Name: The Doctor Is In... Your Office
Uploaded: 2025-05-19
Duration: 20 min 14 s

With 76% of employees self-reporting a symptom of burnout, the need for a holistic workplace health and wellness approach—integrating physical, mental, and social health—has never been more urgent. But with limited resources, where should organizations invest? What health-promoting behaviors drive individual well-being? What are the primary contributors to workplace burnout, and how can organizational leaders improve employee mental health at scale? An organizational psychologist and medical doctor break it down, offering evidence-based strategies to build workplaces that truly support well-being. 

The Doctor Is In... Your Office

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Worker well-being, which began to decline during the pandemic, continues its downward trend 5 years later, as I'm sure you all know. In fact, according to data from our founding partner, indeed, just 29% of employees say they're thriving at work. Stress is a major factor, and that can lead to burnout. This isn't just bad for employees, it's bad for business too. Smart companies are investing in wellness initiatives to help employees thrive, which can lead to better performance and profits. So let's talk with. Leslie Hammer, PhD, director of the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center at Aregon Health and Science University, and Doctor Sohini Stone, Chief Medical Officer of Global Employee Health at Google. They joined Fortunes's next to lead editor Ruth Uma to share strategies on improving employee well-being and at the same time boosting organizational success. Please welcome All right, good morning everyone. Thank you so much for joining us and a huge thank you to our panelists. This is gonna be a great conversation. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. All right, let's make this introactive. Let's kick off with a quick show of hands. This is a safe space. Let's all be honest with one another. How many of you would say that either you personally or your work. Of course more broadly is currently experiencing some level of burnout raise your hand, be honest. I certainly am right now keep your hands up or raise your hands if you feel that your organization's leaders, especially middle managers, are truly equipped to recognize respond to and reduce that burnout. raise out if you feel your leaders are well equipped to do so. Oh, that's quite the disparity and that takes us right into our conversation again thank you both so much for joining us. Let's talk about the 76% number 76% of employees report symptoms of burnout. What does that signal to the both of you? Is it a reflection of individual overwhelm. Or is this something that's more systemic about how we work? Please, Doctor Stone kicking call. Absolutely. Hi everyone, great to be here today, um, and I think that's that's a perfect way to start this conversation and really we have to recognize that it's, it's obviously both, right? We have individuals who aren't equipped to know how to. Um, meet the moment that we're in a velocity that we all need to have in order to accomplish what we need to accomplish with innovation, the pace that technology is moving, and really being able to do that. But then we also have systems or a lack of systems in organizations that are, um, slowing people down or that are creating. creating barriers that ultimately lead to frustration that then become burn out. Yeah, here's to hear from you. Absolutely it's both and really I, I take a social determinant of health perspective which basically is the idea that there are many different factors in our environment as well as our own makeup that. Relates and causes our our experiences such as burnout. And so burnout has some individual characteristics and causes, but it also has organizational and system level causes that we can really address and talk about and the workplace is a great point of prevention when we talk about really mental well-being and health and Safety of people at work and middle managers we'll be talking about are a great point of intersection for addressing some of these issues. Yeah, let's get things a bit more broad before we get a bit more granular. How much of burnout is preventable through cultural intervention and what do you see company culture either compounding that stress or alleviating it? The the company culture is huge and the culture that impacts burnout has to do with expectations and demands and stress and the expectations really when when we think about expectations and demands, the amount of control people have at work and the amount of pressure that they feel are a direct. Direct contributor and there are risk factors to burnout at work and so there are a number of factors that we actually can control and that we can change in the workplace and that we have, we have um control over and we can actually impact health and well-being of workers and what does that then lead to? It leads to improvements in outcomes at work. We've seen in some of our own, and I, I am an academic and I am an academic who has done 100% of her research in applied settings, who has worked in different types of industries and time and time again we see that when we change aspects of the workplace and we redesign the workplace to better support workers that change. is the culture that improves the culture and that leads to not just improvements in mental well-being of the workers but it leads to improvements of bottom of the bottom line we see improvements in reductions in absenteeism, reductions in turnover, and overall improvements in productivity and all from changes that are really kind of originating in the culture of work. To build on that, I think when I think about uh burnout, it's really the reason it matters is because ultimately burnout is a symptom of something that is going to affect the person's entire wellbeing and their health. It will affect their physical health. It'll affect their mental health and it affects their social health. It affects how they're connecting. To other people at work and what those future relationships look like you know as well so from a cultural perspective building on what you said about those factors that we have control over, we should think about we, we like to think about it, Google both the organizational factors but also the environmental factors that can really help to either. Affects negatively or