Whether it’s a lack of work/life balance, financial stress or team conflict, it’s clear that many of our employees are suffering from mental health challenges at work. According to Deloitte’s 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, 46% of Gen Zs and 39% of millennials feel stressed or anxious all or most of the time. As a result, roughly half of Gen Zs (52%) and millennials (49%) report feeling burned out. 

Unfortunately, too many employees are suffering in silence. They hesitate to bring up mental health concerns with their managers because they fear lingering stigmas or consequences. As a result, dedicated mental health support resources are underutilized, as paid time off and vacation are used instead.

For the second year in a row, 70% of organizations report that an increase in mental health cases are driving rising case volumes - which have now hit a five-year high. So what can employee relations professionals do to address this growing challenge?

Use your Employee Relations Data


Employee relations professionals are uniquely positioned to leverage data for good when identifying and hopefully preventing mental health-related cases. According to the latest Employee Relations Benchmark Study, ER teams are starting to respond to continually growing case volumes by analyzing their data to identify patterns and predict and prevent future issues. In 2023, more than half of organizations (51%) identified early-warning flags and used targeted interventions to minimize further issues and 60% implemented initiatives to address trends or spikes.

Beyond sharing high-level case data, Employee Relations teams also have access to something more telling - accommodation requests. Accommodation requests provide insight for proactively identifying issues and helping employees who might be hesitant to share what’s going on.

For example, flexible work schedule requests may indicate a need to accommodate a less stressful environment, therapy sessions, caregiving responsibilities or medical appointments. Reduced workload or adjusted responsibility requests may indicate an employee is navigating a challenging situation. Using FMLA for mental health reasons beyond standard vacation or sick leave is an obvious signal. Finally, accommodation requests for a designated space, lighting changes or noise-canceling devices can signal that someone may be dealing with a private mental health-related issue such as ADHD. 

Proactively Tighten Up your Aftercare
A critical role in employee well-being, aftercare provides closure and helps employees move past issues. In 2023, only 6% of organizations had a well-defined aftercare process to proactively support involved parties and monitor situations after an investigation. Of those that do follow-up post-investigation, 35% leave the aftercare follow-up to managers and just 24% say that ER/HR checks in with involved parties 30-90 days post-investigation.

Employee relations can and should strive to do better because intentional aftercare can do wonders to foster trust, re-engage and retain high-performing employees, minimize retaliation and improve employee experiences. 

Adopting proactive aftercare may also curb future increases in mental health issues. Not sure where to start? ​​You’re not alone. The good news is that you can start small and expand. Pick one or two types of investigations and create a plan to gather feedback from all involved employees. For example, start by asking some standard questions:

• “Did you feel the investigation was conducted in a thorough and timely manner?”
• “How likely would you be to encourage a colleague to report an issue to ER/HR?”
• “Did you feel you were treated with dignity and respect?”
• “How likely would you be to come forward and report an issue in the future?”
• “Did you have the support and resources you needed?”
• “Was the investigator’s finding clearly communicated to you?”
• “Was the HR team member empathetic towards you?”

Once you have this kind of data, design a plan and cadence for checking back in with everyone involved. If you ask the right questions, you’ll be able to identify meaningful metrics that measure success. From there, document the actions taken, evaluate your process and of course - refine it as you expand moving forward.

Widespread mental health issues will damage company culture, slow productivity and impact talent attraction and retention. Given the growing recognition that employee mental health is critical, help your executive team understand what is driving stress levels, burnout rates and the utilization of mental health resources. Employee Relations is perfectly positioned to help.

Get more facts about the current state of mental health at work according to new data from our Eighth Annual Employee Relations Benchmark Study: https://www.hracuity.com/employee-relations-benchmark-study/