The Validating Workplace
In the wake of the pandemic, employee well-being has never been a bigger concern. Studies show wellbeing concerns are now equally important to workers as compensation, especially when considering finding a new job.
In the past, well-being was a lazy add-on, limited to subsidised gym memberships or a mention of healthy eating, not in the hybrid, remote and flexible work routines where the contest for better well-being amid a buoyant labour market is a blood sport. It comes with an industry that provides training programs, self-help books, prevention workshops, and e-health apparatus. In my work, I receive more employer requests to assess employees’ fitness to work and seek advice about motivation, burnout or neurodiversity. Several managers from large firms have informally sought my advice about the growing number of workers that may require special provisions in the workplace.
What’s interesting to me is that repeated studies point to one simple factor that contributes notably to employee wellbeing. That is an empathetic manager. Black Dog research illustrated that merely having a manager who was willing to validate a mental health-related concern was enough to elevate that workplace to the upper tier of performance in well-being markers.
Professor Carol Black a UK government adviser on health and the workplace told the Financial Times:
“It’s all about the line manager- from the shop floor to the top floor,” he says. “They need to have interpersonal, social and empathetic skills. In the world we are going to, there has to be parity of people and technical skills for managers.”
A study this year from the global management consultancy Mckinsey about workplace burnout conducted over fifteen different countries also rated this characteristic as paramount. The estimated cost of mental health absenteeism for business in Australia is around 20 billion dollars according to the Mckinsey report. The research found the majority of workers withheld information about their emotional lives due to fear of others finding out, being perceived as weak which then potentially hampered their career progression.
Workers across the world rated toxic workplace behaviours like bullying or passive aggression as the biggest reason they might consider switching organisations. Since the rise of work from home, I would add perceived exclusion from activities such as meetings or workshops as a rising complaint.
The stakeholder category of ESG considerations so front of mind for modern corporations has traditionally focused on risks in the supply chain or human rights, but employee wellbeing should be prioritised in this realm. The notion of burnout is especially relevant at a time when people invest the world of work with a greater significance, the predominant marker of an achieved identity. First described by the psychologist Freudenberger in the 1970s after his observations in drug addiction clinics, burnout described the emotional exhaustion, loss of motivation and flagging commitment among the clinic volunteers.
While still not a medical category, the essence of burnout was a clash of frustrated idealism against the technocratic coldness of a large organisation. It was the psychological collateral damage from transforming an industrialised society to a post-industrial service-oriented economy. My colleague Scientia UNSW Professor Gordon Parker says the 24/7 dissolution of boundaries between work and home is one of the most pronounced factors his team observed in their research on burnout. Interest in burnout, in parallel with mental health concerns in the workplace more generally, has grown in parallel with the socio-economic development of the countries involved, further accelerated by the pandemic.
I have traditionally been sceptical of the greater therapeutic focus in the workplace, mirroring other aspects of society. But there is something about a validating workplace that speaks to the cultural moment. To borrow from ideas emerging from youth mental health, especially when considering rising psychiatric diagnoses among adolescents, emotional acknowledgement from an employer appears to encourage in workers a culture of dignity over that of victimisation.
A culture of dignity encourages an internal focus on solving psychological distress, whereas perceiving victimisation leads to a desire for intervention by a third party, such as a higher authority or a legal pathway. This is a trend I see when assessing compensation claims. This is not to question the importance of workplace flexibility, job design, or options for time away, such as sabbaticals or other perks. All such measures may help retain workers and reduce absenteeism and even presenteeism, where employees turn up but underperform. They all seem to pale when compared to the simple act of a validating boss.
Never has the importance of empathy, real or imagined, been more strategically necessary in management.
Author:
Dr Tanveer Ahmed
General Adult Psychiatrist
MBBS, FRACZCP
