S3 E7: HR Mindfulness Matters: Mental Health in the Workplace
Podcast May 24, 2023
Podcast Transcript
Pete Wright:
Welcome to Human Solutions: Simplifying HR for People Who Love HR from AIM HR Solutions on True Story FM. I’m Pete Wright. Are you ready to revolutionize your organization’s approach to workplace stress? You want to supercharge productivity, employee retention and legal compliance? Then this is going to be a game-changing episode for you. Jen, the mindfulness maestro Moff and Tom, the savvy employment lawyer Jones, are going to guide us through the HR labyrinth of stress management. Get ready to transform your workplace using your magnificent HR power and create a happier, healthier workplace for everyone.
Jen, Tom, welcome back. It’s so good to see you both.
Jen Moff:
Likewise.
Tom Jones:
Good to be back.
Pete Wright:
I’m really excited for this because we’ve talked about mindfulness a number of times. Jen, you and I have been on the show a number of times talking about mindfulness and reducing stress of the workplace and all the benefits therein. And now we have Tom who I honestly don’t know. I don’t know what Tom’s going to bring to this conversation because so far, whenever Tom’s on a show, he’s telling me what we can’t do. And I’m a little bit nervous about Tom performing the role of wet blanket on all of our efforts too [inaudible 00:01:21].
Tom Jones:
That could happen.
Jen Moff:
You are no wet blanket, Tom. I’m just going to boo you up right now and you’re going to come in and kill it and you’re sharing all these wonderful tips. I just know it and I’m saying that mostly to convince myself because like Pete, the compliance side of thing I think is really valuable. But it does have a preconception of being kind of this, and I think we can reframe that.
Pete Wright:
I think we can reframe it. And I’m really interested as part of that reframing is looking at not just what we are doing, but what we can do, what sort of opportunities exist that maybe we don’t know how to look for or we haven’t been taught to look for from an HR perspective, the things we can do to make our workplaces better in the form of stress reduction. According to the American Psychiatric Association, 26% of people anticipated experiencing more stress at the start of 2023, up from 20% last year. Stress is really killing it. Let’s talk about you guys and your relationship with stress at work. You both seem pretty chill to me right now.
Jen Moff:
Tom, do you want to take the lead here? No, Jen
Tom Jones:
No, Jen. You can go. You can go first.
Jen Moff:
Everyone’s nodding not me.
Tom Jones:
I know.
Jen Moff:
For me, stress, it’s an interesting thing. Number of years ago I was taking kind of a little assessment and one of the questions about work in general was, do you find this thing energizing or exhausting? And I just loved that little kind of litmus test or kind of checks and balance question because that’s essentially what stress is. Stress can be energizing and it can be exhausting. And at the end of the day, I think we all experience both. There’s things that pressure wise we can get really excited about and, oh, I’ve got this project. And I’m just like, can’t wait to sink my teeth into it. And then there’s other… That’s just me.
Pete Wright:
Wow, business Jen just showed up and she’s a little scary.
Tom Jones:
See.
Jen Moff:
I’m a Capricorn. What can I say?
Pete Wright:
Right, right.
Jen Moff:
But then on the flip side, there’s times where I’m just sitting here open-mouthed wide-eyed like, I need a month off. I need to run far away and never rear my head up again. I just need to get away.
Pete Wright:
Well, I feel that’s also what’s buried in this statistic. I wonder how many of those people, if you were to ask them, what is it about stress at work that is causing you to anticipate having more stress this year than last? I wonder how many of those people would be able to define it clearly.
Tom Jones:
Good question.
Jen Moff:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right. It is a thing that because it’s a representation of how we feel, it’s extraordinarily difficult sometimes to put words to why it exists for us. Tom, you were going to say?
Tom Jones:
You know what it feels like? You know how when you go to the doctor for a physical and they say your blood pressure and all those things, and one of the things they’ll ask you is are you feeling pain?
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Tom Jones:
And in some ways it’s completely subjective. Okay, are you feeling pain? Well, what’s the scale? One to 10. How do I measure it? What’s my first seven versus your seven versus Jen’s seven? No idea. It really is very subjective to standard. I think stress could be about having to go back to work physically where people have been working from home. It could be about some change in the work demands because of things like that that you’ve sort of built up in your head saying, this is really creating stress for me. It’s hard to say what’s going to be the driving force.
