Depression is the top cause for ill health around the world, and yet mental health rarely receives the attention and support that is needed to improve wellness. Aon is working to change that. In this special episode of “On Aon,” host Lisa Stevens, Chief People Officer and Head of Global Human Capital Solutions at Aon, is joined by Shekhar Saxena, Professor of Global Mental Health at Harvard, to discuss how we talk about mental health in the workplace, how to be on the lookout for those in need and more. Saxena is a psychiatrist by training, and he spent several decades at the World Health Organization and authored more than 300 academic papers. They discuss the importance of focusing on mental health, the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on mental health around the world, the responsibility that organizations have to provide a mentally healthy and safe environment for their employees and how organizations can help and support employees who are struggling to maintain their mental health.
Depression is the top cause for ill health around the world, and yet mental health rarely receives the attention and support that is needed to improve wellness. Aon is working to change that. In this special episode of “On Aon,” host Lisa Stevens, Chief People Officer and Head of Global Human Capital Solutions at Aon, is joined by Shekhar Saxena, Professor of Global Mental Health at Harvard, to discuss how we talk about mental health in the workplace, how to be on the lookout for those in need and more. Saxena is a psychiatrist by training, and he spent several decades at the World Health Organization and authored more than 300 academic papers. They discuss the importance of focusing on mental health, the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on mental health around the world, the responsibility that organizations have to provide a mentally healthy and safe environment for their employees and how organizations can help and support employees who are struggling to maintain their mental health.
Additional Resources:
Learn more about Shekhar Saxena below, and read through his research and material here
Learn more about One Mind at Work
“Depression: let’s talk” says WHO, as depression tops list of causes of ill health
Aon’s 2020 Health Survey explores the impact of COVID-19 on employee wellbeing, and how employers can support their people. And in case you missed it, check out “On Aon” episode 6, focused on Aon’s 2021 Global Wellbeing Survey
Aon’s The One Brief: The Impact of Mental and Emotional Health on Employee Wellbeing
Looking for more? The Well One app provides Health & Wellbeing Resources to support individual and employee health
More on Shekhar Saxena:
Shekhar Saxena is the Visiting Professor of Global Mental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
A psychiatrist by training, he was in the faculty of AIIMS, New Delhi before he joined the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1998. From 2010 to 2018, he was the Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the WHO. Author of more than 300 academic papers, he was an editor of the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development in 2018. His expertise includes providing evidence-based advice and technical assistance to policy makers, businesses and civil society on mental health promotion and prevention and management of mental, developmental, neurological and substance use disorders and suicide prevention.
More on Lisa Stevens:
Lisa Stevens is Aon’s Chief People Officer (CPO) and Head of Global Human Capital Solutions. As CPO, she is responsible for creating, implementing and leading the strategies that empower Aon’s 50,000 colleagues serving clients in over 120 countries to fully align with the client-centric Aon United mission. Stevens leverages her ability to deliver business results as she leads the People Organization, including culture & change, talent, rewards and diversity, equity & inclusion strategies and their global functions. Reporting to the CEO, Stevens plays a critical role in overseeing the coaching and executive talent development and succession planning strategies for Aon. In addition to her CPO role, Stevens leads Aon’s Global Human Capital Solutions, which provides clients with a powerful mix of data, analytics and advice to help them make better workforce decisions. With 2,000 colleagues across 30 countries, the team includes Rewards, Talent Assessment, Corporate Governance, Environmental, Social and Governance consulting and performance & analytics practices.
Stevens joined Aon in 2018 as Executive Vice President of Aon United Operations, where she led the Delivering Aon United strategy and adoption to accelerate client value creation and drive growth by increasing collaboration across geographies and solution lines.
Her leadership objective is for colleagues around the world to be inspired by the Aon United mission, committed to professional development and work as a unified global team to build and be a part of a firm that consistently delivers great outcomes for clients, and even greater impact in the communities we serve around the world.
