A team leader comes to HR and shares that their team members are struggling. They’re missing deadlines, struggling to launch new projects, and creating bottlenecks across the company. You’re searching for solutions, but shifting workloads and traditional financial incentives aren’t working as they once did.What do you do?
Given the current state of workplace mental health, this may not be a difficult scenario to imagine. In fact, when Seramount spoke with more than 100 CHROs, workplace mental health emerged as one of the top challenges across industries and function areas. Too often, the conversation on employee well-being begins and ends with burnout. However, when interventions to combat burnout aren’t working, we have to look to other factors that may be impacting employees’ mental health.
Seramount research shows that although burnout is a major concern, the mental health puzzle is much broader, spanning financial stress, return-to-office pressures, and even political and economic uncertainty.
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Three Additional Factors Impacting the Mental Crisis
When addressing obstacles to employee mental health beyond burnout, we often need to look at factors outside the domain of everyday work. Although these may not be driven directly by company policy, they significantly affect employee well-being, productivity, and retention.
1. Change fatigue
A combination of personal and work events, change fatigue is caused by interconnected challenges. From life milestones like becoming parents or taking care of aging relatives to political shifts, our lives are rapidly changing outside of work. Added changes at work can further strain our ability to adapt and perform. Leaders should be mindful of this and the strain it can cause as organizations change priorities, react to policy updates, or adjust work modalities.
2. Financial stress and economic instability
Economic instability and personal finances are key social determinants of mental health. At work, perceived economic instability is driving stress about job security—54 percent of U.S. workers say that job insecurity is affecting their mental well-being. Outside the workplace, the growing burden of debt is another factor that impacts employee mental health. Recent Seramount research explored how new models for financial wellness benefits can play a critical role in employee wellness, particularly as debt relief support becomes a highly sought-after benefit for job seekers.
3. Stage-of-life obstacles
From Gen Z’s entrance to the workforce to Baby Boomers’ exits, employees face significant pressures across the age spectrum. For Gen Z and many Millennials, loneliness is widespread, leading to higher risks of anxiety, depression, and other negative health outcomes. For Baby Boomers, the approach to retirement often brings financial and identity struggles that affect engagement at work. In between, elder Millennials and Gen X—often called the “sandwich generation”—are increasingly balancing caregiving responsibilities for both children and aging parents. These stage-of-life obstacles complicate work-life balance, affect attentiveness, and challenge employees’ ability to fully participate in the workplace.
Three Recommended Interventions
Seramount has identified several interventions that balance both personal and workplace challenges and provide a holistic approach to employee well-being. Below are a few strategies with strong ROI potential:
- Improve managerial training and resourcing to normalize mental health discussions. Nearly half of employees report feeling uncomfortable discussing mental health at work. To reduce stigma, managers and leaders need to be equipped to handle difficult conversations and spot the signs of mental health factors beyond burnout.
- Reassess Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) to expand mental health benefits. Offering virtual and telehealth options can improve benefit usage and feedback. Additional wellness programs like sleep support or resiliency training have shown promise in reducing health care costs and improving mental health outcomes. Adding financial wellness programs can also help address money-related stress, such as debt management and financial literacy concerns.
- Expand volunteer opportunities. Research has found that a culture of volunteerism stronglycorrelateswith higher job satisfaction and can support employees through stage-of-life challenges like loneliness or isolation.
Effective Implementation Is Key to ROI
The right interventions can have a powerful impact on morale, productivity, and attrition. Employees who believe their organizations care about their well-being are 4.4 times more likely to be engaged, 73 percent less likely to be burned out, and 66 percent less likely to leave their job. With those figures in mind, it’s no surprise that organizations are making large investments in employee mental health resources—estimated at $94.6 billion globally by 2026. However, Seramount has found that employers are not always seeing the results they expect.
This is driven by lack of clarity around mental health benefits and resources. Many employees are unaware of available benefits, don’t know how to access them, lack time to participate, or are worried about costs.
Two ways to make sure your investments in mental health resources have the desired outcome are consistent communication and comprehensive manager training. That way, managers whose teams are struggling have a place to start and an awareness of the resources at their disposal.
The Bottom Line—An Investment in Talent Acquisition and Retention
We can continue to center burnout in our conversations on mental health, but HR leaders must also recognize the broader factors affecting employees, particularly as these pressures reach well beyond productivity.
Expanding mental health resources to address factors beyond burnout is also an investment in long-term talent acquisition and retention. While today’s labor market favors employers, building strong mental health resources now will strengthen your employer brand for the future.
When the pendulum swings back to a more employee-favored labor market, a strong record of employee well-being will be a powerful differentiator.