Jen Moff:
One of the things that we’re seeing over in the L&D side of the house here at AIM HR is a lot bigger influx of requests for in-person training sessions. And we’re also noticing when I’ve spoken to some of these clients just in relationship building, there’s this leveraging of training as a reason to get together for the very first time since the pandemic. And there’s a lot of pressure being put on these first time experiences to have them fulfill all of these needs that we’ve not been able to provide for during the pandemic because of social distancing and remote work and hybridization of work. And so the intrinsic pressure that an individual applies to what a scenario or a circumstance can be on the other side of this pandemic, like, oh, we’re back to normal, but we’ve got to make up for lost time. We’ve got all these things that we place on a situation.
Pete Wright:
That’s really interesting that the subject and substance of training and development efforts are secondary to the act of getting humans together again.
Jen Moff:
Mm-hmm.
Tom Jones:
I was thinking too of different things at work that could cause stress. When you think of things like change to my work schedule, deadlines, just an uncomfortable work relationship. You have a conflict with somebody. It could be bullying, it could just be you don’t get along, and you’ve been assigned to a team with that person. That could cause stress. It could be layoffs, riffs, could be just rumors about layoffs or riffs going on in the workplace or some sort of change, anything, harassment, your family relationships. There’s tons of stuff. And so the real nuts and bolts are getting some people to open up about that-
Jen Moff:
That’s the tough part.
Tom Jones:
And share that information because if Jen’s my boss and I won’t tell her what’s driving me crazy, she’s left to guess and there’s an excellent chance she’ll guess wrong because I’m holding back information and I’m making it hard for her to do her job.
Pete Wright:
Are there any statistics that exist, and I recognize I’m dancing on the line of privacy, but are there any statistics that exist that define how many people experience stress at work because of work stress versus how many people experience stress at work because they’re bringing personal stress from home to the office? Do we know anything about that and what’s your sense of how those things kind of meet out?
Tom Jones:
I don’t. I mean, I think mental health professionals might be able to give you a sense of that based on their patient inflow, who’s coming in and what’s driving it, but I suspect much of its anecdotal as to-
Jen Moff:
I would agree with Tom on the anecdotal side of things. It’d be interesting to see if there is data out there on that. Some of the things that I could share related to it is, so I have a sister who works in the mental health field specifically as an addiction specialist, and she once shared with me that once problems like that show up at work, that’s kind of like the final frontier. That’s the last place they start to show up. And that’s because it’s gotten to a point where every other area of their life has been infiltrated by the addiction. And so that stress shows up at work and maybe we don’t even know how long it’s been going on. I share all that to say the old belief that we kind of compartmentalize our lives and we check our personal life at the door and when we’re here, we’re fully present at work and we don’t talk about anything else other than work, that’s not biologically possible. The stress that we have outside of work, it’s coming with us whether we consciously choose to bring it or not. We might try our best to keep it at bay, but it’s there in how we show up and do any part of our jobs and vice versa, we bring the stress home too.
Pete Wright:
I don’t know when it’s necessarily going to be appropriate to answer this particular question. I think we need to get Tom to start weighing in pretty quickly on the what we can and can’t do, sort of the legal implications of stress management in the workplace, specifically around, as I teased a second ago, privacy and what we can and can’t ask and learn about our teams. But I do want to make sure we kind of hang a flag on this idea of organizations that have in their identity, in their worldview that work and home are still completely separate. Because I know they exist, right, and I know that it feels at this point like saying that’s a bit of an archaic worldview of employees, but I know it’s still out there. And so I want to make sure that you two have an opportunity to address that point. Tom, let’s dig in. Where’s the line?
