Beyond feel good initiatives science on mental health work
[Music]
so
mason’s my little boy he’s three
he just started counting things so he’ll
run around our house now
counting pretty much everything that we
own
and it’s cute but really doesn’t seem
that
significant or well life-altering at
first
but when you actually stop and think
about it
this has changed his entire world he now
has a new relationship with
everything around him he can measure
the amount of something that gives
everything another level of significance
he’ll go into the kitchen he’ll see
there’s one juice box
he knows yesterday there were four
so he’ll say hey what what are we gonna
do
about this juice box situation
you see measurements they play a pivotal
role in our lives
well they they help us tell a story
they help us interpret the world around
us they help us
understand the situations that we’re in
they also guide us
towards what needs our attention
like the world health organization
they’ve recently
measured the impact a lack of positive
mental health
has on the world economy they estimate
it’s a trillion dollars in lost
productivity per year
that’s a trillion with a t
that’s something that needs our
attention
and i believe one solution well actually
comes down to measuring
so what if what if companies could not
only
increase their profits but also increase
mental health at the same time well they
could do this
simply by treating the positive
psychological health of a workforce like
any
other asset in the company
like any other asset the first thing you
would want to do
is you would want to measure it
things like hope resiliency gratitude
optimism well-being
what would that do for mental health
i can tell you from the work that i do
in my consulting practice
things change really quick when you
actually start
measuring
we could take those measurements we
could compare them across
companies across industries across
fields
benchmark the results we could hold
ourselves and others accountable for it
we could look at programs and
initiatives and see which ones actually
made a positive impact
so what if what if companies did
actually start measuring the
psychological health of their workforce
and simply by treating it like the asset
that it is
we were able to work together and we
improved it three percent
i think that’s incredibly conservative
but well let’s explore it i mean what
exactly would a three percent increase
do
well there would be that much less
stress and anxiety
that much more positivity in the world
who wouldn’t want a world
three percent more positive i wish my
social media feed was three percent more
positive right now
it’d be good for business at three
percent increase
would add around 30 billion dollars to
the world economy
psychologically healthy people they’re
safer on the job they stay longer
they’re more productive they’re also
more creative
what might we create simply because of
that three percent increase what
cure might we find what could be
invented what business might get started
i feel like i need to take a step back
i want to be clear just because i’m
talking about the psychology of a
company’s workforce
does not mean that i’m encouraging
anyone to go all freud on their
employees
this has nothing to do with mental
illness i’m not suggesting anybody
measure or track anything like that what
i’m talking about is looking at how well
a company
supports the part of our psychology
that makes us strong makes us thrive
you see i want to look at the nutrients
in the soul i’m not
interested in trying to find bad apples
i’m also not here to try to convince
anyone that positive psychology is
important at work
the truth is the vast majority of
companies they already know
if you look at hilton hilton has
invested millions of dollars
in their thriving hilton well-being
initiative
accenture offers their employees support
services
for dealing with things like stress the
life of facebook program is designed to
give their employees the tools
and resources they need to thrive on the
job
even vive kayaks the
kayak manufacturer that makes the kayak
efficient every weekend
they have a company creed no drama
just adventure so we get it
companies are interested in this stuff
they’re trying to figure out ways to
improve it
but again i’m not here to try to sell
you on that you’re probably already sold
what i’m here to do is try to convince
you
we missed an important first step
of the companies that are investing in
these programs
less than 20 percent do anything at all
to measure the impact
of those i’ll get vague comments like
yeah you know we had 200 participants
in a workshop on well-being and that’s
great
but did well being improve
what what was well-being before you
started that actually
motivated you to have that program in
the first place
and what is an acceptable level of
well-being
at work and what what level should we be
aspiring to achieve
can you start to see the problem
you see we need to be doing a much
better job of actually measuring these
things
we need to do it in a significant
incredible way
we need to hold ourselves accountable to
it we need to figure out ways that we
can compare these things
so we can actually create a baseline
then we can make a significant
investment towards improving it
you see this could be a massive waste of
money or it could be amazing it could be
