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