Tom Jones:
I think your point about privacy is an excellent one, Pete. If you look at Massachusetts, we have a state law that says privacy, I’ll read the entire law to you. A person shall have a right against unreasonable, substantial or serious interference with his privacy. That’s it. All those terms that have to be defined and they end up being defined in court or between HR and an employee to figure out how much can the employee ask from an HR point of view. How much can the employee be compelled to disclose because of their need to let the company figure out what to do to manage the job. It’s a real struggle and it’s trying… Privacy law is self enforced, basically. You have to take the employer to court, have to prove that that’s an invasion of privacy, and then the company can say, well, no, no, no, no, it’s not an invasion of privacy because we needed to know that information in order to make it safe for you to work here, in order to get you to do your job, to find the necessary technology to help you out, whatever it might be.
And so that’s sort of the battle that companies end up fighting. And a lot of times companies can win it because they have a justifiable reason from a business point of view to ask for that information. But obviously you can’t dig too deeply into people’s lives. If someone’s getting divorced, you’re not going to be getting involved as to why they got divorced. You’ll be dealing with maybe with the issue of they are being divorced at work, but not all the nuts and bolts of it. And so companies have to draw a bright line themselves so they don’t go too deep into someone’s personal life. And that’s a hard exercise because why do I need to know so much about what Jen’s life is? I don’t necessarily, I just need to know enough to know that she can do her job safely, comfortably and all that. But that’s open communication between us because if she won’t talk or I don’t ask, then sort of shame on me and makes life much harder for her. Privacy law is a challenge, a huge challenge.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it sounds like it. Are there any considerations when an employee comes to you as an HR pro and says, I’m totally overwhelmed and now I’m going to unburden myself on you. If an employee comes to you and tells you stuff that otherwise you wouldn’t need to know, but because of the nature of their stress and overwhelmed, they are feeling vulnerable to the point of needing to share it with you, are there lines that you should hold up and say, I can’t know this stuff about you. Is there a line there?
Jen Moff:
Tom, I need to know. I’m like the proverbial bartender my entire life. I’ve got that face. People want to share. Tell me. What am I allowed to share?
Pete Wright:
[Inaudible 00:12:54] face for bartending. I have never heard that.
Tom Jones:
I mean sometimes, it’s well said, I know it. Sometimes you can just put up your hand and say, this is too, too much information for me to know. Maybe you need to see if you have an employee assistance program, we can refer you to that EAP. If you have through your health insurance plan, we can refer you there because this has become too much knowledge for me to have at work. That said, a lot of HR folks get dumped on them that information before they can put their hands up.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Tom Jones:
All of a sudden now they know that so-and-so is divorced or so-and-so is in financial trouble or so-and-so’s dealing with something that they had no idea what was going on. We’re trying.
Pete Wright:
Kind of seems like, like you just said financial trouble, right. Suddenly doesn’t that open a door to responsibility for the HR person to know about, particularly if that person has any sort of position of financial authority at the organization?
Tom Jones:
Yes, it could. It could. And then you’re trying to figure that balancing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Tom Jones:
If an employee comes to me as the HR person and says, we’re going to lose the house, or I’m going to have to declare bankruptcy or something like that, and which maybe to Jen’s point, that’s when the things come to a head. Some crisis has occurred. That could, because if I’m the bookkeeper or I’m accounts payable, accounts receivable, then you may want to know that and see if there’s a way to ease the person out of work for a little while to give them a break. Many states have paid leave laws. That might be a way that you could get the person out of the workplace for a period of time, give them some income and get them away from the stress they’re dealing with right now. But that’s not a permanent solution by any stretch. It may be the person can’t continue in that job if you’re fearful of that person embezzling from the company or just not paying attention. Not even maliciously, but just not doing their job properly because they’re so focused on this other issue.
Jen Moff:
I remember hearing a story about how a certain population, probably within the HR field, management, something like that, there was a wave of people saying, I need a break, I need to go on vacation, I need to quit, whatever it is. And the other party was surprised to hear this. And when they did some investigatory work, they discovered that they were the empathetic employee that everyone came to to unburden themselves. And so they had been carrying all of everyone’s stress for however long. And so then they were the one that was like, it’s affecting me, and now what do I do?
Pete Wright:
It seems like it puts that employee in an incredibly difficult position.
Jen Moff:
Can be.
Pete Wright:
And I think that’s the line I’m curious about is what’s the line where you know too much that you now have a responsibility to the organization from an HR perspective?
