Fast Break: Mental Health – What Employers Can Do That Actually Helps

Matt Cranney

Welcome to Fast Break. Today we’re diving into a topic that’s essential for any thriving business, mental health in the workplace. In fact, a recent study by the World Health Organization found that depression and anxiety disorders cost the global economy a trillion dollars every year in lost productivity. Plus, a 2023 survey by the American Psychological Association reveal that nearly one in five workers have left a job in the past year due to mental health concerns.

To help us unpack this critical issue, I’m joined today by two incredible guests. Celie Valentine, director of Employee Assistance Program at Family Service Madison, and Jodi Riley, senior director of HR at M3 Insurance. Celie and Jodi, welcome to Fast Break.

Well, let’s jump right in. Celie, I want to give you a chance to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the work you do at Family Service Madison.

00:54 Celie Valentin

Wonderful. Thank you, Matt. Hello podcast listeners. Thank you so much for having me here today. My name is Celie Valentin. I am a licensed psychotherapist and the director of the Employee Assistance Program at Family Service Madison. Our Employee Assistance Program provides services to about 65 businesses and organizations in Madison and the Greater Dane County area.

We offer short term counseling and a variety of other supportive employee and employer services, and personally I am a proud Madison native. This community really helped shape me as a youth and I’m so grateful to be able to give back by supporting the mental health and the well-being of all of its community members.

01:32 Matt Cranney

Awesome, so glad you’re here Jodi, same question to you, tell us a little bit about yourself and the work you do at M3.

01:36 Jodi Riley

Yeah. My name is Jodi Riley, and I’m the senior HR director here at M3. And I’ve been with M3 for about 4 1/2 years and during that time I’ve really had the privilege of working on initiatives that are directly impacting our talent, our road map and business objectives. And,  I’m super excited to have this conversation today.

01:57 Matt Cranney

Awesome. Well, hopefully listeners, as you get a quick taste of who our guests are today, you, you’re already feeling like you’re in for a treat. You’re with the right people. And this is going to be a really hopefully educational and a little bit maybe inspirational and through a difficult topic and conversation. So, let’s so let’s dive in.

I know for me, and I’m maybe thinking this for the majority of our listeners, it would be really good to start by having maybe a common definition of mental health for each of you in terms of how you think about the topic, and when you think about mental health. How do you define it? And that will give us a jumping off point. Celie, we’ll come to you with that first.

02:35 Celie Valentin

Gosh, such a loaded concept, but I’ll try to unpack it a bit from my perspective of it. Mental health is really that intersection of a couple different things. The intersection of our emotional health. And our ability to cope with difficult emotions. Another intersection is the cognitive capabilities and our ability to kind of function day-to-day with daily living tasks and then that other intersection is really our social well-being and our ability to form connections.

So it’s kind of this intersection of those three things that I like to describe as our mental health. It really impacts everything from the way we feel and the way we think and the way we behave.

I think it’s also important to remember that mental health is not stagnant. It’s kind of like on a continuum and it can fluctuate throughout someone’s life.

And lastly, I want to mention that mental health is as important as our physical health and as a licensed therapist, I might argue it’s more important.

03:28 Matt Cranney

Absolutely. Jodi, what about for you when you think about that sort of working definition of mental health?

03:33 Jodi Riley

I think for me it’s really about the overall health and well-being of our people, our M3ers.Ensuring that we’re creating that environment that allows them to manage workplace stressors, maintain healthy relationships, contribute their best workday in and day out. And ultimately in ensuring that our M3 years have the mental and emotional resources they need to be productive, engaged, resilient in both their home life and work life.

04:05 Matt Cranney

No, I love what both of you are saying. And I love the common threads between your responses. In terms of thinking about mental health really, holistically, not just simply thinking about, you know, it’s how I feel when I wake up or it’s just about how I feel at work.

Thinking about all of the different things that contribute to our mental health, and then Jodi to your point, the where we perform right. Where we work on a day-to-day basis, but also how we show up for the people that we love the most with our families and our friends.

Immediately, I’m hoping people who are listening and thinking, wow, this is such an needed conversation for our times today, which are infinitely complex in so many things going on, that sort of present as both challenges and opportunities, and I think we’ll be able to dive in and unpack that.

Celie, I’ll come back to you. I’m curious, from your vantage point, when you think about all of those employers that you support. What are some of the most common mental health challenges that you see affecting employees today?

05:05 Celie Valentin

I think some of the most common mental health challenges I see affecting employees today are definitely anxiety, stress, a lot of excessive worry, whether that be about my own circumstances or that of society and the people around me.

We see a lot of depression, burnout, substance abuse and really a lot of times it just boils down to a lack of work life balance. I see those things, probably the most.