Tweetables:
“Especially during the COVID-19 time, I am very interested in seeing to it that organizations do better for the mental health of their employees and staff.” — Shekhar Saxena
“Mental health has to be very clearly differentiated from mental illness and disorders.” — Shekhar Saxena
“We should create an environment… where we can talk freely about our own mental health and emotional wellbeing.” — Shekhar Saxena
“Be kind to others while being kind to yourself.” — Shekhar Saxena
“Organizations have a responsibility to provide a mentally healthy environment.” — Shekhar Saxena
Voiceover:
Welcome to “On Aon,” a podcast normally featuring conversations between colleagues on, well, Aon. In this special edition, we welcome Shekhar Saxena, Professor of Global Mental Health at Harvard, to discuss how we talk about mental health in the workplace, how to be on the lookout for those who need and more. Shekhar is a Psychiatrist by training and his CV includes several decades at the World Health Organization and more than 300 academic papers. And now this week's host, Lisa Stevens.
Lisa Stevens:
Hi, I'm Lisa Stevens, Chief People Officer of Aon, and I'm delighted to serve as your host for this informational podcast on emotional wellbeing and mental health. I'm so excited to be with all of you today and excited for our 50,000 colleagues of Aon, hopefully having an opportunity to listen in. These podcasts are an opportunity for us to provide education to all of our colleagues and other listeners about the great things that are going on in Aon and we're so lucky today to have Shekhar with us, who is the Professor of Practice of Global Mental Health, Global Health and Population at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. Wow, amazing. In my dreams, I never thought I was going to get to spend time interviewing a Professor, let alone someone with your pedigree on a podcast. So it's so exciting to have you here today and really looking forward to a great conversation.
Shekhar Saxena:
Thank you for inviting me. Pleasure to join.
Lisa Stevens:
So let's get started. Let's jump right in it to start the discussion. Could you share a little bit more about your professional journey, which is amazing and the practice and science of Global Mental Health?
Shekhar Saxena:
Yes, Lisa, I am a psychiatrist. People generally stay away from psychiatrists, but I'm happy that you invited me to talk. But I must clarify that I'm a “reformed psychiatrist.” I did 20 years of clinical work looking after patients one after another and their families. But after 20 years of doing that in my home country, India, I moved to Geneva, and worked for the World Health Organization for the next 20 years where I saw no patients. But I studied, researched, and advised government and corporations and other partners on how they should organize their mental health system and services.
Shekhar Saxena:
And in the last three years, I've been the Professor for the Practice of Global Mental Health at Harvard, T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Harvard University. And that also gives me an enormous opportunity to talk to people and to see to it that they're doing better things about mental health than where they would have been doing otherwise. And especially during the Covid time, I'm very interested in seeing to it that governments as well as organizations, including private organizations do better for the mental health of their employees and staff, because that has extremely important.
Lisa Stevens:
So I had to giggle when you said the reformed psychiatrist and so appreciate your background and clearly a global background, which is fantastic. And as you know, Aon is a global organization. And I will say, as the Chief People Officer at Aon, it's been a struggle over the last 19 months to really make sure that we're taking care of our colleagues and that we're taking care of the entire colleague, not just parts of it. And the stigma around mental health has been one that people often have a hard time talking about. So we're trying to create an environment that's inclusive at Aon, where everyone knows that they have the opportunity to share where they have challenges and then obviously provide resources to them. So when you think about the work you've been doing, where you were helping the World Health Organization, you were doing so much work and now at Harvard with what you're doing, it'd be great to hear about what you think every business should be doing when it comes to mental health and how we should be helping our colleagues.