Tom Jones:
I mean, I think every company’s culture is different in terms of what tolerance they’ll have for that. It’s learning what the culture is in your workplace. That said, if you have a culture where people dump every bit of information on one employee, that suggests they need to have an employee assistance program or that one employee’s going to go nuts or you’re going to lose a good employee because-
Jen Moff:
That’s good to know.
Tom Jones:
He or she’s going to quit, right? With all that information, you’re going to quit and just [inaudible 00:16:16] and say, I can’t work here. There’s no support for me as an employee because I’m getting all this information, but there’s nowhere for me to go.
Jen Moff:
Yeah.
Tom Jones:
That’s one remedy, but I think it’s a hard line to draw, Pete. You’re struggling with it because I think it’s one of the biggest issues of companies, where do you find that? Do you find that point? Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Honestly, I expected, frankly, your response to help me and you’ve made it muddier. I don’t know what to do, right, because there is this want from HR. We have processes and we want to be able to tell our HR teams when to hold up their hands and say, go to EAP. But as you say, this dance between privacy and invasion of privacy is so fuzzy. If I’m an HR person listening to the show, I don’t know that I yet understand what to do 8:00 AM Monday morning.
Tom Jones:
Well, I think part of it is really trying to take a serious evaluation and look at what’s our culture like as a company?
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Tom Jones:
How much do we want to be involved in our employees? What can we do? Once we hear that information, can we give people time off? Can we give people other support within the organization? Can we change them to a less stressful position? Can we do something? But that said, so if I move you from position A to B, are you now going to feel you’ve been demoted?
Pete Wright:
Right.
Tom Jones:
Are you now going to feel demeaned in the workplace? And if you are, all of a sudden you’re going to say, well, it’s worse. My situation’s worse and I used to make this much money, now I make less money. My problems are getting worse. It’s making everything more serious of a problem. Part of it’s knowing your culture, part of it’s knowing, I think, the resources you have available to help those folks and then consistently applying them so that well, consistently no, in the case by case. Jen’s case will be different than my case, will be different than your case, Pete. And so it’ll be able to say, what’s our menu of resources that we can use to protect our employees?
Pete Wright:
It seems to me like the road we’re going down here is all the examples we’ve talked about so far are reactive, right. Somebody comes to you and is dumping all this stuff on you and suddenly you have to react. But the alternative is being proactive about the resources we put into place before a particular employee runs into a stressful situation. Let’s talk about what it means to be proactive in terms of stress management in the workplace. Where would you like to start, going down the road of reasonable accommodations?
Tom Jones:
Well, partly you’ve got to have the employee come to you, because any reasonable accommodation request, you can’t just presume you know what’s going on with them. They come to you and say, excuse me, I’m experiencing X, Y, Z, whatever it is. And then it’s a conversation about what that might be and how it made that effect work. Now we do a reasonable accommodation, but that’s again, reactive. I mean, I would think something like putting an employee assistance program in place is proactive.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Okay.
Tom Jones:
We’ve got a resource here or maybe it’s bringing outside professionals or making them available to help employees to come in and maybe do training, awareness training. Maybe it’s, for lack of a better term, sort of wellness awareness training, whatever it might be. But some term so that people feel like, okay, the company’s trying to do something to help alleviate this stress. But I don’t if, Jen, there’s some stress test for a company that they can say, is it high turnover, lack of retention, lack of the ability to hire? Is it…
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Jen Moff:
I’ve been very transparent on this podcast in other episodes that I’ve been somebody that has navigated depression and anxiety for my entire adult life. And for those of you listening who don’t know, when you go to the doctor to get help for those things, they have a worksheet that you fill out that basically asks you to indicate of this list of items, which have you experienced in the last month that are very large stressors? And the more that you have and the more significant they are, the more that’s indicative of a proper diagnosis of depression or anxiety or whatnot. And so I imagine a similar type tool would exist or could exist for a company. What are major stressors a company experiences? Acquisitions, buyouts, threats in the marketplace, just lots of different things that can create challenges, overt or covert. And the more that happen, the more likelihood of stress for the individual and the company as a whole, uncertainty.