05:30 Matt Cranney

Jodi, what about you from an M3 perspective?

05:32 Jodi Riley

Yeah. And just to kind of go on what Celie said, I think those are all the challenges that we’re seeing in the workplace. It can be very dynamic, but some of the things that those areas impact when you think of performance, attendance, overall, job satisfaction, engagement, those are really kind of the things that were very clued into on a day-to-day with our people.

06:00 Matt Cranney

I’ll ask you maybe and maybe follow up question. We’re all people first, right before we’re leaders or owners of businesses or employees. We’re people. And so when you think about some of those common sort of challenges that you’re bumping into seeing, what are some maybe practical steps that you would offer somebody listening today who’s not listening just from a perspective of as an wner, as someone who maybe is struggling with their mental health.

06:26 Jodi Riley

I think one of the most common tips that I try to offer people right now is the idea of mindfulness and staying present. Mindfulness can mean so many things. And I’m not talking about doing a deep dive meditation. What I’m talking about is really just being present in the moment, and every moment in a day. So if you think about stress, anxiety, worry, those are all things that living outside of the present moment. I’m either worried about the future or I’m anxious about something I said in a conversation earlier today with my boss. But the more I can just stay present in the present moment, the less likely I am to be feeling all of those intense symptoms from those mental health issues.

It’s such a simple tip, but it’s such a practical one right now because society is really pushing us in a million different directions. So if I can focus just today on being present in this moment. I’m being present while I eat my breakfast and take my shower and have that first conversation of the day at the office. A lot of that stress and anxiety and worry is going to sit on the outside of how I feel today. Mindfulness being present, probably the simplest way to kind of combat some of that mental health challenges that we’re seeing on a day-to-day basis with employees.

07:33 Matt Cranney

I love that Celie and we had recently a speaker come to our service staff retreat, who focused on that. One of the things that she talked about was just the ability to in the moment, to take a centering breath. You know, whether it’s people call it a box breath like. Sort of four seconds in, hold for four, out for four hold, or whatever, you know, exercise people like. In just the ability to be present on the breath and how that sort of brings us back to kind of my statement is like I want to be where my feet are, not where my feet are going to be. You know, tomorrow or in an hour or in the like you said, a conversation that I wish I could have handled differently, you know from three hours ago. I love that.

Jodi, what about you, when you’re working with M3ers on a day-to-day basis, maybe one of couple of things that you guide them on in terms of being able take care of their mental health?

08:27 Jodi Riley

Yeah, I think it’s absolutely related to what we just discussed. It’s the concept of not boiling an ocean. But stepping back and really self-reflecting on incrementally, what can you do in this hour, in the half day, in the day, versus looking out like what do I have to do in six to nine months to a year? It just paralyzes people in really putting together a solid plan that they can execute and be successful with.

08:59 Matt Cranney

I was introduced to a concept recently that plays off of that, which is, you know, the start of a meeting, even giving your employees five minutes to just brain dump. To take a piece of paper and a pen and say, hey, get everything that’s on your mind, onto the piece of paper.

But the ability to be able to see in front of you all the things that you’re thinking and be able to sort of tangibly just sort of say, OK, I can’t do all of those things, right now.

I was listening to Mel Robbins podcast and she talked about the same thing where she encouraged, like, hey, get it all out and then circle one thing that you can do where it gives you that sense of sort of agency and control to be able to say, I can do this. There’s a lot of things that maybe I can’t do yet, but I can do this.

So, thank you both for speaking so well to our listeners as individuals. Now I want to kind of turn the page a little bit to sort of talk about kind of the employee-employer relationship here. And how both think leaders can create psychologically safe environments where employees feel comfortable seeking support when they face some of those challenges that they that they go through.

I reflect on my career and things are definitely different in that regard today than they have been. In terms of people’s openness to talk about some of those things, people’s reception to those things. But, but I’m curious if I’m a leader listening today. What are some of the things that you think that employers can do to create that environment? Celie, I’ll come to you.

10:19 Celie Valentin

I have to agree with you first that really like times have shifted and I think the pandemic shifted them even further and faster where we talk about things in the workplace that we weren’t even talking about five years ago. And we have openness now about mental health issues that we didn’t have 5-10 years ago. And so I totally agree with you there.

In terms of creating psychological safety in the workplace, I was recently reading an article for the Harvard Business Review and they acknowledge that it’s a bit more like magic than science and I couldn’t agree more with that. The idea of creating that psychological safety is not a perfect algorithm that you’re going to be able to create. It’s really, it’s kind of magic happening. So creating psychological safety should really be viewed, I think, as a co-collaboration. It’s not something a leader is going to do all by themselves. Of course, though some like very key components are necessary, I think management has to provide clear norms and expectations.