Shekhar Saxena:
Well, I will take a step back and say, everybody should be doing something about mental health. And that also will extend to saying every business should also be doing things about mental health. Why do I say that? Because mental health has to be very clearly differentiated from mental illness and disorder. Although the term has been in some way corrupted to mean mental illness, but I would go back and say mental health is health. It is the positive dimension of the value that we attached to our mental abilities. And it is important for all of us. We might be at one extreme of having good mental health, but we can still do something better. We can promote our mental health. We might have a mental health symptom yet, not a disorder. And we can certainly do something to prevent this from becoming a disorder. And if we happen to have a disorder, which is actually quite frequent, we can prevent it from becoming worse and also strive towards the recovery so that we can be functional in spite of having a disorder.
Shekhar Saxena:
So we see mental health as a dimension, and all of us are at some point on this dimension. And that are also varies according to time, because today we might be coping very well, tomorrow we may not be. And the Covid has actually proved that to be very true. I myself have problems with coping and I'm sure many of the listeners might have realized that what they could do very easily earlier, they find it a lot more difficult to do now, and they have difficulties in coping up. So that's when I say that mental health is a dimension and it's important for all of us.
Shekhar Saxena:
Coming back to your question about businesses. It is actually extremely important that businesses, private, as well as the public businesses take a very special care for the mental health of their community, of their family, because that is directly related to not only people's welfare, their emotion wellbeing, but also to how efficiently the businesses are run, including this bottom line. So I would say that it has always been important for mental health to be looked after, but during the Covid period, there is a special emphasis because we are all under the threats of various kinds and uncertainties. And so it has become even more important for us to pay more attention as businesses to mental health of the entire community.
Lisa Stevens:
So Shekhar, I think back to when we first went into all the issues around the pandemic and people started feeling isolated, as an organization, we tried to make sure that people were taking time off, people are very comfortable talking about, were they able to get a walk in or exercise, which obviously, can be connected to your mental health too. It's your physical health, your mental health, your emotional health, there's so many dimensions of a human being. And I think back for us as an organization too, what we learned about how we needed to be more balanced, about being comfortable talking about mental health and the importance of mental health.
Lisa Stevens:
Everyone's comfortable talking for the most part about like, if they have a physical ailment, like, oh my back hurts but it's much more difficult, like what you just said, your vulnerability to say, you've had to come up with coping mechanisms to deal with Covid. And so I would like to stick on that a little bit longer, because I think there's so much to unpack there for our colleagues and for our listeners on how do we get people feeling more comfortable talking about our mental health?
Shekhar Saxena:
Lisa, you're asking a very important question, which is actually the beginning of all recognition about mental health and also help seeking and health giving. In fact, in the World Health Organization, a few years back, we started a campaign public advocacy campaign, and we called it, Let's talk because talking is the beginning of the process of recognizing it and giving help and taking help, which is extremely important. We should create an environment within our own families, within our own communities and our workplace and our schools so that we can talk freely about our own mental health, our emotional wellbeing. To say today, I'm not feeling so great because something happened in the morning, or I talked to somebody or I had a failure of some kind, and I still shared it with people who are around us, because that is really very important. That gives us the strength.
Shekhar Saxena:
And also in some cases that gives us practical tips about what we could do of about it. And it gives us the kind of support that we need. And we should be able to do that. In some cases, that feeling of being stressed or being depressed can be at a higher level. It can be more and it can be impacting our work. In which case we could talk to people and then those people can suggest what to do about it, including, if necessary clinical care, going to a psychologist or a psychiatrist. And all of that is very important.
Shekhar Saxena:
Unfortunately, that doesn't happen very frequently. So most often we feel stressed, we feel depressed and we don't talk to anybody. And then it continues to grow on us and affects our work directly, our roles directly, even within the family and a time arrives that we have to seek help and often that's quite late. And then it requires much more effort to come out of it. We need to create a world where everybody can talk as freely about mental health, as about any other topic, including physical health and seek help, get help. That is the dream that we have for global mental health.