That would be my first answer as far as is there a stress test for companies. I’m sure there’s other resources out there that are far more targeted as well. Going back to the culture though, it really is about making it a lifeblood of the company. If a company says that they value the mental health of the employees, if they want them to be operating on peak performance and they really believe that, they’re going to have things in place ahead of time, part of compensation packages, part of activities and events that are for pleasure, as well as development that are done, regardless of what else is going on. It’s to establish a baseline of this is what we believe, this is where we stand, this is demonstrated through behavior. And that’s because they value the wellness and the wellbeing of their team members, their workforce. And it has to show up through behavior. Values show up through behavior. If we say we value something, but there’s no behavior attached, we merely appreciate whatever it is.
Tom Jones:
Excellent point.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. That’s the proactive stuff, right. That, to me, feels like something that we can really sink our teeth into. This whole concept of being able to say the time of recruiting, we recognize that as human organisms, we are complex and we don’t know where the stresses are going to come from from any given day or any given reaction in the market or right now across the tech sector, there is a pervasive fear of layoff because we have experiences of layoff that are non-trivial. That stress for the people who remain after a layoff, the sort of survivor’s guilt, for lack of a better term right now, that’s not unreal. That is a legitimate, and being able to sell that we have resources to help you do that, I have to imagine, are benefits at the time of recruitment that help people realize this is the kind of company I’m considering joining.
Jen Moff:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Is that a measured benefit at all? Do people come to organizations for those kinds of EAP benefits?
Jen Moff:
What we’re seeing on the learning and development side is we develop trainings specifically about diversity, equity, and inclusion. We’re looking at generational desires and patterns of behavior over time. Not specifically rigid around birth years, but just noticing patterns and trends. And that desire, for lack of a better word, is increasing over time. The population continues to want and seek more and more holistic type job experiences, career experiences where they’re not a cog in a machine that maybe once was an appropriate way to look at oneself as a part of a career path. But realistically recognizing that if the 24 hours we have is split into thirds, a third is sleep, a third is work, and the other third goes to self-care, family relationships, activities, fun, all those things, why would we not want to intentionally set ourselves up for success and spend the time and the energy giving to an organization without feeling like the balance of receiving is not aligned, is what we’re seeing.
Pete Wright:
Making use of an EAP program or EAP benefits is a sign of weakness. That feels like a challenge to those who strive for peak performance. That why should I need these sorts of benefits at work because I have it all together and that’s the show I’m putting on, and that’s what people think of me. Therefore, using these benefits are a sign of weakness, even in times of stress. That is a position. I’m seeking a rebuttal.
Tom Jones:
No, I think you’re absolutely right. But again, that does not have to be shared with everybody. They might know globally how many people are going to EAP, like 20 people did this month or something. But they don’t have to know what I’m going to the EAP for, how frequently I’m going. It might be a one time event, it might be ongoing treatment, but they don’t need to know that unless it’s somehow going to directly impact work. I always tell companies when they call on the hotline, if you have information about EAPs or something, a good place to put it might be in the bathroom. That way people can take the information without everyone having to see them stand at the bulletin board and take a picture or write down the phone number. And so they can do it confidentially and call whoever they need to for the services they’re going to get. But I also tell HR folks, call the EAP phone number yourself, see what you get, see how good they are. ‘Cause a lot of companies will say, well, we have this EAP and it may not be all that good. It might just be an 800 number, it refers people around, or it might be an extraordinarily developed menu of services that can really tap into what people’s needs are.
Jen Moff:
I’m going to disagree with you, Pete, on your previous statement. I don’t necessarily-
Pete Wright:
What a relief.
Jen Moff:
Wipes sweat off brow. I don’t necessarily believe in weaknesses or strengths or failures or successes because that also creates judgment and that doesn’t really help me in life, I’ve found. There’s lessons and there’s experiences, and that’s kind of the guideposts that I live off of. When I think about leveraging resources like an EAP or therapeutics or whatnot, I don’t pretend to be an expert on every last thing in the world. I don’t think that I’m better than anyone else. I think that there’s things that I could constantly be learning and doing to evolve and why would I let my ego get in the way of my own best interest if I can help it? Not to go back to the generational thing, but I’m going to go back to the generational thing. Again, we’ve talked, I think, briefly about social media platforms and on TikTok, it’s very common to see a wave of populations more in probably the 20-year olds that I’m noticing. It’s very common to talk about going to therapy there.
