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Special Issue HEALTH & WELL-BEING
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Mental health and wellness should be taking centre stage for employers as they begin to assess a post-COVID world of work – by Michelle Sturman
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he issue of mental wellness in the workplace was already creeping up the boardroom agenda pre-COVID, in line with a growing focus on health and well-being. Now, as we approach the two-year mark that signalled the start of mandated lockdowns, work-from-home (WFH) orders and dealing with COVID-19-related grief, fear and stress – along with the economic impact threatening job security – the toll on mental health has been, in some cases, catastrophic. But this is nothing new. By 2018, the social and economic costs of mental health problems were already well documented. The impact resulted in a hit on individuals, businesses and wider society to the tune of 3.5-4% of GDP, according to an OECD Integrated Mental Health, Skills and Work Policy. The State of Health in the EU Companion Report 2021, meanwhile, suggests the pandemic “significantly increased levels of reported anxiety and depressive disorders in most European countries”. The study placed this figure at an average of 23-24% across EU countries in 2020. Research overwhelmingly indicates that anxiety and stress over the past two years have not merely affected those with pre-existing conditions. Both have additionally struck swathes of the global population due to the significant change in events brought about by COVID. Based on the Health at a Glance: Europe 2020: State of Health in the EU Cycle survey carried out by the OECD and the European Commission, the effects have been “particularly pronounced
Special Issue HEALTH & WELL-BEING
among people with lower socioeconomic status, young people, frontline workers, especially health and care workers, and for people with existing mental health conditions”. It adds that “people who were able to continue employment during confinement or to telework were less likely to report depression and anxiety”.
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COLLECTIVE TRAUMA This latter point does not mean those able to continue to work – wherever this place of work may be – were immune. A 2021 study revealed that discussion of mental health in Glassdoor reviews has increased over 500% in the past three years. Equally, mentions of well-being have risen sharply (58%) since COVID arrived, while talk of burnout has jumped 128% since April 2021. Huge percentage jumps such as these are wholly unsurprising, given the collective trauma the world has endured since the start of 2020. For many, the stop-start nature of lockdowns resulting in toing and froing from being in the traditional workplace to working from home has been unsettling, to say the least. Pre-pandemic, mental health issues typically revolved around workload, burnout, work-life balance and discrimination. These are still of paramount concern, but COVID has thrown even more into the equation, namely feelings of isolation, grief, uncertainty, etc. As a result, the mental wellness industry posted strong 7% growth from 2019-2020, as people sought solutions to help them cope with the stresses of the coronavirus crisis, according to Global Wellness Institute (GWI) research, The Global Wellness Economy: Looking Beyond Covid. The largest mental wellness segment, ‘senses, spaces and sleep’, grew 12.4%, while the smallest, ‘meditation and mindfulness’, rose the fastest (25%). GWI forecasts 10% growth annually through 2025, to reach $210 billion, with spending heavily concentrated in North America, Asia-Pacific and Europe.
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INCREASED AWARENESS One positive to be taken from the past couple of years, as mentioned in the Mind Share Partners’ 2021 Mental Health at Work Report, is that “amid all the disruption and trauma is the normalisation of mental health challenges at work”. The US-based study found that, increasingly, younger employees are resigning from their jobs for mental health reasons – 68% of millennials (50% in 2019) and 81% of Gen Zers (75% in 2019), compared with 50% of respondents overall (34% in 2019). In addition, 91% of respondents believe a company’s culture should support mental health, up from 86% in 2019. Across all organisational levels, mental health challenges are now the “norm”, with 76% noting at least one symptom in the past year, up from 59% in 2019. As regards workplace factors impacting mental health, the most common was an emotionally draining – stressful, overwhelming or monotonous – line of work. It was followed by work-life balance.