positively the experience that somebody is having with their relationship with the workplace and can help actually be protective against some of the things that are known pretty widely to be um triggers for burnout and so we think about not just how we are setting up things like prioritization. Goal setting expectation setting things like that which, which has to be really clear communication also has to be really um effective in order to help people um but we also think about the environment and how is the environment supporting meaningful connections in the workplace which we know there's a body of research to support is protective and on the flip side, a lack of meaningful connection in your life can um make you at higher risk for experiencing things like burnout. And other um conditions yeah we'll circle back to you about what that looks like in practice first, Doctor Hammer, as you already alluded to, you've done extensive research on occupational stress and how to promote workplace wellbeing. Talk to us about some of those signings absolutely, and I want to build directly on this point of connections because that is where all of my work is focused is on leadership and how do we improve leadership connections with their employees and what I have been able to do through. As I said, many, many, many, um, organizational interactions that have been actually funded through the federal government, so I've been able to do large scale randomized control trials in workplaces such as healthcare, such as technology, and such as military, for example, just to name a few. What we've been able to do is train develop training and develop kind of um actual behavioral. Nudges for leaders and then evaluate how that that those behavioral nudges impact their team members and evaluate through randomized control trials so this is evidence-based and we see that those behavioral nudges and those those teaching behaviors around around emotional support, these are kind of people behaviors, these are connections teaching. Managers, supervisors, leaders, how to improve those social connections has led to profound impacts in workplaces over and over and over again. And this is through these actual randomized control trials. That have been able to be implemented in various different organizations and when you say behavioral nudges, that's what you mean by that. What what thank you. What I, what I mean by that is we've actually identified behavior, specific behaviors such as such as. Like teaching managers the importance of practical knowing about practical resources in workplaces, knowing about how to where to direct um employees if they need support around mental mental health, for example. So for example in one of my um one of our large scale, uh, large scale studies in the military working with active duty military personnel. And specifically with platoon leaders we've taught platoon leaders how to increase resilience and readiness at work and this is a high risk industries so it can be generalized to other high risk industries and other many other industries, but we taught them how to basically interact with their soldiers to improve mental health through emotional support and that's recognizing that it's important to touch base and. Know your employees and be able to then check back with employees if they share something, a concern, and to be able to provide support and that's 11 type of behavior but there's also behaviors around as I said, increasing resources, role modeling, teaching leaders that the importance of their role modeling and that they have to show that they themselves are also supporting mental health and that they are. Basically attending to their own mental well-being and those are just some examples of those behaviors that we have been able to teach to leaders and see significant outcomes and in the military, for example, we saw improvements in um mental health basically through risk factors of anger and loneliness so we were able to reduce. Loneliness and reduce anger that was 6, 12, and 18 months down the road by training the leaders and evaluating that with their, their team members and their in this case their soldiers, but we've actually generalized that outside of the military to other workplaces. Yeah, I mean Google certainly is high pressure environment, so I do want to talk to you, Dr. Stone, before I do. So a quick note to the audience that I will be turning over to you. We have two mic runners, uh, who will be coming to you also raise your hand if you do have a question you'd like to offer to our panelists. So Doctor Stone, at a tech BMS like Google that is certainly fast moving, fast paced, how do you codify well-being into management strategy and really hold managers, hold people leaders accountable to that? It's it's a great point. Because it's it is important to train them and teach them how to do these behaviors and as you just said there's a body of evidence as to why we should do that and the effectiveness of it um but as we all know people do the things that we measure them on and so there's a component of accountability here as well so there's a few ways that we think about it um one is that we have a um. A robust set of tools available to managers in order to receive the education and skill set that they that they need to do these behaviors. For instance, we have, as you mentioned, um, what we call our supporting mental health in the workplace training that there's a manager specific pathway and then an individual specific pathway and those are both that we we're not trying to make everyone diagnosticians. They, we, you don't need to be able to diagnose that a person has depression or anxiety or whatever the case may be, but you have to be able to. when somebody on your team is struggling and know how to direct them in a way that's safe and effective so that's #1 um #2 is that we very intentionally spend time working with managers to think about how does it make sense for their specific team to incorporate these moments throughout the day throughout the week, throughout the year where they're not just focused on tasks but they're also focused on creating a few minutes to have that social. Connection at the beginning of a meeting it's incredibly important when you're working with a global team because as much as I love being able to be together in person, the reality is that most of us are working with people in different parts of the country in different parts of the