HR Mental Health Check-In

About the Episode

Over 60% of HR professionals say they’ve experienced a mental health issue in the past year. HR teams are often placed at the helm of workplace wellbeing, but while they’re checking in on their employees, who’s checking in on HR?

We are.

Join Meg Delp from NAMI with Sarah Warren, Businessolver’s Senior Benefits Administrator, for a mental health check in and to hear some of their tried-and-true strategies for protecting their peace, holding boundaries, and taking care of their mental wellbeing

Transcript

Hi, this is Sarah Warren, Senior Benefits Manager at Businessolver and this week’s Benefits Pulse is brought to you by myself and Meg Delp.  

Meg, if you’d wanna go ahead and introduce yourself. 

Meg Delp, LMFT: 
My name is Meg Delp. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist and organizational psychology professional. I work with the National Alliance on Mental Illness in their workplace mental health. I run their stigma free initiative where we help companies become their most mentally healthy selves. 

Sarah: 
Perfect. This week we’re gonna talk about HR mental health check. So we talk a lot about our employees and their state of their mental health, but this time it is the opportunity for us to dig into our HR teams and make sure that we are doing a mental health check for them as well. 

So. 

In some recent studies, we’ve seen that HR mental health is on the decline. Over 61% of HR professionals have experienced some sort of mental health issue in the last year. And so really want to talk about what it is we can do for them, Meg, some of the things that you’re seeing. So I think it would be great to just dig in a little bit.  

What are some of the signs that you see around burnout, especially from the HR standpoint? 

Meg: 
So with HR burnout, you’re really seeing a huge increase in stress. This is really especially high since COVID and having to figure out how to kind of integrate back into the office, do hybrid well, keep remote workers healthy. It is just so much more to figure out now. So there’s a huge increase in stress that, of course, leads to higher exhaustion rates, emotionally, physically, mentally. 

Decreased job satisfaction, emotional fatigue, which can look like an increase in irritability, faster to anger, maybe even a decrease in ability to kind of tap into that empathetic side of ourselves.  

Yeah, that emotional fatigue is, it can be really challenging for HR professionals who get into HR because they care about people and they want to help people feel like their best selves. And so that can be a really troubling piece of burnout for HR professionals. 

Sarah: 
Yeah, I know that I can definitely relate to a lot of those items that you just brought up.  

You know, we are a small but mighty HR team at Businessolver and we care very deeply about our Solvers here, our employees, and we do take on a lot of what’s going on in the organization.  

So to your point, the figuring out how to keep an engaged workforce as we’ve moved to 100% remote, making sure that we keep that culture alive at the same time. 

Really helping those employees as they’re struggling with, whether it was having kids at home during COVID, to the trends back to school, really anything and everything in between, and then you layer on just life, like taking care of parents and kids and all of the things in between.  

So yeah, I definitely can relate with a lot of those. I know that overall the HR role is really complex. We’ve kind of touched on it a little bit. We are not only managing from the business side, but managing from the people side. You touched on empathy. And so I think a lot of us do take things to heart. 

It’s how do we expand beyond that and make sure that people are not only taking care of their employees, but taking care of their HR teams too.  

So any good ideas around things that can kind of be put into place to just do those checks for the HR teams, making sure that, you know, I think back to, right, like you can only care for others if you’re taking care of yourself, right? So taking that to heart a little bit, you know, what is it that HR teams and even leaders in the business can do to help? 

Meg: 
The biggest way is honestly is that recognition. Oftentimes it falls to HR to do a lot of recognition and awards for employees, but then they don’t get to be recognized themselves.  

So for leadership to really step up and give accolades to their HR professionals and how amazing of a job they’re doing, thanking them for all the effort that goes into open enrollment time and sharing those resources and benefits throughout the year. Recognition really helps every employee really feel like they’re seen and appreciated at work. So that’s a huge one.  

It really just makes us feel the warm and fuzzies and who doesn’t want to feel that?  

Another option would be professional development.  

So offering set aside time every single week for HR professionals to learn something that would be helpful, including things like watching mental health trainings or doing a mindfulness practice or meditation practice.  

I know at NAMI, we are almost expected to do one to three hours of professional development every week, and it’s totally up to us how we use that time and for HR professionals to also have that benefit and also hold their own personal boundaries and actually use that time.  

It can be so helpful to learn the warning signs of burnout, how to better take care of stress during the day, how to notice emotional fatigue like we were talking about earlier. That professional development, I know we all want to often kind of gear that towards how we do our jobs. We can also use that professional development for how we take care of ourselves so that we are fabulous workers and parents and friends. It all kind of goes hand in hand. 

