Global mental health crisis hits workplaces

A mental health pandemic is engulfing the world’s workplaces, with financial services among the hardest-hit sectors, businesses and economists have warned.

A survey by Deloitte this year found that the proportion of UK staff suffering from all three main signs of burnout — exhaustion, declining performance and mental distancing from the job — was 17 per cent in finance and insurance, compared with 12 per cent for all employers.

It added that the average annual cost of poor mental health per employee in finance and insurance was £5,379, more than double that in any of the 14 other sectors covered.

The report adds to a growing volume of research on the impact of a global mental health crisis on companies and the workplace.

According to the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization, about 12bn working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety, costing the global economy $1tn annually.

“The scale of the problem is hugely worrying, particularly among young people,” said Kate Pickett, professor of epidemiology at York university.

“People ask whether we’re just measuring more mental illness because people are more willing to report it,” she added. “But the increase has been so huge that there is something real going on.”

Factors driving the global mental health crisis range from the cost of living to the pervasive use of social media. But businesses are increasingly focusing on ways to foster employee wellbeing.

“Leaders must be prepared to host more conversations about the whole spectrum of mental health,” John Flint, former HSBC chief executive and head of the UK’s new National Wealth Fund, told the Financial Times.

Global Crisis in Mental Health

This is the first in a series examining how employers and governments are tackling the crisis and new therapeutic approaches

Part 1: Financial services among hardest-hit in global workplace mental health crisis

Part 2: The new breed of treatments (coming Wednesday)

Part 3: Mental health support on the cheap

Part 4: Which nations are getting it right?

A long-term decline in mental health since the millennium has been exacerbated by Covid-19, according to a WHO survey that found cases of depression had increased 25 per cent globally during 2020 and 2021.

“We are not yet back down to pre-pandemic levels,” said Dan Chisholm, a mental health specialist at the WHO. “Some people are still suffering from a massive hangover from the pandemic.”

Elizabeth Hampson, the partner leading the Deloitte research, said a deterioration in young people’s wellbeing was adding to pressure on working parents, with one in five children having a probable mental health disorder in 2023, up from one in nine in 2017.

She added that parents’ concerns about their children’s mental health cost UK employers £8bn a year.

A global survey of 12,200 workers by MindForward Alliance, an international business partnership, also found that mental problems were more common in finance companies and law firms than in most other industries.

But it found that these sectors were working harder than others to promote mental wellbeing.

Alison Unsted, chief executive of MindForward, which works with companies to foster staff wellbeing, said that when executives addressed the issue openly, 85 per cent of their workers felt supported, compared with only 31 per cent when they did not.

Brightstar Group chief executive Rob Jupp, who has struggled with depression since childhood, has made employees’ mental wellbeing a priority at his UK specialist finance company.

“I’m embarrassed that I stalled about being open so long,” he said. “When I was growing up, it wasn’t acceptable to mention your mental health. Then I started talking about it and felt much better.”

He added that his employees have monthly meetings with a life coach, and the company has had mental health first-aiders for years.

The investment in nurturing mental health has paid off in terms of better staff retention, fewer sick days and productivity that is 40-60 per cent higher than comparable companies, according to Brightstar’s data, Jupp said.

A recent study by Oxford university researchers, using data from the recruitment website Indeed, illustrated the business case for investing in improving workplace mental health.

Analysing responses from 1mn workers at 1,782 publicly listed US companies, it found a “strong positive relationship between employee wellbeing and the firm’s performance”, said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Oxford economics professor and the project’s leader.

A simulated share portfolio of the 100 companies that scored highest in Indeed’s wellbeing surveys consistently outperformed the main stock market indices.

“We have found that how people feel at work is consistently a good leading indicator of future market and financial performance,” said De Neve. Since January 2021, the portfolio had performed 11 per cent better than the S&P 500, he added.

However, after huge progress on improving mental health at work, some campaigners such as Unsted are warning of worrying signs of a reversal — partly as a result of a backlash against “woke” attitudes and a belief that such concerns even fuel mental health disorders.

“There’s more unhelpful rhetoric going around, with people using terms like ‘snowflake’ and beginning to point towards mental health as being a cause of inactivity in the economy,” she said.

“I fear this is leading to an increase in stigma which will prevent people speaking up about it. This is a challenge for us and our business partners but we’ll keep on fighting.”

Additional reporting by Michael Peel