Training and coaching experts PUSH Mind and Body launch new research to mark World Mental Health Day – having polled a total of 1,360 C-suite leaders, middle managers and junior employees at businesses across the UK.
Key findings
Worsening mental health:
- More than three-quarters of managers polled (78%) reveal their team has faced stress or burnout in recent years.
- 43% of managers polled said they’re seeing rising anxiety among employees.
Breakdown in trust:
- Nearly half of managers (47%) say their team has faced either a “communication breakdown” or “worsening relationships” in recent years.
- The majority of UK employees (62%) either “don’t trust their manager” or only trust them “somewhat”.
- More than half of all managers (56%) “do not” or only “somewhat” trust their team to manage workloads and time from home.
- 1 in 5 employees say their manager “doesn’t get the best out of me”, and of those individuals, 89% say their manager “only cares about their own career” or “doesn’t make any effort”.
Needing support:
- 56% of employees now claim that self-care is more important to them than work, a figure that has more than doubled since 2020.
- 76% of UK employees say hybrid working would work better if companies offered “advice on how to switch off” (29%), burnout support (27%) and “strategies on how to deal with loneliness” (20%).
- 87% of UK employees say hybrid working would work better if companies offered “better communication” (36%), “clearer boundary setting” (28%) and “stronger relationship building” (23%).
Cate Murden, Founder and CEO at PUSH Mind and Body, said: “Our findings demonstrate in no uncertain terms that employee wellbeing and mental health have worsened since the pandemic. Trust is breaking down between employees and managers, which is having a big impact on organisational effectiveness. Both of these groups don’t believe that employers and c-suite executives are doing enough to safeguard mental health and provide them with the support needed to excel. This is culminating in hugely disengaged workforces.
The answer lies in having a genuine and empathetic understanding of how the people in a business are feeling and using this insight to create and maintain a working culture and environment that makes employees feel safe.
If you want to change the way people are feeling, create a space where they feel able to talk openly and encourage this behaviour to take place regularly. Safe spaces are not about creating a physical space, but rather a culture where employees can show up authentically and speak up in psychologically safe environments – promoting positive mental health for all.”