Sarah:  
I like that a lot. And you talked about personal boundaries. I think that’s hard as, I know for myself as an HR professional, right? Many of us got into this role because we really enjoy helping people, right? It’s a very people-focused role. And so it’s hard to set those boundaries because you don’t want to let someone down.  

If someone, typically they’re coming to HR and at least in my role on the benefits side, it’s not necessarily when they’re in their best place, right? There’s either an emergency with something that’s going on with their benefits, they’re struggling either with their own mental health, or because they have some sort of situation where they maybe need to take time off under a leave of absence, where they have something else that’s going on where they really need us as an ally and really be a support system for them.  

And so it’s hard to set those boundaries to really say, I can’t right now because it’s after hours or it’s, you know, whatever the case may be. So I love the idea of personal boundaries. I try really hard to do that, but I do think that those are some of the things that then end up leading to that burnout because we don’t really have, especially in a remote work space, you know. I walk downstairs, I’m in my office, my kids come home, I’m in my office. It’s, you know, end of the day and I walk into the living room. There’s not that really time where you can kind of decompress from work on that drive home when you’re in that 100% remote workspace.  

And so I think all of those are kind of things that probably do lead to burnout. So any good, I guess, tips for setting those personal boundaries, whether that is doing the professional development, making sure you take a lunch, making sure you really disconnect at the end of the day or during those vacations? 

I think it’s one of those things that we, especially as HR professionals, tell people to do, but we don’t necessarily do that for ourselves. So any tips or tricks to kind of move that direction for us as HR professionals? 

Meg: 
As a therapist, I feel that exact same issue, right? Like I’m always telling my clients, self-care, but then am I going home and practicing self-care? Am I holding those same boundaries for myself?  

For many people, it’s actually really helpful to, you’re mentioning for remote workers specifically, to almost create a commute for themselves that could be going for a walk immediately after work so that you can kind of go out and then come back in and kind of shift your mindset from work to home.  

I even have one client who literally just walks outside his front door, takes a deep breath, comes back inside. And that’s just that one little reset that he needs to feel like, okay, I am stepping back into my role. Here I go. So that one always makes me laugh.  

But with personal boundaries during the workday, it can be very helpful to start blocking time on your calendar and actually holding it for yourself. So holding that half hour for lunch and actually going to get your lunch, eating your lunch, just enjoying your lunch, not also trying to take notes or do a meeting or catch up on emails. You really just let your brain take a little break.  

And honestly, the best reason we have for taking those breaks is so that we can step back into work and not feel as so overwhelmed, so we can be more effective and efficient and get our work done in a way that feels really awesome for us. So just reminding ourselves, it is a cyclical benefit. If we step away and take care of ourselves, we feel better overall, which means we can actually do our work better. 

It is a give and take there. If we’re burnt out, we’re not gonna be the coworkers we wanna be, we’re not going to be able to do the work we want to produce well. And yeah, it is a cyclical benefit to really take care of ourselves. 

Sarah: 
Yeah, I like that. I like the point you made about, it’s not just blocking the time on your calendar, but then it’s actually holding yourself to that and taking it. I often put blocks on my calendar and then end up doing something else, trying to play catch up all the time. It’s a good point that you made to actually step away and you kind of become, it’s that reset and you’re refreshed and able to come back and actually do, probably be more productive, which is what we all need, right? 

Meg: 
Exactly, yes. 

Sarah: 
So around mental health, right? We talk a lot about the stigma around mental health. And I know internally at Businessolver, it’s something that we talk about all the time.  

We have senior leadership who talk about their own mental health struggles. So I think we’re in a really good place, but there are still times where individuals don’t feel comfortable coming forward, talking about some of the struggles that they’re having with mental health.  

I know we’ve had employees come to us with the need to take time off under a leave or some sort of scenario and probably waited too long to get to that point.  

I think it kind of relates back to what you were saying about making sure that you’re taking that time away and really resetting. But how do we get people to realize and maybe remove that stigma around it is okay to take the time off to address your mental health. By doing that sooner than later, you’re probably it’s going to take you less time to really get to that place where you are in a better mental state. 

And that truly, again, it is for your health, for the business’s health, and really for your own family and outside of work, that the healthy journey for that as well. 

Meg: 
So at NAMI, we really look at stigma through our stigma free initiative at NAMI, our workplace mental health initiative. We look at breaking stigma in three different areas.  

First is raising awareness and providing education. So just getting the information out to employees about mental health is really the first step. It is not enough to fully break the stigma, but it’s an important first step so that people really understand what mental health is, first of all, why we should care and how it fits into the workplace.  

After starting to raise that awareness, building education, we look at how to create a culture of caring. So that would include psychological safety, that would include figuring out the language around mental health, how do we talk about mental health at work in a way that everyone feels supported. Everyone feels like they can share what is going on with them.  

