SEEING THE LIGHT OF ALL EMPLOYEES: SUPPORTING MENTAL HEALTH IN THE WORKPLACE

Lulu Cossich

Background

My journey in educational leadership started during the COVID-19 pandemic. As I strove to support my team, I began to recognize the importance of having leaders who are well-versed in mental health in the workplace. My understanding of the inextricable relationships between employee well-being, job satisfaction, and performance is informed by my lived experience. To support all employees and their differing needs, we must see the importance and moral imperative to build divisions and teams that are equipped to attract, retain, and develop individuals with mental health illnesses. Our commitment as Friends educators positions us to examine and challenge our practices through the lens of continuing revelation.

Learnings

Mental health in the workplace is a topic that is often neither disclosed nor discussed. For almost a decade, researchers have tried to understand the impact and relationship between employee well-being, leadership, and mental health outcomes. In 2016 John Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health held a summit to call attention to the gaps and issues related to workplace practices regarding mental health. Since the summit, there has been a growing call for employers to implement practices and policies that support employees with mental health illnesses. Multiple factors have contributed to a heightened awareness of the topic including the COVID-19 pandemic and a generational shift and attitude toward seeking support and help in adults ages 18-25, as reported by McKinsey and Company.

Through an extensive literature review, I learned that work is one of the leading causes of stress in adults and can be directly linked with mental health outcomes. Wu, Roemer, Kent, et al. in a 2021 article stated how long working hours, lack of vacation or weekends away from work, and unclear roles and expectations are all contributing factors that exacerbate mental illnesses for employees within an organization. In addition, workplace ‘burnout,’ a casually and colloquially used term, was labeled by the World Health Organization as a medical condition due to chronic workplace stress. Burnout is a condition that can be prevented before it impacts employee mental health; the literature has several recommendations for doing so, though I will focus on three.

• Culture

• Health Benefts offered by the institution

• Workplace policies and practices

When we think of organizational culture in schools, we often think of how people work together and how Friends schools enact the different Quaker testimonies guided by the principles of Friendship and kindness; it is also how leaders manage teams and the behaviors they exhibit with their own relationship to work, policies, procedures, practices, or expectations that are in place. As leaders, it is important to model healthy behaviors with our work-life boundaries, speak about the importance of mental health, and collaborate with other team members to normalize it as part of workplace conversations and decisions. Thomas Hersen’s research deemed culture to also encompass, “unconscious assumptions that make up the value of an organization.” Our understanding, value, and behavior towards mental health should not be left open to interpretation.

An actionable first step towards making our organizations and teams have a clear stance on mental health is through the evaluation of current Health Benefits programs. The Annual Review for Organizational Psychology published in its 2023 review of Mental Health in the Workplace that mental health illnesses are not covered to the same extent as other medical illnesses in most health insurance plans and cites that despite organizations having traditional Employee Assistance Programs (EPA), these are often underutilized. In their review, they recommended training leadership to promote health and well-being, re-examining insurance policies, developing programs supporting mental health, and taking a critical look at diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

The research elucidates the challenges employees face when navigating through unclear or non-existent policies regarding accommodations for mental health. To support our faculty and staff, we must challenge ourselves to examine what policies exist or do not yet exist for encouraging well-being and providing accommodations when needed. It is also vital to train our leadership team to think of possible structures or accommodations before they are needed. Throughout my career and research, I have learned that psychiatric illnesses and mental health conditions are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and leadership practices can be, if in support of a colleague, subject to reasonable accommodation.

According to the research, leadership style and support have an important role in workplace mental health. Considering mental health falls under the social identifer of ability, as leaders we must approach it with and through an equity lens. It is paramount to a positive work culture that we examine our practices and meet the individual needs of colleagues. Below are some questions for self-refection,

• How am I mitigating biases when assigning tasks?

• Am I holding all members of my team to the same expectations?

- How am I mitigating performance punishment of high achievers?

- How am I holding colleagues capable of their responsibilities while also providing support to perform them?

• How am I modeling well-being?

• How do I ‘show up’ when speaking up and about mental health?

Throughout the course of this action research, I inquired with colleagues and created a social media poll to learn more about the support different schools might have for faculty and staff. My informal findings aligned with the literature, in that many independent schools only offer EPA benefits and access to in-building wellness facilities as the main sources of support for mental health. In addition, professional development or training on the subject had not taken place in the past two years.

Limitations and Next Steps

Further research is needed to have a comprehensive understanding of the services offered by schools, as well as the impact that certain services or lack thereof have on employees from historically underrepresented groups. With the available information, I hope to create a faculty meeting model that includes mental well-being as one of its core tenets in conjunction with professional development and curriculum to be implemented in the fall of 2024.

LULU COSSICH

Associate Head of Lower SchoolThe Chapin SchoolNew York, NY

Lulu Cossich is an educational leader who is deeply invested in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging and understanding the intersections of social identities of school stakeholders. She has presented at national and international conferences on Culturally Sustaining Practices, Fostering Musical Behaviors in Bilingual Children, DEIB considerations in the choral classroom…She has worked on collaborative projects including Flux Leadership: Real-time Inquiry for Humanizing Educational Change (Teacher’s College Press) and Choral Perspectives of Music Learning Theory (GIA publications). Lulu holds advanced degrees from the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.