In this episode we will explore the importance of mental health and well-being in our fast-paced professional lives. Jen Moff and Jillian Derby join Pete Wright to share personal stories, experiences, and valuable insights on creating a supportive and compassionate work environment.
Discover the secrets to promoting a culture of open communication, flexibility, and psychological safety. Learn about the evolution of work-life balance, autonomy, and asynchronous workstyles, as well as practical steps for employees and managers to prioritize mental health, and take the first step towards cultivating a more mindful and productive workplace today.
Links & Notes
- S2 E3: Managing Stress and Heading Off Burnout
- Danielle (Posa) Pusateri on LinkedIn: #businesscaseforwellbeing #wellbeingresearch #reputation #innovation… | 35 comments
- Developing Mindful Leaders
- Unlocking Well-Being in the Workplace
Episode Transcript
Pete Wright:
Welcome to Human Solutions: Simplifying HR for People who Love HR from AIM HR Solutions on TruStory FM. I’m Pete Wright, and this week we’re exploring the importance of mental health and wellbeing in our professional lives. Our own Jen Moff and Jillian Derby join me to talk about their experiences and valuable insights on creating a supportive and compassionate work environment.
Welcome, everybody. Thrilled you are all here. Jen Moff, Jillian Derby, welcome back. One more week, more lessons to learn.
Jen Moff:
Oh, Pete, Pete, Pete.
Jillian Derby:
Oh.
Jen Moff:
My favorite.
Pete Wright:
Oh. I love podcasting with you guys. And today, we are going to be talking about one of my favorite topics. Once again, we’re in the middle of a brief ongoing series on mental health in the workplace. And I wonder if we could start with a little bit of a history lesson. I’ll kick it to you first, Jen. When did we start thinking about the value of work-life balance and workplace mental health safety? When did that become important? Because it certainly is in my lifetime.
Jen Moff:
If you ask different people this question, I’m sure you’re going to get completely different answers as well. Some people might say, “Well, it’s because of the pandemic. We’ve really seen the need because of the pandemic.” And that might have been the most overt recent major event or catalyst, but I personally would argue it’s been brewing for years prior to that. Some people could argue that it stems from millennials and their personal feelings about it and their growth path and what they want out of a workplace, and what they want for their lives. But with all things, there’s no one clear answer, but what we are seeing is like a snowball at the top of a mountain rolling downhill, it’s gathering steam, it’s getting bigger and bigger, it’s gaining speed and it can’t be ignored.
Pete Wright:
Why does it matter that we create a culture of all the things, open communication and flexible schedules and psychological safety at work? Why does it matter?
Jen Moff:
In my opinion, and take this for what it’s worth, I personally think that it has to do with the fact that we’re learning more and more over time. Technologically, if we look at that in the last 50 years, we’ve had the most growth that we’ve ever had, and that same kind of learning can be paralleled in many other industries and areas of exploratory learning, mental health being one of them. When I think about stereotypical, and I’m using air quotes here, stereotypical ideas of what a workplace should look like, again, should is in air quotes too.
Pete Wright:
So many air quotes-
Jen Moff:
Yes. All the air quotes.
Pete Wright:
… listeners, I can verify she is on camera using air quotes.
Jen Moff:
The older frame of thinking when the industrial revolution happened was, “Oh, we have a way to automate. We have a way to standardize. We have a way to guarantee certain things.” And that took people out of the farms, out of doing things of their own creative skillset and guaranteed certain types of work. But in order for things to be financially valid and valuable, there had to be structure, there had to be process put in place. And that was the tipping point of people disconnecting from themselves and becoming more part of a machine. And that could only last for so long before this robotic check your personal life at the door mentality at work is no longer sustainable. So we’re at that tipping point. We’ve been there for a while. We feel the pressure from a bottom line perspective. Companies are seeing the financial impact of ignoring the holistic nature of employing another human being.
Pete Wright:
That’s the nut of it, isn’t it? That by creating these systems and a culture of support systems, we can, by and large, make work better for more people more of the time.
Jillian Derby:
Not only that, but if you have employees who are healthy mentally and physically, you’re going to get your best work from them, the best quality of work. So if you’re saying check your mental health at the door, we don’t care about that. We don’t want to talk about that. Personal life is going to leak over and bleed into your professional life. So by supporting them, by not only doing the right thing and creating a culture where that’s acceptable in what people want, but overall productivity and job performance is going to be better.
Pete Wright:
Well, okay, so Jillian, since you broke the seal on that particular subject, how does it manifest that maybe we just take AIM as a, fair to say, a role model example? What is the culture of mental health awareness and these support systems look like for you?