It’s very common to talk about doing the work on yourself, very common to talk about asking for help and getting help, and it’s not seen as a sign of weakness or something’s wrong with you. In fact, it’s being flipped on its head and saying, when people are meeting new people, oh, you’re not self-aware? I think I’m going to steer clear of a relationship with this person. It’s interesting how things are shifting gears to use the old manual transmission metaphor.
Pete Wright:
I think it’s a good time as we get toward wrapping up to go back and offer the opportunity for another rebuttal hopefully. And circle back to that point I was making earlier about organizations that are still looking to draw more of a solid line between work and home. And I’m interested in both, what are the employee challenges in an environment like that and from an HR perspective what can and can’t they do? And what are the potential impacts on that? Who would like to go first?
Jen Moff:
From my perspective as a manager, as an elder millennial, as someone who works in the HR field, I recognize the dance and I also recognize the stigma that HR tends to have with employees. And so there is a belief that the company really doesn’t care. And why they’re drawing that line is because they’re just there to protect the company. And while there may be some truth to that, there’s also truth that if the company doesn’t exist, the job for this person doesn’t exist. They are looking out for the individual as well, indirectly, as it were. And so when a company needs to make a decision and employ some sort of policy, it’s not for lack of caring on the company’s part about the individuals. And I think we, through the lens of things like this podcast, have an opportunity to continue educating the public about what HR is here to do and what they can do and why in the bigger picture.
Tom Jones:
And I think if you keep drawing that bright line between the personal and the public and say, well the person’s your responsibility, individual employee, and we as a company are paying you for work and that’s all we want from you. I think that couldn’t work, obviously it does work for a period of time, but again, what you end up having oftentimes is disgruntled employees, unhappy workforces, high turnover, people who if they don’t quit, they stay at work and quit, which is sort of even worse. A person does the minimum to survive in the workplace doesn’t do a good job. And I think it harms the company’s bottom line. And I think ultimately that comes back to haunt companies because people will talk about, be it on social media, be it amongst their friends, not recommending people to come work there, whatever it might be.
And so, I mean, can it be done? The answer is when you could look around at hundreds of companies that have survived based upon that model of bright line between work and private life. But I think there’s a legacy cost to that, and it’s in terms of all the different factors of stress we’ve been talking about, and it’s lawsuits. I mean, you could be into one, how many times people would sue a company or how many times would they complain to other coworkers about it? And so it’s always going to be a miserable environment. HR folks are going to be unhappy, employees are going to be unhappy.
Jen Moff:
One additional thing that you just made me think of, Tom, if companies want to go that route again, totally their choice. There’s nothing wrong or right about this. Again, I’m taking judgment off the table. What I would encourage them to do is be a hundred percent committed to it. If that is who you are and that is who you want to be, own it fully and communicate it in every possible area that makes sense so that when you are attracting talent, you are attracting people that believe that too. And it’ll be a better [inaudible 00:32:28].
Pete Wright:
And their eyes are wide open, right? Yeah.
Jen Moff:
Yes. That’s the key thing there.
Tom Jones:
Good point.
Pete Wright:
Thank you both for sharing your insights there. This was a solid and useful conversation, I think, particularly Tom bringing the legal and compliance perspective to what we can and should do at work is super useful. Jen Moff, Tom Jones, you’re the best. Thanks for being here. And as always, thank you everybody downloading and listening to this show. We appreciate your time and your attention. As always, you can find the links and notes about the show at aimhrsolutions.com. You can also listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the show in Apple Podcast or Spotify or anywhere Finer podcasts are served. And if you are listening in one of those apps, just scroll up. You’ll see all the show notes here, and I put a bunch of links in there too for more information. On behalf of Tom and Jen, I’m Pete Wright. We’ll catch you next time right here on Human Solutions: Simplifying HR for People Who Love HR.