I spend a lot of time thinking about how we experience work, as people. After all, we spend more time working than we spend doing pretty much any other thing than sleeping. One piece that popped up recently on my TL was this, from HBR, on how to manage an employee with depression.
Normally, I’m inclined to say that most of the management advice contained therein doesn’t need to be connected to depression at all; the techniques work for employees with depression because they work for people, generally. Everyone likes a more flexible schedule that allows them to work when when they’re at their best. Don’t isolate employees. Break up larger projects into smaller ones, be thoughtful about deadline-setting, celebrate wins. Get to know your team’s strengths and weaknesses and tailor your management approach to their individual person.
So, yes, those are all valuable things to do for your staff. The thing that trips me up is that it has anything to do with depression at all.
It’s fashionable in HR to talk about mental illness and health. We’ve got all kinds of “wellness” programs and initiatives, which range from the pet project of a well-meaning HR person to a company-wide initiative to lower insurance premiums.
And don’t get me wrong… I’m all about authenticity and honesty at work. We’re human and it should be OK to call in for a mental health day because we all have to look out for our mental health, not just people with diagnosable problems. And obviously, we should work to end the stigma against mental health and make it OK to talk about. Saying that you need to go to therapy should raise no more eyebrows than saying you need to go to the dentist. We all have teeth and/or gums, and we all have brains.
But I’m also deeply uncomfortable with the idea that we should expect people to disclose these kinds of health problems at work. Health is personal, and I resent the huge role employers already play as gatekeepers to who has access to insurance and who doesn’t. With rare and specific exceptions, my workplace should not have an opinion on how much I weigh, whether or not I smoke, what my blood pressure is, or what medications I’m taking. We should work to separate employment from healthcare entirely.
My role as a leader at my organization is to ensure that we have an excellent team that does great work and has a huge positive impact in our space. And I’d be very grateful if my team trusts me enough to let me know what’s going on in their life and how I can help improve their experience at work.
But frankly, I don’t think it’s any of my business if my staff is depressed, and I don’t know that it’s any of my boss’ business to know if I’m depressed either. It’s not that I’d never disclose it, and in fact most of my bosses have been people that I’d feel perfectly comfortable talking about mental health issues with; it’s that I’d resent the expectation that I’d disclose such a condition at work. I resent the idea that we (as HR people, as managers, as organizational leaders, as co-workers) would expect staff to disclose those conditions as a matter of course.
Even if the workplace is really open and authentic and the manager is really open to accommodating struggles, for lots of people, it’s not a matter of getting a flexible schedule for a couple weeks until things “go back to normal.” For lots of people, normal is depressed, or anxious, or phobic, or whatever. And our “normal” in American working life is often pretty bleak, tbh, with stubbornly low wages and less vacation time than the rest of the modern world… if you’re burning your staff out, the solution isn’t to give them a couple weeks where they can sleep in until they feel better. The solution is to stop burning them out in the first place. The solution is to create a workplace that accommodates life’s hiccups, whether it’s sick kids or a blown-out tire or a depressive episode or a bad night’s sleep, and to create a workplace that helps our recovery, rather than exacerbating our problems.
There is one thing here that gives me pause. I’m someone who thrives with lots of autonomy and little structure, but I know that that doesn’t apply to everyone. And the authors are right, that many people with depression and other mental issues really benefit from structure but have a hard time creating it for themselves. My hope is that the process of getting to know your team, you’d find (either because they tell you, or because you notice) that they do noticeably better with a bit of structure, and work from there (talking with them directly about it, creating a temporary experiment, etc). But ultimately, maybe it’s hard to ask for that kind of structure without disclosing your condition, or even acknowledging to yourself, at the time, that you would benefit from such structure in the first place.
To examine that further, not only do people seem to vary a lot in what level of structure we thrive in, we seem to vary a lot within ourselves. Perhaps you really need that structure when you’re going through a bout of depression, but you hate it when you’re not. Does the extra praise and breaking down of projects help when you’re anxious, but feel condescending when you’re feeling good? Is there a way to manage a workplace that can accommodate all our human lives? What does that really look like? Honestly, idk. Some orgs just aren’t a good fit for some people… but when we’re talking about mental health at work, that feels more like a cop-out than an insight.
Here’s what I do know: If you’re a manager, I recommend working to do all the things outlined in that piece more than you are doing them now. If nothing else, as the article states, 1 in 5 people struggle with mental health issues at some point. Assume that someone on your staff is struggling. Don’t expect them to share their deeply personal medical issues with you. Build a workplace that helps everyone cope better with life. We all deserve it.