Ask the Expert: Kimberly Gasco, Founder and CEO of Shine, LLC

Kim has over 20 years of Human Resources experience in Generalist, Organizational Development, Learning & Leadership Development and Talent Management roles. In our interview below, we talked with Kim about her experience with mental health and tips to promote mental well-being in the workplace.

How did the last two years change the conversations that we have about our mental health in the workplace?

The definition of “mental health” expanded over the past two years to include the mental “overload” caused by the overwhelming daily stressors that most of the employee’s experience.  This is a lack of overall “well-being” that employees are managing daily.  The workplace has exponentially increased stress levels for employees from the global nature of work, the increasing complexity and ambiguity in the markets, the 24/7 access/availability due to technology and the ever-increasing expectations that organizations are placing on employees to accomplish each year.  Our financial markets are demanding increasing levels of results which places demand on companies to deliver those results, which places expectations from executive teams which ripples to the entire body of employees. 

Because of the integration of work and life in our current context, the workplace has evolved to become our “community” which now places added responsibility and accountability on organizations to stand for social justice and well-being for employees. 

When it comes to working, we all feel varying degrees of pressure in our roles. How can employees take steps to manage these pressures so that they don’t become worse over time?

Employees must identify and manage what they can actually “control”, then use individual freedom and accountability to take care of their own well-being.  This can include re-setting personal expectations about what can get done, not expecting perfection, and learning from “failure” instead of perceiving it as wrong and minimizing self-esteem.  This also includes managing everyday calendars with inserting breaks for exercise, focus and restorative practice in order to ultimately increase productivity and innovation.  Employees must also increase confidence levels in speaking out and up about reasonable expectations for priorities and volume of work that can be done while still maintaining well-being and brain effectiveness.

What does a mentally healthy workplace look like? What are the physical and cultural choices that would make a real impact and create that healthy workplace?

Organizations need to own establishing reasonable priorities and permission for employees to say “no” to work that does not drive the priority.  If the workload is balanced and focused, employees will not be suffering with trying to “do it all”.  Creating environments of psychological safety is critical for employee well-being.  Psychological safety will allow employees to input perspective, speak up and challenge work that is not aligned to the goals, ask for help when needed, admit failure to learn from it and move forward.  This provides autonomy and a sense of belonging and trust which increases motivation, productivity, problem solving and innovation.  Organizations also need to provide foundational resources for employees to support well-being such as mental health resources, support for flexible working arrangement and support for physical health such as exercise programs.  Encouraging hybrid work environments also promotes autonomy and a sense of belonging as employees can balance their personal lives and the need for physical collaboration.

What is a managers’ role in employee mental well-being, and do you have any tips to help them identify how to help?

Managers need to add well-being advocacy to their leadership skill set.  This includes ensuring employees feel psychologically safe, checking in with employees at least weekly, standing for them when priorities become overwhelming versus operating under “just figure out how to get it all done.”  This will take courage from managers to model this for their organization.  Managers should also be modeling well-being practices (do what I say) – taking breaks for exercise, restorative practices, letting go of what they can’t control, allowing for mistakes and challenge, etc.  Again, because the workplace IS our “community”, managers now hold an added responsibility of ensuring the community is healthy, safe, and equitable.  This is what leadership has evolved to, which places a heavy accountability on leaders, which is why leadership is a verb and needs to be practiced doing better every day.