How to ensure employees are thriving, not just surviving 

Add to this poor work design and unsupportive work cultures, and it’s no wonder that workers are taking it upon themselves to self-diagnose their mental health issues. As a result, leaves of absence are rising, posing a significant threat to longer-term productivity and workers’ ability to build near-term health and wealth resilience. 

Despite more employees feeling they are thriving at work this year, the uplift comes at a cost. Our 2024 Global Talent Trends Study points to employee burnout being higher than ever, with over eight in 10 (82%) feeling at risk. Meanwhile, employers are worried about how the young people of the Covid Generation will cope with typical work stressors and setbacks. 

According to King’s College London, the rate of students self-reporting mental health difficulties almost tripled between 2016–17 and 2022–23. This is the workforce entering our workplaces in the near future. Leaving these underlying mental health issues unaddressed means a resilient future workforce is increasingly out of reach. What can be done?

In theory, today’s employees are better equipped to handle work-related strains than those who lost out during Covid in their formative years. Those who have spent time in the office building relationships know the rules of the game; they’ve paid into the social bank. Yet we all also know people who love their job and are thoroughly exhausted with it. You might even be one of them. And there are many other signals suggesting that work may now need to come with a health warning:

• Poor mental health is now the most common cause of work-limiting conditions among those aged 44 years and younger in the UK. 

• Prevalent mental conditions such as depression and anxiety cost the global economy US$1 trillion each year, driven predominantly by lost productivity. 

• A fifth of working-age people (8 million+) in the UK have a long-term health condition restricting their ability to work. This figure rose from 15% to 20% between 2013 and 2023 for people age 16 to 64. 

• The global medical trend rate (the YoY cost increase for claims on a per-person basis made under a medical scheme) is forecasted at 11.6% against an inflationary backdrop of 4.2% this year, according to the MercerMarsh Benefits Health Trends report.^[1]

Despite these trends, when executives were asked which human capital insights would be the most useful for managing their business, predicting burnout risk was not in the top 10, falling from number 2 in 2022 to number 12 out of 20 this year. While some businesses have made progress on bringing these insights into managers’ purview, others have deprioritized mental health due to shifting priorities and/or put them into the “too hard” bucket given lackluster progress.

The imperative to find a long-term solution for forming good mental health habits at work has never been greater. Leaning too far into focusing on “surface level” benefits such as yoga, subsidized gym membership and well-being days runs the risk of underestimating the critical role that a positive, empowered and supportive work culture — led by empathetic, compassionate leaders — has on well-being. It also fails to address the strong tie that job / financial security has to our overall well-being: employees who feel they are thriving at work are 5.5 times more likely to say their employer helps to alleviate their financial and retirement concerns. 

The root causes of poor well-being lie in ineffective work habits, poor work design and the culture. Companies recognize the impact of unsustainable workloads, with nearly half (49%) redesigning work with well-being as an outcome. When employees’ values don’t align with their employers’, this can also impact well-being metrics and an employee’s intent to stay: one in five employees who feel at risk of burnout attribute it to a mismatch between their values and those of their employer.  

Enabling employees to thrive at work isn’t just about doing the right thing for them; it’s about protecting the bottom line. Businesses that are stepping ahead are:

• Using workforce analytics such as engagement data, aggregated AI coaching data and even output from wearables like smartwatches to provide feedback on cultural issues and stressors. 

• Evaluating different worker outcomes from various healthcare providers to advise on the best choice for different illnesses/populations. 

• Publicly setting goals to hold themselves accountable for progress as part of their Good Work Commitments under the World Economic Forum initiative: Novo Nordics has committed to reducing stress-related illnesses to under 10%. 

• Appointing Heads of Well-being to proactively manage well-being concerns.

• Combining increased mental health awareness with pre-emptively addressing the factors that derail an individual’s well-being, such as lack of financial education and poor work design. 

• Using AI to nudge people towards healthy habits in the flow of work and educating managers and co-workers on their roles in building healthy and inclusive team cultures. 

Leading firms are also moving toward predictive analysis of what drives workplace outcomes such as life satisfaction, flourishing and hope, as well as more clinical aspects of well-being such as anxiety, stress, burnout and depression. As part of this analysis, employers can split well-being into nine corresponding determinants.

Understanding and addressing these determinants makes sustainable transformation possible. Each one has a domino effect on another; for instance, poor mental health can impact sleep quality or make an individual less likely to want to exercise, affecting overall physical health. Lower financial well-being has repercussions for mental, social, work and emotional well-being. And so on.

In the face of aging populations, shrinking workforce participation and declines in health and well-being, making progress on mental health must be a combined effort across businesses and governments, so every generation is inspired by their employment choices today and able to thrive in the long term.

Mercer Talent Enterprise’s pioneering well-being diagnostic tool, Element X, is a psychometric assessment that evaluates well-being at an individual, team and organizational level across nine elements using a highly visual, gamified, immersive approach.

Based on years of research and validation, Element X is a self-report assessment that enables individuals, teams and organizations to maintain an awareness of their overall workplace well-being and take appropriate actions to develop, sustain or enhance their levels of employee well-being. It is a unique well-being assessment tool designed to predict positive workplace outcomes such as life satisfaction, flourishing and hope, as well as more clinical aspects of well-being such as anxiety, stress, burnout and depression. Through an integrated framework consisting of nine elements and 36 sub-drivers, Element X provides an extremely comprehensive and contemporary view of well-being.