world on a regular basis, especially post pandemic, especially since the pandemic and so to be able to have those moments so that when there's a crisis when you need to work quickly through something you already have that sort of. Bank of goodwill built up with each other to be able to then work together quickly and effectively. On the accountability side what's really important for us is that we are telling managers and showing managers that we're not just saying you're responsible for this but we actually get feedback from everybody about their manager's performance um on an annual basis to make sure that the managers um are getting that real time feedback about what they're doing well and um where they have opportunities to support their team better it's meant to be. A way to really give managers that insight that they that's part of annual performance review. Well, no, it's separate. It's, it's, it's a tool that we have available for managers to get that feedback to be able to understand, hey, what can you be doing better to support your team? It's, it's meant as a way to help people grow and develop and, and, and be and be stronger together. Um, the other thing is we have everything written down so there are res part of the resourcing I mentioned is that managers are able. To actually go to internal sites and see this is what's expected of me as a manager. There's amazing programs that our people operations team has built to help new managers um also be able to understand what's expected of them form communities with each other, and then, um, be able to figure out how they can also respond to the feedback that they're, uh, receiving. Absolutely. Let's quickly open up to the audience. Any questions do raise your hand, uh, and a mic runner will come over anyone. I think we have someone right here in the middle. Great Hi there, I'm Renee Myers. I love all that you're talking about and The middle manager I feel is the most pressured. So even if they're doing what they need to do with their team, they still have to manage up and so they may be the people who are most burnt out in any organization, given the fact that often they're given so much. To do so many KPIs and uh a lot of uncaring about how they get it done. In fact, also incentivized not to be thoughtful in some respects because people don't see the link between productivity and people doing well. So how do you manage that? Um, I'm assuming that middle managers tell you about how difficult it is, uh, in this space, and I just wanted to know how you help them. Manage the folks up who don't always see the truth of the matter. I'll go ahead and start and then I think, I think both of us should should respond. That's a great question, and I get that all the time because it is you are absolutely spot on that there is so much, so much going on with middle managers and the pressure on middle managers, and that's why we go back to this whole piece of culture. We've got to really focus on changing the culture and you wonder how do you do that? Well you don't do that with a flip of a switch. You do that over time and with really changes in the communications and the systems and the way that the top. Leadership is really organizing work and we know from decades and decades of organizational psychology research and social psychology research and systems research that when we actually focus on providing the support at the top level that trickles down, the emphasizing the social connections that trickles down and focusing on the preventative aspects in the workplace that Really impact burnout that trickles down. So reducing demands or dispersing demands differently and increasing resources and what that does is it has to start at the top and then it does trickle to the middle managers and then the middle managers have more resources to support their team members absolutely. This is a group of leaders, but in order to get to that point, you had to be a middle manager most likely at some point. So if you remember back to whether you are today or when you were. Um, and, and I, I do the same. I remember the thing that helped me the most was somebody asking the question because every organization is different, so I will share with you what what some of the things I do, um, and that we do, um, but the context of our organization may not be exactly the same as yours. So the first and foremost thing I'll say is senior leaders have to be taking the time to ask that question in the context of a one on one or during. Um, annual planning, whatever that right time is for you to say to your middle managers, what are, what are the things that we could do to help you continue to take care of your people and get the work done, um, in a way that's effective? A couple of very tactical things though that I'll add is going back to that idea of prioritization. It is so important that we're clear about what those priorities are and what that what's the most important thing to be working on, um, and be communicating that constantly it's not a once a year. Here are our goals for the year and then we just let everybody run but making sure that we're going back constantly to that with our middle managers and saying let's make sure we're still aligned. Context doesn't change annually. It can change weekly in some industries or monthly and so making sure that you are. Giving people the information they need to make those intelligent decisions about stop doing this and start start spending more time on that can make a really big difference in that in that stress and um resilience that the middle managers have. The other thing that I think is also really important is helping the middle managers form communities with each other, so keeping in mind that a lot of middle managers are working separately because they're so busy focused on the area that they're that they're in charge of the in the organization has to invest in creating time and space for those middle managers to interact with each other, um, learning. Communities support communities, whatever is the right context for your organization is incredibly protective for those middle managers. We'll run up on time, but this conversation one that's particularly pressureing at this balls high very uncertain moment, uh, in corporate America we're seeing a ton of tectonic shifts. So thank you to both of you. We'll be delving even deeper into mental health and we'll be in later in the afternoon. Thank you. Yeah, thanks.