SPOTLIGHT: The undeniable impact of mental health on the labor market
Spotlight on mental health's impact on the labor market
Brought to you by the Need to Know Briefing
20% of U.S. adults experience some form of mental illness each year, and 5% of U.S. adults experience serious mental illness each year.
Half of the world’s population is “at risk of developing mental health condition by age 75,” according to a new study published in The Lancet Psychiatry.
34% of U.S. workers say their mental health has “taken a turn for the worse” in the last six months, according to a 2023 survey. Workers attribute their decline in mental well-being to long hours and excessive workloads, among other factors.
Almost 70% of workers who reported decreased mental health also reported decreased levels of engagement.
26% of workers say “toxic work culture is having an impact on their mental health.”
38% of workers say they “do not feel comfortable speaking to their manager about their mental health.” (That's up from just 18% who said the same one year ago.)
92% of workers say it is either very or somewhat important to them that they work for an organization that “values their emotional and psychological well-being.”
Read more via National Alliance on Mental Illness, APA, The Conference Board, STAT News, The Lancet Psychiatry
“Many workers are really struggling with their mental health. This could be due to a combination of factors both inside and outside of the workplace, but the fact remains that it can have an outsized impact on work performance."
According to a new dataset released by HR software provider BambooHR, employee satisfaction has been declining since 2020.
The “largest dips” in employee satisfaction were “also the most recent,” according to BambooHR.
Currently, employee satisfaction is lower than it was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Workers are struggling with return-to-office mandates, limited job choices and record inflation.
BambooHR found the unhappiest workers to be those in the education and healthcare sectors.
In healthcare, employee happiness “dropped 32% between June 2020 to June 2023, with half of that drop occurring in 2023 alone.”
Employee happiness in education “fell 5% between June 2022 to June 2023, or twice as fast as in the previous two years.”
Workers in the technology and finance sectors have also seen dramatic declines in their levels of happiness.
“The new norm of ‘unprecedented times’ is causing enormous stress. Today’s complex problems will require leaders to be proactive, adaptive and data-informed to beat back the Great Gloom. To succeed in a rapidly evolving world, businesses will need to prioritize employee experience in real, meaningful ways like never before.”
Read more via HR Dive, BambooHR
Large companies are reporting “greater challenges with anxiety and depression,” according to a new survey by the Business Group on Health.
77% of large employers report an increase in mental health concerns including depression, anxiety, and substance use disorder.
Just a year ago, only 44% of employers said they were “seeing greater mental health concerns in their workforce.”
“[I]n 2024 and for the near future, employers will be acutely focused on addressing employees’ mental health needs while ensuring access and lowering cost barriers.”
Read more via Chief Healthcare Executive, Business Group on Health
“More control over personal health leads to better mental health,” according to a new survey by TELUS. A new survey of U.S. workers finds that workers who feel they have more control over their health, and access to better benefits, score higher on a mental health index.
According to the TELUS Mental Health Index, one in three U.S. workers say that they “want better control over their health for overall better well-being.”
Just 23% of workers say they have “full control over their health.”
Workers who say they have “full control over their health” reported a mental health score 10 points higher than the national average.
12% of workers say they “have left or plan to leave their job for better benefits.”
The mental health score of workers who have left or who say they plan to leave jobs for better benefits is more than 10 points below the national average.
The mental health score of workers who have left or plan to leave for better benefits is 58.7, more than 10 points below the national average.
Read more via U.S. TELUS Mental Health Index, HROToday
According to new research by North Carolina State University, job candidates who “post about anxiety and depression” may appear “less emotionally stable.” While there is no doubt it has become increasingly common to discuss mental health challenges on social media, researchers found that job applicants who discuss their own struggles on LinkedIn are viewed differently than candidates who don’t.
Applicants who post about mental health on LinkedIn are introducing “personal information” into the “recruiting, screening and hiring processes” that could impact them later on, researchers found.
Researchers asked 400 hiring professionals to “review LinkedIn pages and give their impressions of an applicant’s personality traits and future work performance.”
Hiring professionals’ “impressions of the candidates’ work-related personality traits, such as emotional stability and conscientiousness,” were impacted by candidates’ posts about experiences with anxiety and depression.
Hiring pros who saw LinkedIn posts about mental health challenges “viewed the job candidate as being less emotionally stable and less conscientious.”