Jillian Derby:
Personally I could say that a lot of it has to do with my relationship with my manager. There’s this safe space mentality that I can go to her and really feel like I could say anything and it would be reciprocated and we could work on a solution. So I really think that communication is a really, really big piece of that. Jen, I don’t know if you have any experiences related to AIM that you could tie into that.
Pete Wright:
Well, I have one back to you, Jilli, before we transition, before you throw that particular hot potato, Jen. You have cultivated a, from my perspective, a rigorous work schedule. And you are so… I talk about you at dinner as someone who, when Jillian is not working, Jillian’s not working. Jillian just feels gone to me on non work days. And so because you don’t work a full five-day week and that’s a work-life balance, family necessity situation.
Jillian Derby:
Yeah, no, that’s a great point. So about, I was just talking to my husband about this, about, my son’s almost 10, eight years ago, I went part-time and I was full-time and I was working for a company that when I was on vacation week, I was being pinged by the CEO and I was really stressed out. It was getting to a place where I felt like, can I even work anymore? Does this makes sense? But I knew that-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, not just for these people, but at all? Well, yeah.
Jillian Derby:
Right, right. Do I want to work anymore? Am I in the right field? Is marketing for me? You start to question your own sense of value and-
Pete Wright:
Identity. Yeah.
Jillian Derby:
Yeah. And so I really, really struggled with it. And then I decided, my husband sat down with me and we both decided that part-time would be a really great solution for me, but there wasn’t a lot of part-time options out there. And so I ended up at one company that they were very good, but it wasn’t like AIM. And then I saw AIM’s role and I applied and I came in with a part-time schedule. And they have always been so fabulous about working with me, especially during the pandemic when I had multiple, the kids home and remote school and all that fun times.
There was a lot of flexibility there. And so I like to think that because there is that flexibility, I bring myself, a hundred percent of myself to work when I’m here on my days that I’m on, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and I like doing that and I’m okay with that because I know that on Thursday or Friday, my manager has made it clear to people, Jillian’s off, don’t expect her to respond, and I do here and there, but it’s because I want to. It’s really has to do with the relationship of the people that you work with and setting the groundwork for what’s okay and what’s not okay.
Pete Wright:
Well, I think that’s such a great example of, to anchor that work life experience that you were stressed at work and contemplating no longer contributing as a productive member of the public economy, and you found this organization that already had the mechanism built in to support you and allow you to do your best work.
Jillian Derby:
The funny thing is too, is when I told my manager that I was leaving to go part-time, she said to me, “Well, why didn’t you just talk to me about it? We could have worked something out.” And to this day, I still am very fond of my manager there, but I think that that also helped me in growing in the future and that I needed to have that openness with my managers so that I didn’t put myself in that situation again, because she was right. Why didn’t I just approach her about it? It might have not happened, but it at least could have been a conversation.
Pete Wright:
So this is a great segue for you, Jen, that I think it’s really interesting that we have an organization that even if it had a self-image, that we have a culture that these things are okay to talk about. All organizations are made up of complex human organisms and we are learning all the time. So Jillian at the time sounds like didn’t know that this was an okay thing or hadn’t internalized that this was an okay conversation to have, and as a result ended up in a new place to all of our great benefit. But I’m curious how you approach client conversations or member conversations about how do we build out a culture when we’re facing so many things that we’ve never faced before? These are the famous unknown unknowns.
Jen Moff:
I love that. The unknown unknowns, yes. I’m not a member of the hotline team, but I have talked to Terry who heads that up and has been on the podcast quite a bit, and she does get questions about this. And the big theme that I recommend, because I’m our wellness expert internally within the learning and development department, is that you have to know what the legal parameters are and you have to have a clear stance on what wellness, wellbeing, mental health, emotional health is, and put a policy in place that hits right from an employee’s start date. There’s no proving oneself to earn anything. There’s no determining what mental health for one person looks like versus another person. It needs to be applicable across time and space. And knowing that that’s in place for possible people that want to work there, that’s a benefit, a part of the compensation package. If you can communicate those things to attract ideal team members, I think that’s only going to be the way of the future.
Pete Wright:
So at what point do teams… So if it’s a compensation benefit, it sounds like you’re suggesting that this conversation happens at time of hire.
Jen Moff:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
So what are the tools that you put in place to actually talk about this effectively?
Jen Moff:
It depends on the company. I know there’s a couple of other companies here in the state of Massachusetts that leverage third party software and companies that provide mental health resources, that include say, 12 therapy sessions per year. And as somebody who has looked into getting a therapist many different times over the course of my life for various things, therapy is not a low investment item. It’s easily a multiple hundred dollars per hour kind of investment. So to have a company offering to put that into its comp package is really, I think a high value. And that’s separate from an FSA or an HSA. These same companies also offer coaching. So yes, we offer coaching and I offer coaching myself individually as part of our executive coaching team. So I am a little partial, but there are services out there that provide these support systems to holistically look at what a person needs to excel.
