When Mental Health Becomes Part of the Manager Job Description

Core competencies for the modern manager may include hiring staff, training team members, setting deadlines and overseeing projects. But now a new task is being added to their plates: identifying signs of mental health distress among their workers.

Being able to effectively accomplish the latter task isn’t an innate skill for most managers, even though their potential impact on worker mental health is significant. And when it comes to equipping managers to effectively tackle this task, many workplaces lag behind.

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Today’s workforce is irrefutably struggling mentally, according to several survey reports:

• Half of American workers reported experiencing moderate-to-severe burnout, depression or anxiety, with 9 out of 10 reporting at least minor levels of one mental health challenge.
• More than one-third of workers reported their job negatively impacts their mental health, with over half saying they feel “used up” and almost half feeling burned out.
• 70% of employers received more mental health-related requests from employees.

Having managers serve as boots-on-the-ground mental health resources can make an impact on workplaces, but only when they are properly trained and equipped.

“Although this increases the day-to-day demands placed on managers, the long-term benefits of having strong managerial relationships pay dividends for organizations,” said Betsy Schwartz, the senior director of the Center for Workplace Mental Health, a program of the American Psychiatric Association Foundation. “Employee retention and engagement increase in workplaces that acknowledge mental health needs and provide resources to meet employees where they are.”

“We all need to adapt to make a place where people can work productively and in good health and have access when they need something, rather than waiting until it becomes a conflict or litigation, which will be the worst way to work it out.” —
Devjani H. Mishra, shareholder, Littler Mendelson P.C

A Capability That Must Be Cultivated

Tapping managers to serve as the eyes and ears for employee mental health, and the middleman between workers and HR’s offerings and affiliated resources, makes sense in some ways, said Sarah Gunderson, RN, the vice president of clinical consulting at HR and benefits consulting firm Segal — but that doesn’t mean mangers can simply slip into that role.

“There’s an assumption that’s doing a whole lot of lifting, which is that managers are the best person to have the conversation with the employee just because they have proximity to the employee and some sort of relationship with them,” she said.

Without tailored training and clear guidelines, this expectation — whether stated or implied — may cause managers to feel as though they’re expected to serve as mental health professionals.

“That leads to managers who feel like something bad will happen to their employees unless they do something exactly right and say the exact right thing at the exact right time,” Gunderson explained. “It’s not fair to put that in a manager’s job description.”

Responding to employees’ challenges, needs and requests specifically related to mental health also is often less innate or comfortable for managers, said Devjani H. Mishra, a shareholder and member of the leave of absence and disability accommodation core group at employment law firm Littler Mendelson P.C.

“People intuitively understand, ‘I fell, so I need to have surgery and I’m bedridden,’” she said. “It’s a lot harder for managers to understand sometimes how to deal with a mental health-related request. Some of this is giving people the awareness that these issues are real, they’re to be taken seriously and they’re just as protected as physical health requests.”

The unique challenges workers are facing (e.g., remote work, artificial intelligence) presents an opportunity for employers to find new ways of addressing them, said Mishra.

“You have to acknowledge that what you were used to in the past may not hold true anymore,” she said. “We all need to adapt to make a place where people can work productively and in good health and have access when they need something, rather than waiting until it becomes a conflict or litigation, which will be the worst way to work it out.”

Creating the Framework

According to Schwartz, successfully equipping managers to recognize and discuss mental health needs means:

• Offering structured training programs and teaching practical skills, including how to recognize signs of burnout, have supportive conversations, and understand when and how to escalate concerns that arise.
• Enabling ongoing support to reinforce those skills by providing managers with access to coaching, resources and additional training.
• Role-modeling mental health openness from the top by having organizational leaders exhibit healthy boundaries and normalizing discussions about well-being, which decreases stigma and encourages use of mental health resources.

Schwartz acknowledged asking managers to consider and support workers’ mental health may feel intrusive at first, but experience has demonstrated that when provided with effective mental health training, managers report improved confidence in their ability to lead.

“We know that just one person expressing concern can counteract stigma and change mental health outcomes,” she said. “The key to success is ensuring that the training emphasizes appropriate boundaries by acknowledging the limits of recognition and referral.”

Editor’s Note: Additional Content

For more information and resources related to this article, see the pages below, which offer quick access to all WorldatWork content on these topics:

• Employee Benefits
• Employee Experience
• Well-Being