“Our findings don’t mean people should refrain from posting about anxiety and depression on LinkedIn. However, people who are considering posting about these issues should be aware that doing so could change future employers’ perceptions of them.”
Read more via HR Dive, North Carolina State University
According to a new survey by behavioral health software provider RethinkFirst, close to three quarters of parents missed work last year to address either their child’s mental health or academic performance.
All that missed work adds up. The U.S. economy could be losing “up to $65 billion in productivity” annually.
74% of parents missed work in 2022 to deal with challenges related to their child’s mental health or academic performance, according to RethinkFirst. (60% of parents missed at least one day of work, and 32% missed four or more days.)
Almost a third of parents are missing a week or more.)
Over half of parents said they “missed as many as four days of work during the school year” as a result of having to take their children to “mental health-related appointments or stay home with them for related absences or attend IEP or parent-teacher conferences.”
"Workplace absenteeism related to supporting children is a growing concern. As employers look for ways to support employees and their families, it will be increasingly important to offer mental and behavioral health benefits, including those for children with learning and developmental challenges."
Read more via Rethink
According to new research published in a Canadian medical journal, “working nights” could “negatively impact someone’s cognition and memory.”
The study’s authors conclude that shift work, like working nights, results in the “misalignment of the body’s internal clock and circadian disruptions that occur with irregular sleep schedules.”
While working “outside of a normal, daytime shift” was found to have a potential impact on cognitive function, the study’s authors believe that rotating shift work – “sometimes working day shifts and sometimes working nights” – is even more likely to cause “impaired executive function, a mental process that allows people to plan, focus attention, remember, and multitask.”
Approximately 25% of U.S. adults either have been, or are, “shift workers” who work either night shifts or who rotate between day and night shifts.
Shift work, the study’s authors say, disrupts the body’s rhythms and results in Circadian misalignment.
Read more via Health.com
Despite workers’ desire for employer-sponsored mental health benefits, a new survey by Amwell suggests workers aren’t using the benefits offered.
85% of respondents to a recent Amwell poll said they do not use employer-sponsored mental health benefits.
Respondents attribute not using mental health benefits to “both confusion regarding how to access mental health benefits, along with what their employer-sponsored packages included.”
Also cited by respondents was the “lack of telehealth options as a factor.”
Half of respondents said they “prefer digital programs when caring for their mental health, and 67% said they’d be willing to use wellbeing benefits if they were digitally accessible.”
Read more via Amwell
According to EY’s Belonging Barometer report, three in four workers say they have “felt excluded at work,” and more than half feel as though they cannot – or should not – share aspects of their identity at work. EY surveyed 5,000 workers in the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, India and Singapore.
75% of workers say they have “felt excluded at work.” That is despite the fact that 41% of workers say they also “feel the greatest sense of belonging at work second only to home.”
56% of workers “feel like they can’t share — or are reluctant to share — aspects of their identity at work.” This is especially true of LGBTQ+ workers, 77% of whom say they feel uncomfortable “sharing dimensions of themselves at work.”
32% said “checking in on how someone is doing” contributed “greatly” to a sense of belonging.
45% of respondents said that “flexible work, such as autonomy with their hours and location, was the top motivator for instilling DEI initiatives in their own teams.”
“While it’s encouraging that workers continue to feel an increased sense of belonging at work, it’s clear that a disconnect has emerged with many workers globally, of all diversity dimensions, feeling excluded, actively self-editing or hiding certain dimensions of who they are at work. For leaders looking to bridge this gap to maximize engagement, wellbeing and productivity, and better enable their employees to feel free to be themselves, one-on-one check ins still matter most.”
Read more via EY
According to a July 2023 report from The Hartford and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Black workers in the United States face “greater barriers to mental health support.”
Compared to their non-Black counterparts, Black workers were “more likely to rate their mental health” as “fair/poor”.
Black workers were also “less likely to say their employer had empathetic leadership and an open, inclusive environment that encourages discussions about mental health.”
Black workers were also more likely to say they have experienced “difficulty in discussing mental health in the workplace due to their race/ethnicity, cultural background, and gender identity.”
Further, Black workers were more likely than their white counterparts to say they had experienced “exclusion, hostility, a culture of inequity, microaggressions, and discrimination at their job that affected their mental health.”
Read more via The Hartford