something that we should be doubling
down on investing more time and
resources in
but the truth is we don’t know
and if you don’t know where you are how
can you possibly be making smart
choices about how to get to where you
want to go
all maps are worthless if you don’t know
where you are
and for that matter if you don’t know
where you are
and you’re not really sure how to get to
where you want it how do we even know
where you want to go
before i joined the university i was a
consultant
i worked with hundreds of organizations
i traveled all over the world
it’s a great gig then i had kids i’d
stay home
i’ve been in your companies i’ve seen
the mission statements the value
proclamations i’ve seen the banners on
the wall
proclaiming that employees are your
number one
asset really
can you substantiate that claim because
i bet you can tell me to the nth degree
every aspect of every asset in your
company
except that one asset that you claim is
number one
from production to performance to
productivity maintenance life cycle
efficiency
you got data to support every bit of it
i bet you don’t even have to pull up
your laptop right now to tell me what
your gross
revenue was last year sales volume for
each product line the delta between this
year and last year’s kpis
you’ve got data to support all of it
i’ve worked with some of the largest
companies in the world
i’ve done these calculations myself i’ve
seen the data i know
you have data to support all your assets
every aspect of them
except for one and sure you’ve got
things like demographics and diversity
and tenure and
turnover and absenteeism you may
go as far as looking at like
satisfaction and engagement
but that doesn’t get at the root of what
actually drives an employee you see
75 percent of an employee’s performance
can be attributed
to part of their psychological health if
you had a machine
and 75 percent of that machine was
attributed to part of it
then you damn sure you’d measure it you
track it you
report on it you talk about it in
meetings if it wasn’t at the level you
thought it needed to be
will you be like mason hey what are we
going to do about the
juice box situation but
the truth is we don’t measure it we
don’t report on it we don’t talk about
it in meetings
even though it makes up 75 of an
employee’s performance
and i’ve worked with executive teams
i’ve sat on boards i’ve met with
hundreds of ceos i’ve run investor calls
not one time has the psychological
health of a company’s workforce
ever been discussed at any of those
meetings
with any level of significance
one reason is because there’s no
universal algorithmic approach
to actually measuring these things
so no company can actually pay me a
clearer picture of what their
current situation really is
so even though we say it matters
right now it doesn’t because what you
measure
matters now i’m not here to argue that
companies don’t care about their
employees they do
one way we know they do is they make a
significant investment
towards workplace safety and no
organization no
entity has done more for workplace
safety than osha
or the occupational safety and health
administration
and when i was an undergrad i was taught
that osha started as the
public responding to a massive increase
of deaths and injuries
on the job that’s what
we’re told and if you google it how did
ocean begin
that’s exactly what you’ll find that’s
the story we’re all told but it’s 100
wrong there’s one thing that had to
happen
before anybody got upset at the increase
how did we know there was an increase
we had to measure it and because we
measured it
your chances of getting seriously
injured on the job they’ve decreased
73 percent that’s
that’s a huge cry from the three percent
i was talking about earlier
look another thing that we can learn
from osha
is when they started there was no
universal way to actually
measure workplace safety and the same is
true for the psychological health of a
company
we don’t have the perfect way to measure
there’s been a tremendous amount of work
around positive organizational behaviors
dr fred luthens my personal mentor dr
carolyn youssef morgan they’ve done a
tremendous amount of work on four
constructs
hope resiliency optimism self-efficacy
these four constructs they work together
to form a higher order construct called
psychological capital
and there’s a tremendous amount of
research and a great possibility of the
link between that
and performance i think it’s a great
place to start
i’m incredibly biased because i spent a
huge chunk of my life
writing a dissertation on it but
the important thing is we start we start
somewhere we start
and we learn as we go and we adjust but
the most important thing is we start
look i truly do believe companies care
about their employees
they really do want them to be their
number one asset
they care about things like well-being
and mental health but if we want
significant change we have to start with
a measurement
we have to take those measurements with
the same level of scrutiny
demand the same level of credibility
that we do with any other asset in our
company
then we can actually make a significant
effort towards improving it
we need to be transparent we need to
report it
we need to compare it between companies
if we all work together we can
make a massive change in the world of
mental health
thank you
you