For most of its history, the corporate world shied away from talking about mental health in the workplace, particularly when it came to executives. Even in recent years, as organizations have expanded their support for employees in need, they have rarely asked leaders to focus on the issue. Which was a big part of why Nigel Jones, a longtime partner at Linklaters, LLC, joined up a decade ago with two other professionals — one a banker, one from accountancy — to form the City Mental Health Alliance in London.
“We all thought it odd,” Nigel says, that although they were “entirely dependent” on their employees, they were incentivizing an approach to work that "created sickness, not health.”
“We decided to create a safe space,” he adds, “in which senior people from the business could talk to each other openly and honestly about how mental health and well-being is important to them individually, and to the success of their businesses.”
The last year brought mental health to the fore for all of us, and the issues go well beyond loneliness and anxiety about the pandemic. Even the basic tools of doing business remotely are taking a toll: “It’s very, very difficult and tiring to read body language in two dimensions,” Nigel says, and “we can’t do it effectively.” And it’s also “much more tiring because we’re trying so hard.”
Jim Harrington, the Chief Intellectual Property Counsel at Radius Health in Boston (and a former client of Nigel’s), agrees. “The studies are overwhelmingly consistent that humans need human contact to be happy,” he says. Having a close friend or confidant at work is “the Number 1 correlation to employee retention, happiness, engagement — everything you want in your workforce.” So something to focus on going forward, he argues, is how you can help your employees to “develop those kinds of close contacts” while keeping their distance, and also how you enable new employees “to become engaged and have those personal contacts” right now.
Nigel underscores the bottom-line nature of the issue:
“I would encourage people to stop thinking that there is a balance, on the one hand, between profitability or commercial success, and on the other, the well-being of your people, and recognize that those ‘tram lines’ are parallel and synergistic,” he says. “If you don’t look after yourself and your people, your business will not be sustainable, it will not be commercially successful, and it will not generate a profit.”
To hear more of the discussion between Nigel, Jim, and Vanguard principal Ken Banta — and to learn more practical tips for fostering well-being in your people — check out this highlights video.