Pete Wright:
I think this is fascinating. We just lob this tidbit to people who work at organizations that have built in coaching and therapy services built into their health plan that often, I don’t know if you’ve tried to find a therapist of late, it’s really hard to do right now.
Jen Moff:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
This is a constrained resource and often the agreements that your organization has in place with third party providers will allow you to get therapy much more quickly. And so that’s just something to consider. If you haven’t looked into it and you need it, please look into your organization’s plan. You might have it already and not know it-
Jen Moff:
Yes.
Jillian Derby:
That’s a good point. I had a family member who was just trying to get counseling for her son, a teenager, and you’d think with every conversation that’s out there about mental health post pandemic, especially in young children, and what this pandemic did to them, it was so hard to find something and she was able to find something, but it was months later and it was telehealth, it was something. So that’s good. But when you’re talking about mental health, sometimes time can be really precious and two months seems like forever to you.
Jen Moff:
Yeah, you’re looking at, when looking for a provider, you have to look at do they take clients? Are they taking clients right now? If they are, are they taking your insurance? More and more of them are not taking insurance, they’re going self-pay and then we’ll issue you a super bill that you can submit later. And then do they provide a modality that supports what your goals are in therapy? It’s very challenging. So having these things I think is going to be a continued benefit of where someone would choose to work.
Pete Wright:
Let’s look at some of the practical symptoms, organizational symptoms that people are in need. How do you identify red flags in the organization from an HR perspective that indicates you might need to push forward some of your mental health and safety initiatives?
Jillian Derby:
I can weigh in on that a little bit while Jen research. So I think you also want to look for people who maybe that were really interested in work all of a sudden become withdrawn.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Jillian Derby:
I think that’s disinterest in work. We talk about quiet quitting, I think boundaries are different than totally withdrawn. So unexplained absences and tardiness, things like that as well.
Pete Wright:
Jillian, I just have to think the responsibility, the locus of responsibility for identifying these red flags, that lethargy at work, the quiet quitting, that’s something that seems so wildly out of control of HR and so perfectly in the basket of responsibilities of individual line or department managers. And as if they don’t have enough to do already. That again goes back to culture when you’re promoting somebody to management, how are we training them to be on the lookout for these things too?
Jillian Derby:
Yeah, I was going to say, without training and all leaders in your organization having that training too, not just cherry-picking certain people. It needs to be every manager so that every employee has at least a chance to have a similar experience. They need to be trained. And I know Jen can talk a little bit more about training and what MHR offers in relation to that too.
Jen Moff:
The other piece of what Jillian’s talking about that people don’t recognize is individuals with high functioning depression. So people that look on the surface like they’ve got it all together, they’re getting their stuff done on time, they’re your peak performers, and then when they are not there, they just completely mentally check out. They disassociate. They have no energy for anything else. They’re basically giving every bit of energy and wellness that they do have to the job and everything else just goes away. Their social life doesn’t exist. Their diet and sleep does not get prioritized, but they wouldn’t share those things because that’s not something you talk about at work.
So it can be hard sometimes to recognize who might need help, which is why I think making it a blanket educational thing like Jillian’s saying so that people can not only rely on the company to have some responsibility to show up, but it’s an individual’s responsibility too. But if we don’t educate, if we don’t provide those training resources to help people self-identify when stress gets to a point that’s affecting their mental health, when they aren’t able to take care of themselves outside of work. There’s other areas of life that when things start showing up at work that’s indicative of, it’s already affected everywhere else. The workplace is the final frontier, so to speak.
Pete Wright:
Compartmentalized masking, that’s the-
Jen Moff:
Love that phrase.
Pete Wright:
… I’ll tell you, I work extensively with the ADHD community, adult ADHD community and people living on the spectrum of ADHD and anxiety. And I think there is so much there where we see people who have to mask certain parts of their lives just to get through the day. But at the end of the day, the exhaustion is such that there’s no ability to take care of the things, the self-care, let alone mental health self-care. We’re talking about, just as you say, sleep, diet, exercise, what are the things that we know contribute to mental health, positive mental health and outlook not able to do any of that because it takes so much work to work. And one of the things that I think you both have said, just promoting that you have these benefits, doing that internal marketing sends a really good signal that this is the kind of culture that you work in, that this is a culture where you don’t have to be afraid.
