Compassionate Management of Mental Health in the Modern Workplace

Abstract

Our central argument is that wide-ranging effects flow from how managers choose to educate themselves about mental health issues and use and promote the spread of best practices. It follows that making changes, even if initially at a small and local level, can have much broader impact. We therefore build our analysis around a set of concentric circles – at the center is the manager’s behavior and attitude, which ripples outward, first to his or her closest collaborators (an employee who might need attention, help, and accommodation) and family, the team (which could be better managed), and then potentially across the organization and the broader community (which could be doing more collectively to hold itself and me responsible for my impact on the mental health of others). At the same time, the manager and his or her ecosystem are impacted by changes in the outside circles (such as technology, social developments, and political upheavals) (see Fig. 1).