Unapologetically Marie

Writer, podcaster, mental health advocate

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3 ideas for workplace mental health 

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Happy Mental Health Month!  

In May 2020, I wrote an article called 11 Ideas For Your Next Mental Health Day to support Mental Health Awareness month. Since then, it has become one of the most popular blogs on the site, with thousands of people around the world reading the article in the search for more resilience and better mental health. For Mental Health Month 2022, I wanted to build on the ideas in the original blog and bring some new science and applicable ideas to help us all better navigate our ‘crazy, busy’ lives.  

Before we get into it, I do want to acknowledge Mental Health Awareness Month recognises the impact of mental illness on families and communities and raises awareness for those living with mental and behavioural issues. This global initiative helps to shine a light on the millions of people around the world who experience mental disorders, such as mood, anxiety, personality and psychotic disorders, as well as eating disorders, trauma and substance abuse. For too long, these conditions have been hidden and people have been shamed, but through the concerted effort of people around the world, we’re now normalising mental ill-health, increasing awareness and understanding and helping our next generation better manage the stressors of modern-day life as well as provide better quality of life for people with permanent and severe conditions. Most importantly, we’re fighting for a future in which people are no longer ashamed. Instead, we’re on a path to acceptance and empathy.  

There is still a long way to go… in particular, globally we have recently seen declining youth mental health due to various factors linked to Covid, such as isolation and loneliness and increased stress. However, as a global society, we’re now more attuned to these impacts and more equipped than ever to make real change for the better. 

Happiness isn’t the result of success, it’s the cause of it.  

If you lead a team, this Mental Health Month you may be looking for ways to increase resilience, connect with each other or develop better wellbeing habits.  

If this isn’t on your radar, then I suggest you read Shawn Achor’s book, The Happiness Advantage, which shows that many of us have had it all wrong. It turns out that happiness isn’t the result of success—it’s the cause of it and investing time in helping your team members to be happy via good mental and physical wellbeing habits, will come back to you and the company ten-fold. 

In fact, the latest research shows that happy people have improved creativity, stronger relationships, increased energy and better health (and fewer sick days). Happier people also have better quality of life, and they are more successful at work. 

Here are some ideas you can propose your team participate in during Mental Health Month. Remember that autonomy impacts commitment, so putting these ideas to your team (or letting them come up with their own ideas) and letting them decide what they want to do is a great way to get their buy-in. 

1. Team sleep challenge  

For a number of years now, scientists have been arguing that poor sleep and lack of sleep should be considered major public health concerns. We now know that not getting enough sleep or good enough quality of sleep can have significant impacts on our lives and our enjoyment of our lives. Yet, when things get busy, sleep is often the first thing to go! 

No more! For the month of May, get the team to commit to getting more, or better sleep.  

  • STEP 1: Review the 3 keys to good sleep: Getting enough sleep. Getting consistent sleep. Getting good quality sleep in this article with the team.  
  • STEP 2: Create a simple table and ask everyone to write their commitment for the month (see example below) 
  • STEP 3: Check in each week to see how people are tracking. Share successes and challenges. Recommit to each upcoming week, or tweak goals if they’re looking to unachievable.  
  • STEP 4: Finish the month with a sleep party to celebrate success. Tally up the results and share achievements and stories on what worked and what didn’t. Ask the team to share whether they’ll aim to make any of the changes long-lasting. To kick your party up a gear, you could let everyone come in an hour later on Friday (so they can get more sleep), or shout everyone a morning coffee (and cake!) to help them wake up. Or gift the team deluxe face masks.  

Example team sleep commitment tracker 

Team member name How many hours I need to feel rested How many hours of sleep I usually get How many hours I will try to achieve each night throughout May Busting sleep disruptors 
Joe Smith 7 5 6  
Jane Stevens 8 8 8 No phone for 30 mins before bed 
Fred Jones 7 4 5 More consistent bed times 
Sam Baker 9 7 7 Eye mask & white noise maker 

Related: Is a Good Night’s Sleep the key to Sustained Happiness? 

2. Train your brain for optimism 

Practicing gratitude forces employees to stop and pay attention to the good things they’re accomplishing. It makes them appreciate the things they might otherwise take for granted. In that way, they start to become more attuned to the sources of pleasure around them—and the emotional tone of their work life can shift in profound ways. Multiple studies have shown (see here and here) that cultivating gratitude toward the workplace can help alleviate negative emotions and attitudes at work. Also, employees with higher levels of gratitude toward work are more likely to excel by going above and beyond their job tasks. 

Make this Mental Health Month all about gratitude. Here are a few activities you can run throughout the month. But, before you set up these activities, make sure your employees understand the ‘why.’ As a team, try watching any of these great Ted Talks on the science behind the practice of gratitude, then set up one, some or all of the below activities. 

  • ACTIVITY 1: Ask each member of the team to write one thankyou note (hand-written is great, but an email is OK too) to someone in the company.  
  • ACTIVITY 2: During the month, start every team meeting with a quick around-the-grounds and ask each team member to say one thing they are grateful for today.  
  • ACTIVITY 3: Why not try a team volunteering activity. Not only is this the ultimate way to show gratitude, but research shows that helping others through acts of charity or volunteer work can also make you feel better and happier. 

Related: How to Practice Gratitude, and Why You Should do it 

3. Be social 

We often get caught up with only talking about work to our work colleagues. This Mental Health Month let’s flip the script and share things that are personal and meaningful with your team members. This Show and Tell activity is a simple way for the team to learn more about each other and what makes them tick, while also sparking a joy of learning and discovering new things. 

