Sharyn Toner, about the need to normalise the conversation on mental health in order to prevent employee drop out

Sharyn, you work for the world’s largest healthcare company, leading on Health and Well-being for the Netherlands. I’m curious, how Health and Well-being is organised at Johnson & Johnson?

For Health and Well-being, our Vice President and Centre of Excellence is based in HQ in the US, with regional managers and country health leads like me positioned globally. We work with a ‘think global, act local’ philosophy, meaning that we have the autonomy to tailor our global H&WB strategy to ensure it fits the needs and culture of our businesses and employees in each country. I am the Global Health Services lead for the Netherlands, which is part of the Total Rewards & Benefits team of HR. In the Netherlands, our company is diverse, with various commercial, manufacturing, and R&D hubs across six J&J locations.

What’s the vision and approach to mental Health and Well-being at J&J?

At the heart of the J&J culture is Our Credo. It’s like a manifesto that guides the company values and provides a moral compass for doing business. Central to Our Credo is the Health and Well-being of our employees and their families.

When it comes to implementing our Health and Well-being initiatives, how we use data matters. We are currently working on using our data more effectively to identify challenges and ‘hotspots’ around health and well-being. This data helps us to engage and partner with business leaders in a more impactful way. It also enables us to develop and provide our organisations with targeted interventions that fit the needs of our employees and leaders better.

We are currently working on using our data more effectively to identify challenges and ‘hotspots’ around health and well-being.

What impact has the pandemic had on the H&W strategy?

The pandemic has acted as a catalyst, it has offered a platform to talk about broader health and well-being issues, including mental health. It has become easier to engage senior leaders to speak about their own personal well-being journey and mental health challenges. However, there’s still a long way to go before we have a culture where we can speak with the same ease and openness about mental health in the way we do about physical health.

You mention that culture plays a key role. What culture do you envision?

A culture where employees feel it’s ok to have a conversation when they are struggling, be it with mental illness or due to life factors that cause us anxiety, lack of sleep, and prolonged periods of stress, which cause us to feel less mentally well. It’s easier to have the conversation about the broken leg. I believe there is a willingness to learn how we can have a better quality of conversation when people are struggling with mental health issues. Ultimately, we want a culture that helps people proactively look after their total well-being – mental, physical, financial, and social – to be happy and productive rather than reactively trying to fix something once it becomes a problem.

 

What challenges are you facing in shaping this culture?

To start with, there is still a stigma to overcome when it comes to mental health. We all have mental health, and we all experience different points on that scale at different times. Normalising the conversation on mental health means extending it beyond the HR/Health departments and weaving it throughout the organisation as part of our day-to-day human interactions.

From a leadership perspective, not all leaders feel equipped with the skills or comfortable to address mental health and well-being issues within their team. This is where we can help to coach leaders so that they feel more comfortable to talk about these topics.

Normalising the conversation on mental health means extending it beyond the HR/Health departments and weaving it throughout the organisation as part of our day-to-day human interactions.

Can you tell us more about how a leader-centered approach works for H&W?

When we see senior leaders share something personal about their mental health or personal situation, this helps us relate to them as a person who, just like you and me, have struggles. That provides the human connection needed to normalise the discussion. It helps us to integrate mental health and well-being into our conversations, it gives us permission to speak up. Since covid, I see a willingness of leaders to intentionally demonstrate compassionate leadership and actively be part of preventative measures to tackle mental well-being.

I hear you referring to compassionate leadership. How do you encourage your leaders to act with compassion?

Sometimes it’s as simple as reminding a leader to include a personal story in their narrative during a staff engagement – and in my experience leaders readily embrace the nudge!  I see it as my job to surface, cultivate and share those moments of authenticity and compassion so that more people can benefit from the message.

What is the impact of having compassionate leaders in a company?

People want to work for organizations with compassion and humanity, where they can do work they love and feel supported when life gets messy.  Future employees are even more discerning in their choice of employer and are choosing to work for more caring, purpose-driven organisations that are a force for good for people and society. Our leaders are the ones who bring that commitment and compassion to life in the everyday experience of our employees.

Future employees are even more discerning in their choice of employer and are choosing to work for more caring, purpose-driven organisations that are a force for good for people and society.

Is there an initiative with respect to mental health at J&J that stands out and that you would like to share?

J&J really believes in the power of their Employee Resource Groups (ERG) where employees are encouraged to connect with each other around topics they are passionate about. This creates a sense of belonging and connection, and ultimately it puts employees in the driver seat of developing the culture they want to work in. Mental Health Diplomats (an ERG) are a group of employees that strive to reduce the stigma of mental health through informal connects and mental health first-aid training. At J&J in the Netherlands, this is a close collaboration where we leverage our expertise, resources, and networks to guide as many employees as possible towards health and well-being resources.

Another example is J&Js foundational training ‘Energy for Performance,’ which has been inspired by high-performing athletes. This is a resource that is often talked about at J&J. Most of our employees are trained in the principles of energy management in their work and life, focusing on managing energy rather than time and the impact of sleep, nutrition, and movement on energy levels and wellbeing. The challenge for all of us, myself included, is maintaining the habits that we know are good for us! A powerful aspect of this training is taking time to reflect on and articulate our own personal purpose and motivators.

Do you feel you have a sufficient budget for Health and Well-being to be impactful?

Budget is a challenge for everyone in these times of economic uncertainty.

The more intentional we become about adopting preventive measures, the less money we need to spend on managing long term sickness absence, and that’s costly.

As organisations, to have a positive impact on well-being, we need an organisational culture that enables this. We might need to consider which systemic changes need to be made to our ways of working to ensure that employees feel that their well-being is prioritised.

As individuals, we have a responsibility to ourselves to make conscious healthier choices to be well-beings.

The more intentional we become about adopting preventive measures, the less money we need to spend on managing long term sickness absence, and that’s costly.

Well-being is a ‘hot topic’. How do you keep yourself informed on mental well-being?

I regularly connect with my Health & Well-being peers in other companies. I’ve found this to be one of the most informative and practical ways to share ideas and learn from one another.

I also follow thought leaders on social media platforms and have a particular interest in reading about positive psychology and the neuroscience of our behaviours. Take loneliness and exclusion, for example, this triggers the pain centre in our brains, it’s fascinating how much we’ve learned about the workings of the human brain over the past decade! There is a growing body of science-based research and knowledge that supports the view that consistent visible day-to-day leadership values are critical to creating a workplace where people can thrive and be at their best. Ideally, we should be working towards a place where each employee feels permission and empowered to be their own well-being champion!

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