And for that one, that really, really starts with leadership. If leadership is doing a great job allowing mental health to be part of the conversation, then many other people at that workplace will most likely feel more comfortable sharing. They might not feel comfortable sharing with everyone, but even just sharing with one person can be so, so impactful. 

And so for leadership to start sharing, that is a huge, huge way to create that culture of caring. And then finally, really looking at our benefits, our policies, our procedures. If we’re sharing everything about mental health, educating about mental health, telling everyone that we are a supportive culture is what we are doing in practice actually supporting that.  

So are there mental health benefits that people know how to access? Do they know what an EAP is? Not everyone knows what it is or how to access it. So really making sure that how the business is structured is supporting the mental health awareness initiatives that are going on. 

Sarah: 
Yeah, you know, talking about the benefits that are offered, that one is near and dear to my heart, right? That’s what we, that’s what I do on a day-to-day basis. 

And I do think that there is, that kind of leads back to some of the additional stresses of HR, right? We have these benefits, we have some great benefits here at Businessolver. We have EAP, which was expanded. We have an additional mental health benefit through another vendor that we have as well. And it’s getting people to realize and remember where those are, getting them to use those to get that utilization up.  

And so, like I said, it’s one of those additional stressors for HR to figure out how to really get that in front of people. And I think we do a good job, but also, you know, getting people to utilize those services when they need them. So those are some of the things that I feel like kind of kind of played back to. We talked about a little bit where things are kind of. 

I don’t want to say dropped on HR, but where you’re kind of looped into everything. You’re on the business side, you’re on the employee side, any sort of initiatives that you have going on as well. And so there are just, there’s just a lot. It tends to be a lot for this team, but perfect. 

Meg: 
I was just going to say there really is so much that HR has to juggle. Just going back to your point about how to get the messaging out to employees about benefits. Some things that we have seen be successful is if there’s an all staff meeting, inviting an EAP leader, for example, to come and just give a five to 10 minute chat about what the EAP is, how to access it. 

We gave a presentation the other day to a large organization and the CEO was on, and he actually shared that he used the EAP for grief counseling. And they saw their EAP usage just skyrocket the next few weeks. So just sharing as frequently as possible, if leadership feels comfortable sharing that they even use it, it’s huge. 

Sarah: 
Yeah, those testimonials are super impactful, right? That’s a great idea. 

So I’d like to wrap up these podcasts with a one minute Q&A. I’ll just have a couple of questions for you. You get, give your elevator speech, so to speak, on a couple of topics. We have two questions that I want to do. So you figure out how to divvy up your minute yourself.  

First one is, how can organizational leaders play a more active role in dispelling the mental health stigma in the workplace? 

Meg: 
One, it is so much about that communication piece. If leadership is talking about mental health, inviting their employees to talk about mental health, everyone benefits. And we’re not asking anyone to be a therapist. That is always a concern that gets raised in our leadership training, trainings that we do. We’re not asking anyone to be a therapist. It’s just a, hey, how are you doing really? Like actually tell me, what is your stress level like? How are you feeling with your workload? 

Really kind of digging in a little bit more than the usual, how are you today? Fine, let’s move on. It’s actually stopping and asking, how are you really doing? 

Sarah:  
I love those deep dive questions. Those are great. Probably steal some of those for my kids as well instead of having school today. That’s perfect. I love that.  

Okay, last question for you. So what is the best way to support HR’s mental well-being? 

Meg: 
There are so many options. There are, you know, the wellness programs are really, really helpful. Oftentimes, HR is the one that sets up those wellness programs, but then actually utilizing them is really helpful.  

Many companies are also starting employee resource groups, and that is a major helpful new addition to companies so that HR can actually go to a separate group and talk about their hopes and dreams for the company, what they want to see if they aren’t feeling quite comfortable in the HR department even.  

But yeah, ERGs are a great option. Making sure that they have a safe space to provide feedback about their own work that is anonymous. So those anonymous engagement surveys are really, really helpful and it’s especially helpful for HR to be able to answer those anonymously. And then additionally things that many people are asking for these days.  

So those flexible work options, you know, making sure we’re supporting caregivers, making sure that if remote work is preferred, we figure out how to do that, we’re promoting work-life balance, allowing that sign off at the end of the day.  

So if someone reaches out after five, you are unavailable. So there’s so many different ways to support, but really just making sure that they, that all HR professionals have a way to communicate their own concerns and make sure that they are feeling seen and heard is really the most important piece of that. 

Sarah: 
That’s fantastic, I love that. So awesome Meg, it was so great to talk to you today. Thank you so much for joining the HR Mental Health Check and our benefits pulse. 

Meg: 
Thank you so much for having me, it was a pleasure.