Open communication is the most valuable thing in the workplace for my personal opinion. I think we need to actively listen to our employees, we need to ensure that they feel supported. We need to show them appreciation. Demonstrating humility and taking accountability are huge, too. Really, at the end of the day, people want good role models, even adults. And part of creating psychological safety is implementing all of those things so that they can see that you’re just a good person at the end of the day.

11:38 Matt Cranney

Jodi, anything you’d add there?

11:40 Jodi Riley

Yeah. So I think from an HR perspective, there are a few different areas that I think really help support this. I think the first is ensuring policies, practices are supportive of mental health. This can really range anything from implementing flexible work arrangements, leave policies to help support employees. It’s also critical to invest in training and development for our leaders to ensure that these leaders are equipped with the skills to support their people through the challenging times, maybe be able to recognize and then jump in to help support.

Even going back to what Celie said, is really communication. Ensuring an environment really fosters that open communication is so critical. We want to ensure that our people feel comfortable sharing their concerns, their ideas.

And I think the last thing I would mention here too is just being able to pivot when needed. You know, as we’ve seen the market dynamic shift quickly in the last 5-10 years, that’s going to continue to happen. So we as employers need to just be able to recognize that and make shifts when necessary.

12:59 Matt Cranney

So I want to push a little bit on this for, you know, maybe there’s some people listening today that are still in the mindset of like, I don’t know if they would say this, but like I liked it better when we didn’t talk about some of these things at work and we could just talk about work ,right? And again, I think you all are hope making a case to say that, gosh, that is not the world that we are in today. And haven’t been for a while.

What would you say for to those people who are listening, how we can balance the need to support employees, but at the same time, maintain productivity and performance. That’s sort of like a, you know, I use the expression all the time at, M3 there’s a difference between problems to solve intentions to manage. And I think this is a big one and it’s a real part of the conversation that we need to move towards.

13:43 Celie Valentin

Yeah, this may sound silly. As the director of our Employee Assistance program, but I think one of the most practical steps really is offering an employee assistance program. I do say that genuinely. I think it’s really because it’s, it provides that perfect level of support from the employer perspective, while not overstepping or become overly involved in someone’s mental health issues.

So, a really, really practical step is just offering an EAP. It allows you to say here’s a resource. Here’s this tangible thing, these people are experts in mental health. I am not and I want you to have access to this thing. Your employer values it in such a way that we want you to have access to it.

Really, offering mental health-based trainings is so important, whether it be for managers but also for employees. Anything that’s a supportive resource, whether that’s a newsletter, a webinar, umm, a resource about something in your community that supports mental health. At the end of the day, we want to offer employees things that improve themselves, improve their mental well-being, while gaining insight into their mental health and that of their loved ones. So I think anything you can offer that’s supportive for them is really going to be helpful in terms of those practical steps.

14:48 Matt Cranney

Yeah, I love thinking about that more holistically, then simply you know what we would have done in the past. Which is like hey, well we give people paid time off and so they can, right, take some time off. And one of the things I read somewhere was that you can’t fix time on problems with time off. Jodi, what about you> How have you approached it with you and your staff?

15:13 Jodi Riley

The number one thing for me is we cannot wait for employees to come to us with problems. We really want to be proactive in creating a culture that supports mental health, prevents issues prior to escalation.

And to give you a real-life example, in addition to our EAP offerings for M3 a couple years ago, we deployed a program called Boone Health, which is a platform that really helps facilitate both personal and professional growth. Our M3ers can participate in up to six sessions per year with a coach that’s selected specific to their needs. And we continue to see very high utilization and get really rave reviews over this offering. And I believe it’s because it’s truly meeting people where they are in life, which I think is so important.

16:07 Matt Cranney

From my perspective, I think another thing that that we do to help with that time on is not just creating a psychologically safe environment, but an environment where we’re willing to talk about these topics from the platforms that each of us have.

And so I think about again, I referenced our service summit before, but we also have a sales summit that we had a couple weeks before, and our CEO talks very openly around the challenges that he had experienced in his journey integrating work and life together. And some of the results that that caused for him that were not positive and. I don’t think we’ve had a keynote at any one of our retreats that has resonated as much as that one, because I think there’s such a hunger from employees to be able to say, OK, it’s safe to talk about it.

Let’s keep going on this topic a little bit because I want to be very, very practical as we get to sort of the end of this part of our conversation today. We talked about things that we would encourage our employees, everybody to do actually, not just employees, but everybody, all of us, to do for our own mental health. But when you think about resources for employers, when you think about the best employers that you see and interact with. What are the things that they’re doing practically to help from a resource perspective to help create these environments that move towards this topic? Celie what I’ll come to you first.

