3 Ways Leaders Can Support Better Mental Health at Work

Mental health matters to workers. At the Fast Company Innovation Festival, executives from Rare Beauty, Ikea, and Pie discussed the role leaders play in workplace well-being.

By Sarah Lynch

If leaders want to build a workplace that better prioritizes mental health, the buck stops with them.  

At the Fast Company Innovation Festival, three executives -- Elyse Cohen, executive vice president of social impact and inclusion at Rare Beauty; Andy Dunn, CEO at Pie; and Linus Karlsson, chief creative officer at Ikea -- spoke transparently about their own experiences with and research about mental health at work.  

It's a topic that matters greatly to U.S. employees: 92 percent of workers said in an American Psychological Association survey that it was either "very" or "somewhat" important for them to "work for an organization that values their emotional and psychological well-being." And two-thirds of employees even said they would "take a pay cut for a job that better supports their mental wellness," according to another survey from the Workforce Institute at UKG.  

Dunn knows firsthand how detrimental mental health issues can be if left unchecked. At the panel, he shared that when he was 20 years old, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder but ignored the diagnosis. He co-founded the menswear company Bonobos, growing it into a multimillion-dollar success story -- and then in 2016, found himself in a psychiatric ward.

Today, as founder of Chicago-based events app Pie, Dunn is tackling the issue of loneliness, which was identified by the U.S. Surgeon General as a public health crisis last year, and working to get "people addicted to real life again."  

At Rare Beauty, the El Segundo, California-based makeup brand, mental health is also core to the company's commitments. Founder Selena Gomez has spoken openly about her own mental health, including bipolar disorder, and launched the nonprofit Rare Impact Fund (of which Cohen is president) alongside Rare Beauty.  

Here's how these panelists say company leaders can support mental health in the workplace and make it a priority from the top down:  

1. Establish strong values  

Karlsson says that while Ikea has policies in place to support employee well-being, it's the values that are more important "to create a good environment," he says. "Because everybody benefits from it, including yourself. And it's really fun to work in an environment where that's really respected."  

One of those values, he argues, should be making sure that team members are able to adequately rest up. He points to Ikea research that found that 55 percent of respondents said sleep was their most important "well-being activity at home."  

This can run counter to common stories of successful people getting very little sleep to run their businesses, he says: "Why be so obsessed about when you wake up? Why don't we talk about when you go to bed?"  

2. Have a transparent dialogue  

The startup grind can be exhausting, and Dunn admits that joining the team at Pie is a 50 to 60 hour per week commitment. But that's something he establishes up front.  

"The question is: are you in a life moment, in a life season, where you want to be...in that kind of passion project and grow personally? Because you don't have to," he says.  

Even so, he says, they strive for some sort of balance. For instance, he's had discussions with team members about the urgency of messages and when they should be expected to respond. "It's a dialogue for the team," Dunn says.   

3. Incorporate education 

At Rare Beauty, every new employee receives "Mental Health First Aid" training, run through the National Council for Mental Wellbeing. But that doesn't mean that employees are expected to be "a first responder," Cohen says.  

"It means that you understand mental health, the signs and symptoms, how to interact with coworkers, how to create that culture and environment that we're talking about," Cohen says.  

This is something Cohen says she personally would have appreciated as an employee navigating mental health issues within her family -- and it's something she says has been a draw for prospective employees, according to their human resources team.  

Leaders can start small, though, Cohen says, and listen to their employees about what they need: "We think that we have to come up with this grand idea...you always have your own focus group in your team."