Co-authored by: Jen Porter, Mind Share Partners, and Chelsea Madryga, Office of the Prime Minister of Canada
We’ve certainly met people who are confused by, and even outright dismiss it, when we talk about workplace mental health and wellbeing.
They scoff if their job requires intense 10-12-hour days — people like global business executives working across time zones, entrepreneurs running on sweat equity, client-oriented businesses such as law, nurses, doctors, and those in politics. People who go into these public service jobs in high-demand industries usually know what they signed up for: the long hours, job insecurity, and weekend calls.
But work grates on all of us; no one is immune. Many will likely experience burnout at some point.
One of us (Chelsea) started working in Canadian politics three years ago and was one of the skeptics. Of typical wellness practices, Chelsea remembers thinking, This job is too high stakes; mental wellness at work doesn’t apply to me, despite having a panic disorder.
The other of us (Jen) tried to muscle through depression during her first pregnancy while starting a new organization. It affected her work, but she stayed silent, thinking the role of a leader was to be strong and steady and to make strategic decisions. So she stayed silent.
These mindsets assumed that wellbeing was something only for people with extra time.
If a coach played their star athlete for an entire game, pushing her to work at 100% threshold the entire time, most of us would probably think the coach was lousy and unreasonable. In fact, the coach would probably be fired. Yet some of us set these impossible expectations for ourselves: minimal sleep, high-stress, always giving 100%.
The good news is that more and more executives, managers, and global companiesare seeing they can’t ignore employee wellbeing, which the research shows is inextricably tied to productivity, recruitment, and retention. Deloitte has found real-world evidence that investments in mental health produce a positive ROI in Canada. Newsweek is now publishing “America’s Greatest Workplaces for Mental Wellbeing 2024.”
The well-worn workplace advice – don’t check your emails after 6pm, don’t work on the weekends, set boundaries – aren’t always realistic for employees in certain industries. For those with jobs outside of the nine-to-five grind, these workers, especially, need to be mindful of mental and emotional strain. You – we – are not invincible.
Here’s how.
Separate the truly urgent from everything else.
In high intensity industries, it’s easy to get into the habit of treating everything as urgent. It’s not. There’s probably only one or two truly urgent items that require any employee’s undivided, immediate attention and can’t be put off. Prioritize what’s genuinely the top priority to get done today or this week. Those in management should model this for their teams, giving them permission to do the same. C-suite leaders at a high-demand tech start-up recently spoke to their teams about the importance of radical prioritization, both to manage work stress and to make space for personal care, including therapy and exercise.
Relief.
We all have to take a beat for relief. When certain aspects of a job can’t be changed—such as off-hours meetings with teams outside of your timezone—seek opportunities to balance that strain. If you work until 10 pm one night, come in later the next day or take the next day off as a “balance” day, not as PTO. It’s incumbent on managers to allow workers the flexibility to take relief in high-demand industries.
Autonomy.
When we talk about preventing burnout at work, most leaders’ minds go immediately to workload—and when that feels impossible to shift, they assume that burnout is just part of the job. However, research shows that an individual’s sense of autonomy at work is tied to symptoms of burnout. When managers can give employees more ability to decide how they work, when they work, and the type of work they’re involved in, they are taking steps to prevent burnout.
Recognition.
Recognition plays an equally important role in preventing burnout. Employees in high-demand industries are often high-achievers giving much of themselves and their time to work. The Canadian Prime Minister’s Office is working with managers from across the government to come up with innovative ways to ensure employees of all levels get thanked and recognized for their work by their leaders.
In February, the Canadian Prime Minister’s Office created a Workplace Wellness role in the human resources department – one of the first of its kind in a G7 administration. This was, and still is, a priority for the government and a program that can serve as a model for other governments across the globe.
Like the generations that came before, up-and-coming political leaders are filled with passion and fresh ideas to chart the future. What’s different today, however, are the higher levels of anxiety-inducing polarization, the mental health impact of social media, and, globally, the financial uncertainty felt among Gen Z and Millennials. Whether it’s politics, business, or nonprofit work, even high-demand sectors need a healthy bench to attract and keep the best and the brightest.