Lisa Stevens:
So I love that seek help, get help. And I think the other thing that you're saying is give help. So we've got to be able to give it to people and again, create that environment where everyone can be their true, authentic selves when they show up for work. At Aon, we've created programs and opportunities for colleagues all over the world to be able to come together and talk and as isolating, as it sometimes feels, the opportunity for people around the world to sometimes gather even in a VC form or via phone calls, I think there are ways for us to connect with each other. But there are colleagues out there that are struggling and it would be great to hear from you when someone sees that a colleague is having trouble or a peer, what are things that you would broadly say for them, one to look for indications, and then two, anything that you would recommend from an internal perspective of what a company or organization can do, what a leader could do, what colleagues could do for themselves?
Shekhar Saxena:
Yes, quite often we are in company of people. But we generally don't look at them in the way that we can actually understand them as to what they're feeling and what problems they might have had. Just looking at people, looking at their faces, looking at the way they're behaving, hearing them, gives us a lot of information about whether they are okay, or they might be struggling. Also, the way people behave, sometimes people are more irritable. Sometimes people are asking for too many things, which maybe not normal. And that gives us an idea that something might be going wrong. The work performance could also be affected. People may not be able to, to honor the deadlines. People may not be able to do the tasks as efficiently as earlier. People might be not able to lead a team, for example, in the same way that they were doing earlier and sudden absences, coming late, taking leaves or being present and not able to perform are all signs that a person might be struggling psychologically.
Shekhar Saxena:
But if we start asking then people report sleep disturbances, appetite disturbances, they might be smoking more or taking more alcohol, for example. And all of these are early signs that the person might be suffering emotionally. And these are early signs. So, something much more readily can be done about them. If a person becomes clinically anxious and depressed, then of course it affects their work in a very significant way. And these symptoms have lasted at least for two or more weeks. That's where we say that this might actually be a mental disorder where help is quite urgently needed.
Lisa Stevens:
So this is October, and it's world mental health month. Aon is running a United in Kindness campaign globally to mark the month. We've got leaders all over the globe that will be talking about what they're doing to be kind to others, but also to be kind to themselves, examples of creating better habits, small acts of kindness, they can give you a big payout. What are your thoughts on that?
Shekhar Saxena:
Well, you said something very important. That is, be kind to others, but be kind to yourself also, and both are important. Especially during these times, where everybody's under more stress, the normal work environments have been disrupted to quite some extent. People have to learn new ways of working, new ways of communicating, including by remote means like what we are having now. It does make sense for one, to be kind to oneself because the same efficiency that we could have attained earlier quite easily comes at a much higher emotional cost. And I think to enjoy some of the outcomes of what we are doing and be grateful to oneself and to one's own colleagues is extremely important. Because, that gives us the strength to go forward in a meaningful manner and also being kind to others and trying to help others is extremely important for not only their mental health but for our own mental health, because gratitude is a very essential element of feeling emotionally better.
Shekhar Saxena:
In fact, I would suggest that all of us should take just a couple of minutes, maybe in the morning and late evening before you start your day and at the end of the day, just to think about what other people have given us and be grateful about that. Even if you don't communicate, just thinking about it in real life terms, something very practical that has happened, somebody was kind to you, somebody helped you, makes a lot of difference to us and the same way you be kind to others, and that really helps them and helps you.
Shekhar Saxena:
So these are very essential, I would say life skills actually, which protect us from emotional problems and burnouts, which is becoming extremely common now. So we hear about a lot of organizations, that the rate of employee burnout has increased a lot. And that is a long term problem because these employees, if you don't redo something about it, can go on long leaves or retire early, or seek disability benefits in short term. And that is something which is extremely bad for the organizations, but also will consume a lot of resources to train new people, to join them and join the organization. And that is all very bad news for organizations. So we need to prevent those kind of stresses and long stresses giving rise to burnouts. So all of these micro steps, I would call are extremely useful to prevent stress and to prevent burnout.
