Before she even reaches her desk, the employee catches a glimpse of her manager. His shoulders are tight and his expression is stony as he stares at his laptop. Nothing has been said, but the tone has been set. She feels her body tense in response and mentally braces for whatever lies ahead.
Let’s call her Ariel.
For Ariel, the impact accumulates over time. She perceives her workplace as unsafe, and slowly adjusts her behavior in small ways, often choosing to proceed with caution, while skillfully masking her growing stress levels and declining psychological wellbeing.
Organizations that want their employees to thrive mentally must examine both the causes and the symptoms of poor workplace mental health. Most organizations respond to workplace mental health issues only when they become visible – when work quality suffers, engagement metrics fall, or attrition rates climb. Two corporate functions are often tasked with this responsibility:
Employee benefits
Organizations are increasingly exploring mental health coverage under their medical insurance programs, and insurers have been forthcoming in supporting such requests. In recent years, we have been observing a promising trend towards covering mental treatment expenses under Group Hospital & Surgical and Group Outpatient Specialist plans, and we strongly encourage all organizations to adopt this practice.
Culture
Within the Culture function, discussions regarding workplace mental health often revolve around events and engagement initiatives – yoga and meditation sessions, table tennis facilities, annual dinner & dance events, and similar programs. These are common ways organizations attempt to inject fun, encourage interaction, and break the monotony of work. Participants often express appreciation and positive anticipation for such activities.
While these measures are undoubtedly helpful, they primarily address visible symptoms, and do not penetrate deeply enough to diagnose, treat, and prevent the underlying causes. Tackling symptoms without addressing root causes can create an illusion of action while failing to prevent recurrences.
Effectively addressing workplace mental health, therefore, requires more than symptom management. A brief comparison between conventional and functional medicine offers a useful analogy: while conventional medicine excels in acute care by focusing on specific disease symptoms, functional medicine aims for lasting outcomes by exploring a patient’s genetic, environmental, and lifestyle influences. The two approaches complement each other in delivering holistic care and transformative results, and neither is sufficient on its own. Similarly, organizations that want their employees to thrive mentally must examine both the causes and the symptoms of poor workplace mental health.
Moments like what Ariel encountered are not covered in engagement surveys, nor do they trigger formal interventions. However, they quietly shape how safe employees feel about speaking up, asking for help, admitting to mistakes and uncertainty, or even making light conversation.
Research by The Workforce Institute at UKG (opens a new window) in 2022 found that among 3,400 employees across 10 countries, nearly 70% of respondents reported that their managers had as much impact on their mental health as their spouses. It is therefore unsurprising that entire industries now exist to coach managers in cultivating good workplace mental health – training them to recognize and address mental health concerns, model healthy behaviors, promote psychological safety, distribute workloads sustainably, and check in regularly with their direct reports.
While these are helpful and necessary, they lack the teeth to bring about lasting change when incentives and accountability remain untouched. In addition to personal traits, management behavior is a product of organizational design, where who is promoted, what is measured, and what is celebrated or tolerated all clearly signal what truly matters.
Organizations must make three structural decisions about management responsibility that define workplace mental health. Those decisions, and why they matter, are explored further here.