We’re not afraid to tell you these services exist and we’re telling you loud and proud. It’s in every bathroom, it’s on every wall, and so you don’t have to be afraid to make use of them. That feels like step one. Step two is how you address the actual practical application of these things. How do you handle vacation days, sick days, mental health days? What do those look like and how do you build a policy? So I’ll throw it back to you guys as we get close to wrapping up here, ideas on crafting the practical application of work-life balance in your organization in a way that helps you create a safe space for folks.
Jen Moff:
The question is a big one, and I want to touch on a couple of key things. You are establishing a culture of wellness, wellbeing and valuing those things. And values are rooted in behavior. So you have to have actionable elements that can be behaviorally witnessed. So if you’re designing something like a time off structure that consists of paid time off, sick time, as well as vacation days that are annual holidays for the country and state that you live in, you need to know what legally is permissible for where you live and for where the company is based off of, based out of. And from that place deciding what do we want? What is the marketplace telling us other people want? What are the trends and building something in place.
I’ve worked for companies that have an unlimited PTO policy with a required minimum of X amount of days used per year, and it’s the supervisor’s responsibility to enforce that that minimum gets met, and that’s used for sick time, that’s used for vacation, that’s used for whatever is needed by the individual. So if somebody doesn’t really like to take a lot of vacations, but they need a lot of mental health days, they might use the same amount as somebody else that says, I like to take a lot of vacations, but my mental health is fine. But there’s no need to disclose. So if you’re wanting to keep anonymity, privacy front of mind, having a policy like that might be valuable. If that’s not as much of a priority or a value, then having different buckets of time for each type of thing is another approach to go.
Pete Wright:
It seems like that unlimited PTO time plan gets you from an HR perspective, eliminates possible conflict and putting you in an uncomfortable space when you don’t have to ask the questions. You just take the time you need. I’m curious, do we have data that shows… I think what I’m getting to is I have worked for some more conservative managers in the past and they push for conservative buckets of time, and the fear was that with a more lenient policy that let’s just say going all the way to unlimited PTO, that people would just not work enough. And I’m curious, is it harder to get people to work with an unlimited PTO time or harder to get people to take time off that they need to take off?
Jillian Derby:
I don’t have any data points or anything like that to point to, but I would say by having an unlimited vacation policy, you are putting in a trust factor with your employees, so you’re trusting in them that they’re going to do the right thing and not not work or take months off-
Pete Wright:
Egregious abuse of a kind policy.
Jillian Derby:
Yeah, and I think from what I have seen, companies that have unlimited vacation time, I think we talked about this in one of the podcasts, Pete, it’s still a very average amount of time that people are taking off three weeks or something. But I do think it goes back to trusting your employees. If you really think that all your employees are just going to take a wild amount of time off you got a bigger problem, you got a bigger problem. You don’t trust your people.
Pete Wright:
That’s my hunch. I have heard more often, I have a great policy and I have too much to do. I can’t take time off. Those two things go together more than, Hey, I have a great policy, let’s play video games all day.
Jen Moff:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
I just don’t hear that, that often. So I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m not saying that your mileage may vary broadly, but I do think that there are some real benefits to consider.
Jen Moff:
I like what both of you are saying. I know Jillian and I both do a lot of research out in the marketplace and see what’s going on in the zeitgeist, and I see a lot of videos either on YouTube or on TikTok talking about this from a different point of view. Imagining you won the lottery and didn’t have to work, or if there was some other funding of money so that you were not reliant upon Job X to provide X amount of dollars to live. The belief is, well then no one’s going to want to work, the same like fear is there that distrust. But what they’ve found is people then begin to pursue things that are exciting to them, that are meaningful to them, that motivate them. So people want to contribute. People want to be helpful, people want to matter, and to be part of something bigger than themselves. So to dismiss and think that it’s as simple as, well, people just don’t want to, I think Jillian hit it right on the head, that nail. There’s bigger fish to fry, there’s bigger concerns.
Pete Wright:
Well, this is a great conversation, and obviously, as you both have said at some point or another, this is a very big conversation, but it is worth continuing to put this under the microscope and make sure your people are feeling taken care of, help them stay happy, healthy, and contributing. Thank you both very, very much, Jen Moff, Jillian Derby, your best. And we also have a whole bunch of links in the show notes, so swipe up in your show notes to make sure you can see those. We are talking about managing stress and heading off burnout from our own podcast and we’ve got some other resources on developing mindful leaders and unlocking wellbeing in the workplace. On behalf of Jillian and Jen, I’m Pete Wright. Thank you so, so much for continuing to subscribe and download this show. We appreciate your time and your attention. Until next week, we’ll see you next time on Human Solutions: Simplifying HR for People who Love HR.
