has come up in both. Participants said that people in their teams routinely take days off when they felt stressed or overwhelmed. The pandemic normalised conversations around mental health, but some managers felt this has gone too far.
The government has been talking about it too. The current UK Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Mel Stride, has warned that we are at risk of labelling ‘normal anxieties’ as medical conditions. ‘We seem to have forgotten that work is good for mental health,’ Stride said.
Putting responsibility solely on the employee like this isn’t much help. A stoic ‘keep calm and carry on’ mindset won’t fix the whole cause of their anxiety. There are more issues at play than just a lack of resilience. Life is much more complex than it used to be.
The organisations I’ve been running the programmes for are both Mindful Employer Charter signatories, meaning that they have made a public declaration of their ambition to support the mental wellbeing of their staff. They understand their role in building a supportive culture to prevent mental ill health and to remove the stigma around discussing it.
That’s a great start, but the managers I spoke to found it hard to be sympathetic. When people took time off to recalibrate, their work had to be shared around their colleagues. Teams were already working at full capacity and under resourced.
How the work environment contributes to anxiety
A major cause of stress is uncertainty. It is hard to do our best work when we lose that vital sense of control over what happens to us. There is so much to worry about: a slow economy, NHS waiting times, the housing crisis, strikes, transport issues, crime, AI’s threat to job security, political division, family breakdown and frightening news headlines. These issues compound to make us anxious.
In the absence of adequate public services, people turn to their employer for reassurance. Employers have been trying to win hearts and minds after all. Now it’s pay back time as there is an expectation for managers to be concerned with what was previously personal: our feelings. Their support needs to be both proactive and preventative. Good managers can make all the difference in making us feel safe and in control. Purposeful work is a great distraction.
The managers people turn to unfortunately aren’t always much use. I’ve written before about the Chartered Management Institute ’s finding that 82% of managers haven’t had any training – they are ‘accidental managers’. They are busy with their own responsibilities. They aren’t trained to spot signs of burnout early or to support people into a quicker return to work. They don’t know how to manage properly or build psychological safety. They certainly aren’t trained to talk about mental health. They end up micro-managing their workers rather than doing what they should do: building confidence and competency, then managing the workflow so that tasks are easier to complete in reasonable working hours.
Relentless working environments don’t help either. Hybrid working has eroded the valuable trust and ease of communication that comes with everyday contact. People feel isolated, that they don’t belong. Distance allows small misunderstandings to escalate into big problems.
Crazy busyness crowds out time to spot problems, to talk properly, to notice when people’s performance is tailing off and to discuss it with them. I’ve noticed that managers find it harder than ever to start a ‘difficult’ conversation. Maybe it’s fear of upsetting people, or of litigation, or that they have so many other pressing priorities that the ‘people stuff’ goes to the bottom of the list.
Endless 24/7 communication and digital distractions don’t help. People get their work done but switch tasking and endless interruptions means it takes much longer than it should. The managers I spoke to admitted that they had worked fewer hours when they were younger and had been able to switch off and recharge at evenings and weekends. Maybe that’s why they were able to bounce back more easily.
I’ve been reading about a Japanese initiative to enjoy long working lives, rather than long working hours. We all know how draining days in front of a screen can be: no breaks, no fresh air, no proper meals during the day, not enough time for exercise. I’ll never forget the senior leader in a bank who told me he’d only had time for a sherbet dib dab for lunch. We teach young children the requirements for good mental health but ignore them ourselves. No wonder we crash and burn.
Those Mindful Charters should include a commitment to break times and banning non-essential contact outside working hours. If people can’t recharge their batteries then of course they’ll run out of energy and pull a duvet day. We aren’t robots. Mental health days restore the boundaries that working cultures should put in place. Individuals must develop better coping strategies, but there are also systemic issues behind poor resilience. If your culture doesn’t address them, then don’t be surprised if your sick days increase.