STEP 1: Set everyone in the team a challenge to find a 3–5-minute video that is meaningful to them, inspires them, teaches a skill or challenges an existing way of thinking. It can be a short Ted Talk that inspired them, or a performance that moved them, or a skills video for a hobby they like (just remind the team to check the content is work appropriate, particularly when it comes to language). 

STEP 2: Over the coming weeks, dedicate the start of each team meeting to allow 1 or 2 people to share a quick intro about why they selected their video, and then watch the video they selected together.  

STEP 3: If you have more time, allow a few more minutes for each team member to share back with everyone what they learned, found interesting or liked from each video.  

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Get a weekly dose of happiness by subscribing to the Happiness for Cynics podcast and email newsletter!  

‘Do what you love’ could be contributing to the great resignation

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“Do what you love,” is no longer just advice. 

High school students learn early on that their future careers should be passion-driven. Self-help books counsel job searchers to start with reflection on what they love. And Hollywood films teach people, in romantic fashion, to aspire to work that is intrinsically satisfying and expresses our authentic selves. 

Researchers call this way of thinking about work the passion paradigm, and studies show it has become pervasive in modern societies. The passion paradigm emerged in the 1960s. During this time, there was widespread questioning of social and cultural norms — especially among youth — which helped develop a new way of thinking about the role of work in human life. 

This trend was spearheaded by the scholarship of humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow, who applied his theory of the “hierarchy of needs” to the modern workplace. In Eupsychian Management, Maslow argues that work should be thought of as a key source of personal growth and self-actualization. 

Maslow envisioned a world where individuals derive deep satisfaction from their working lives, and who treat their work as a sacred activity. Since early 2021, I have conducted interviews with over 90 professionals and managers in Toronto, to learn how they think about work. Although there are exceptions, what the data shows, in general, is that Maslow’s theory has increasingly become common. 

The downsides of the passion paradigm 

Because the rising popularity of the passion paradigm has coincided with both increasing economic inequality and a steep decline in the power of unions, it has attracted a host of criticism. 

Sociologist Lindsay DePalma contends that the passion paradigm encourages workers to romanticize their work while blinding them to the unequal distributions of power that characterize their working lives. In her book Work Won’t Love You Back, journalist Sarah Jaffe argues that loving your job is a bad idea because it is a recipe for (self)exploitation. 

Derek Thompson, a staff writer at The Atlantic, maintains that the passion paradigm has fuelled a new religion — “workism” — which is responsible for causing burnout and depression even among high-wage earners. These commentators rightly fear that the passion paradigm can (and does) lead workers to accept harmful working conditions, poor treatment from their employers and unrealistic expectations from themselves — basically to put up with what they shouldn’t. 

When people aspire to love their work, they may prioritize work at the expense of other important aspects of life — family, friends and hobbies. An overvaluation of work can lead people to see those who cannot work as lazy, stupid or undeserving of concern. 

And yet, despite these evident pitfalls, the passion paradigm can also have the opposite effects. In fact, I would argue that it is one cause of what has been dubbed the “Great Resignation.” 

The Great Resignation 

In August 2021, 4.3 million American workers quit their jobs, the highest ever recorded. And similar waves have hit the U.K.. In Canada it’s not clear whether the Great Resignation is taking place with equal intensity, but some studies show that Canadian workers are increasingly considering leaving or switching their jobs. There are many factors causing the Great Resignation. Among the most notable are wage subsidies which have given workers more freedom to choose the kind of work they want to do, the added work stress caused by the pandemic, the need to stay home with young children and the shift to remote work. 

However, I think another reason has to do with the expectations workers have around work — expectations which derive from the passion paradigm. 

The passion paradigm and the Great Resignation 

By disrupting people’s routines, the pandemic has reawakened in many the deep-seated desire for a job they actually enjoy — a desire that has long been suppressed. My interviews make it clear that many Canadian workers are looking at their jobs and asking themselves, “Is this really what I’m passionate about?” “Do I want to spend the majority of my waking hours doing this?” “Does my job bring me meaning?” 

And this isn’t just managers. The highest number of resignations in Canada have taken place within the accommodation and food service industries. And as a recent article in The Atlantic put it, “this level of quitting is really an expression of optimism that says, ‘We can do better.’” 

In a sense, the passion paradigm is paradoxically fuelling the demand for better, more satisfying, and more meaningful work. It is because workers expect more that they are no longer willing to put up with the status quo. The passion paradigm requires a strong safety net Of course, none of this could have happened without the government supports that reweighed the balance of power between workers and bosses. 

Since the 1980s, workers have had less and less power to negotiate. So, while the passion paradigm may have grown in popularity, it grew in economic conditions that were largely determined by employers, not employees. 

But in the wake of the pandemic this has slowly begun to change. Faced with labour shortages, employers are forced to take workers’ seriously when it comes to demands around pay, flexibility, autonomy and scheduling. They are receiving the message that “business as usual” is no longer acceptable — and, in some cases, they’re caving. 

The crucial takeaway is that the passion paradigm can fuel demands for better, more meaningful work, but this is only possible when it’s accompanied by a strong social safety net. 

Workers don’t need to stop loving their jobs. But they should ask whether their jobs are themselves loveable. And this is easier to do when you have real economic freedom.  

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and weekly email newsletter for regular updates and news!