Lisa Stevens:
So again, so thoughtful and everything that you said. I know for myself personally, gratitude has been a huge muscle that over time I've learned to use in situations, because it helps with perspective, when I've been going through difficult times and everything that you said about taking time in the morning or taking time before you go to bed. The other thing I've caught myself doing is trying not to say, I have to do this, but instead saying I want to, I know it's just a little tiny nuance, but I catch myself on the difference that makes when you realize, actually I get to do this, not I have to do it. It's a little nuance, but it's powerful. At least it was for me, the burnout factor is huge.
Lisa Stevens:
There's so many things that have happened, but the fact that people can start so early in the morning and go so late, the advantage, maybe you don't have as long of a commute time, but that commute time might have been your time to meditate or your time just to come down. And now people are, you work where you live, you live where you work. And, I think that's brought on so many other challenges for us and it'd be great to hear what do you hope for the future of mental health in the workplace as we move into this hybrid environment of maybe sometimes traveling, maybe sometimes in the office, maybe sometimes at home, it's going to be a mix, which I think in a long term can make a better world for everyone, but it'd be great to get your advice on what you think about the workplace and mental health going forward.
Shekhar Saxena:
Lisa, as communities and countries, we have given very little importance to workplace mental health, and that needs to change because, on an average, we spend almost half of our weekend time during the work days in work, whether we are at home or at work. And, that is really something that has a tremendous impact on a very emotional wellbeing. And also our mind is not divided completely between work and personal life. So we bring our stresses from personal life to work and we take stresses from work to our personal life. So it is not that we can segregate both these lives very clearly. And sometimes we have problems in both and that affects also both [inaudible 00:19:58]. And so we need to at least make sure that the work environment is mentally healthy. Now, how do we do that? We know that the stresses are part of the work life and unless we have some stresses, we actually won't work.
Shekhar Saxena:
At least I won't. So we have to see to it that the stresses are in the optimum range, not too low, but also not too high. And currently during the Covid period, I noticed that the stresses have become on the higher side. That means they are decreasing our efficiency, and we need to bring it back to that optimum range so that we can be maximally affected. And the responsibility is on both, on the individuals, but also on the organizations. So far we've talked a lot about what people can do. I think it's equally important to emphasize that organizations have a responsibility to provide a mentally healthy environment. And much of that depends on the top leadership and on the middle level managers and that it needs to be really taught to and included in the planning for the organization, which some organizations are doing, but many more can do, which means managers need to be trained to look out for the emotional wellbeing of their team.
Shekhar Saxena:
They need to see to it that the people who struggling and are more vulnerable are provided additional help and a listening environment needs to be created. And very often the managers, including at the top leadership can actually talk about their own stresses, which opens up the dialogue for other people also to be open. And finally, if somebody is struggling to the extent that they need help, it should be given in an inclusive and non-stigmatizing environment, so that people can come out with their struggles and seek help because the result of not doing that is really bad for the individual and bad for the organization. So I would argue for better workplace mental health, being a responsibility for the individuals, but much more also for the organizations. And if that can happen, it can only happen incrementally. But if that can happen, that will be one of the silver linings in this terrible pandemic that we are going through.
Lisa Stevens:
Thank you so much for your comments. And as an organization internally, we've just rolled out three new values and one of them is United through Trust as a Team. And that really is about encompassing. Again, everyone being able to bring their true, authentic selves to work. Also, for all of our colleagues that are listening, our COO James Platt, is signing along with other companies with the one mind at work organization on making sure that that organizations are taking this very seriously and that we are here as a resource and a community together on working through the mental health of all of our colleagues and our clients.
Voiceover:
This has been a conversation on Aon and Global Mental Health. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this week's episode tune in, in two weeks for discussion of Aon's Apprenticeship Program. To learn more about Aon, it's colleagues, solutions and news, check out our show notes and visit our website @aon.com
Lisa Stevens:
When I was a little kid, I really wanted to be a radio host because I knew you could go to work in your pajamas. And so getting to do this with you was kind of fun. So I just wanted to let you know that.