The majority of chief executive officers (83 per cent) and employees (70 per cent) report missing at least one day of work due to stress, burnout or other mental-health challenges, according to a new survey by Headspace Health.
The global survey, which polled more than 500 CEOs and 5,400 full-time employees, also found more than half of CEOs and 43 per cent of employees missed a full week of work in the past year due to mental-health challenges. The top stressors employees cited were the coronavirus pandemic, burnout due to increased workload or lack of staff, poor work-life balance and poor management/leadership.
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“Employee mental health is a business continuity issue which every leader needs to address, particularly as many employees return to the office and experience new day-to-day stressors,” said Russell Glass, CEO of Headspace Health, in a press release. “To attract and retain talent, it’s critical that leaders de-stigmatize mental health from the top down and meet the growing expectations of their employees for high-quality mental-health benefits.”
Two-fifths (40 per cent) of women said they feel burned out at work, compared to 34 per cent of non-binary employees and 33 per cent of men. Non-binary employees reported a wider range of stressors at work than their male and female counterparts.
In terms of mental-health support, 94 per cent of CEOs said they believe they do enough to support workplace mental health, while only 67 per cent of employees agreed. Almost three-quarters (71 per cent) of workers said their company increased its focus on mental health at the start of the pandemic, but only 25 per cent said they’ve kept that focus in the last year.
And a majority (91 per cent) of company leaders said they take advantage of mental-health support at least occasionally. Almost two-thirds (60 per cent) of CEOs said they use their company’s mental-health benefits regularly, compared to 37 per cent of employees.
Read: Expert panel: How employers can help employees struggling with burnout