Why Leaders Must Focus On Employee Anxiety And Wellness Following The Capitol Riots

Bringing a healthy start to this New Year

We share offices with a telecom company here in the Rocky Mountains. On a typical Wednesday in January, the biggest distraction for the workers might be disrupted service from a snowstorm. But the recent Capitol riots became a case study in uncertainty and anxiety.

We watched as employees gathered in clusters in the parking lot, talking animatedly about what was unfolding thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C. It was obvious that concentrating on their work was nearly impossible, and it was a harsh reminder that we as leaders need to have clear and realistic expectations of our teams during times of high stress. This means being willing to address when potential causes of anxiety might slow people down and learning how to best help team members cope through challenges in what has become a distracting, uncertain world.

The trouble is, as we’ve found in our research, there is still a lingering stigma around mental wellness in most organizations. How often do our people really raise their hands and say, ‘I need help with my anxiety or depression?’ Not as often as our people need our help. When you look at employee assistance programs (EAPs), utilization is not increasing even in the midst of the pandemic. There is a concern on the part of employees: ‘If I tell my manager, how will they react?’ as well as concern from managers: ‘If I get too personal, will I upset or offend someone? Will I get a visit from HR?’

As human resource professionals, the question is this: Have we properly coached our managers on what they should do to help with employee mental wellness on their teams?

To help address this very real issue, managers must be taught to understand and empathize with the realities that employees are facing, whether it’s work overload, work-life balance, stress, burnout, anxiety, or reduced energy levels. Of course, our managers aren’t going to become therapists, but we need to consider how to equip them to recognize anxiety, where they may be contributing to their employees’ stress, and how to best address anxiety-related issues—from riots inside of the house of government to long-lasting pandemics—with compassion.

The profound realization from not only this most recent political instability at the capitol is that our world is subject to destabilizing threats, which may arise seemingly out of nowhere to disrupt our businesses. These threats are affecting anxiety levels like nothing we’ve seen before. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, today more than 30 percent of all Americans of all ages are reporting symptoms of a full-blown anxiety disorder, including almost half of the workers in their twenties.

With so many employees experiencing heightened degrees of anxiety at work, leaders simply can’t afford to leave team members on their own to either “buck up,” or “calm down.” As a famous saying goes, “Never in the history of calming down has anyone ever calmed down by being told to calm down.”

We’ve found the best way to begin identifying anxiety in team members is for them to be able to self-report in a psychologically safe environment, which means we must make it normal and acceptable for team members to talk about their mental health. Too many of us have become adept at hiding what we’re feeling. This begins with managers displaying vulnerability themselves, for instance talking about their own struggles—e.g., “I’m finding it overwhelming to focus on work while trying to help my kids get their remote school work done,” or “Is anyone else feeling isolated in this digital world?”

This also means teaching managers to have compassionate heart-to-heart’s with their people to get below the typical “fine” response when asked how they are doing. And it means helping managers understand the questions to ask and what not to.

What’s not right: “Do you have anxiety?” or “Are you depressed?”

What is right: “How are you holding up after what happened last week?”

Overall, what we should be asking are specific questions that show we are concerned about our people when they seem out-of-sorts: “You seem to be a little distracted, how are you feeling about your work this week?” In most cases, when a manager just listens, that can be the best wellness program possible.

Maintaining productivity in 2021 means we must be more vigilant than ever for potential sources of anxiety and be willing to hold meaningful conversations to find out if a source of anxiety is a cause of distress for anyone on our team. That alone will help bring a healthy start to this New Year.