WorkTango analyzed academic research and news coverage to explore how companies can prioritize employee mental health in a meaningful way.
Be good models
In her 2024 research for the SHRM, Daroon Jalil found that while 73% of employees said their companies claim to care about mental health, almost half said those workplaces don't take actions that support this sentiment. She notes one way to cultivate a workplace environment that benefits mental health is for leaders to be positive models. For example, a leader telling colleagues they're taking a few days off to unwind after a lengthy work project is modeling good mental health care practices.
Companies can create work-life balance through four-day work weeks to help employees manage stress and productivity. Trials of the model in other countries have led to more productivity and a boost in mental and physical health, according to the World Economic Forum.
It's also important for company leaders to proactively encourage workers to take advantage of the benefits available to them. Almost 70% of workers are unaware of what their employer offers, according to the SHRM. In Nicholl's experience, this information will sometimes exist on a company's intranet, an internal network where a business disseminates information to its workers, often without further advertisement.
"Sometimes you have a really great program that just sits on the shelf because nobody knows it's there," she said.
Duran said that he tried to kill himself after struggling early in his career. In a statement released Tuesday, Duran said: “Talking about this wasn’t easy, but it felt important.”