17:27 Celie Valentin

Yeah, I guess I just want to first say how cool to have been part of that discussion with your M3 CEO. It for me it’s not just about open communications, it’s about transparent and genuine open commmunications. And so the fact that you guys got to witness that, the fact that it resonated with you in such a way is no surprise to me because that I think is incredibly valuable.

About resources that specifically, I think employers, businesses can maintain. I already said it but obtain an EAP program. Do it, if you don’t already have one. Really obtain an AAP program. The cornerstone of the EAP program is really confidential counseling. That’s the part of the benefit that we provide right here in house. We are a team of licensed mental health professionals. We also provide a bunch of other support services, including legal, financial assistance. Have a specialized website. There’s a bunch of employer resources that we or services that we offer as well.

I think in terms of those, the best businesses, as you say, or the businesses that have the best kind of mental health resources available also, really offer comprehensive health insurance plans that cover mental health treatment. I think that’s huge. If you have a health insurance plan that does that, gosh, that really says that your employer gets it and recognizes what you need to be your best employee.

I also think providing access to other things though, like Wellness apps like Calm or Headspace. Those are becoming very popular in the workplace.

Jodi mentioned this already, but training managers and mental health awareness is huge. If your managers are not aware of what to look out for or how to best support their employees, then they’re doing the owner, right, the people at the top a disservice by not having that awareness, but it’s up to the leaders to provide that level of insight and awareness for managers.

I think, Jodi you mentioned, to book  flexible work arrangements are huge accommodations when needed can really go a long way with keeping an employee retaining them, but also making sure that you’re hitting those performance measures.

The other thing I would mention is just making sure that your employees have access to mental health resources outside of your company. Whether that’s national resources, like NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or SAMSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, those are national organizations, but we have a ton of local ones as well.

And making sure that you have, even if it’s just a handout or a one-pager that has a bunch of mental health resources listed that you can hand out in meetings or during difficult conversations with your employees.  I think that really can go a long way when you can offer that to an employee.

19:54 Matt Cranney

Jodi, anything you would like to add to Celie’s list?

19:57 Jodi Riley

I think the point that I would make on that list is, it’s very comprehensive and for me this isn’t a one size fits all. Stepping back and understanding how you can have an array of resources to hopefully be able to meet each and every employee at their different struggles along the way, and being able to pivot when necessary I think is also key.

20:24 Matt Cranney

You know, knowing enough about your own business about your own employees, about the unique challenges that your business provides. What works for M3 as an insurance agency might not be what works for a manufacturer who has multiple shifts. There might be different ways that those tools can be applied.

The common thread though through it all is how can we, as employers keep the human in human resources, right? And, as cheesy as that sounds, we talk all the time here at M3 when we’re asked what our strategic priorities are, we just keep saying the word talent until we can stop saying it. That’s really what our business is. We go as far as our talent takes us and so it’s not just enough to say we find great talent or we can develop great talent, but we want to care for great talent.

Celie, Jodi, thank you so much for being willing to share and we’ve, I feel like just scratch the surface we could talk for a long time on this topic, but unfortunately, because the podcast is called Fast Break, we do have to keep moving. I can already sense that we might have to have a follow up conversation on this topic,

But again, I can’t let either of you go without going through the next section of our conversation, which is the fastest break set of questions, which is where I’m going to pepper you guys with some quick rapid fire questions. Just looking for a quick. Off the top and then we’ll move on to the next. Celie, I’ll come to you first.

Favorite book that you’ve read in the last 12 months.

21:49 Celie Valentin

Probably the Silent Patient, it’s a psychological, it’s a fiction book. Very unexpected. Main character is a therapist, so obviously it’s a favorite.

21:58 Matt Cranney

OK. OK, Jodi, what about you?

22:00 Jodi Riley

Mine is In Five Years by Rebecca Surly. A quick read, but it was awesome.

22:06 Matt Cranney

OK, complete the sentence, Celie for you, leadership is.

22:10 Celie Valentin

Leadership is all about what people can do together. It’s about achieving results that someone could never achieve while working alone.

22:17 Matt Cranney

Jodi, what about for you?

22:18 Jodi Riley

Leadership is not about being in. It’s about empowering your team to reach their full potential.

22:25 Matt Cranney

Celie, the most impactful coaching advice that you’ve ever received. Obviously, you’ve provided a lot of coaching advice, but what is the most one that you?

22:32 Celie Valentin

One came from a movie, this is so cheesy. “The Pursuit of Happiness”.  There’s a scene where Will Smith tells his son, don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t do something and that has stuck with me from the moment I saw it.

22:42 Matt Cranney

I love that movie. Jodi, what about you?

22:44 Jodi Riley

Active listening is key hearing and understanding, not just waiting to offer solutions.

22:51 Matt Cranney

Celie, your favorite podcast you would recommend to our audience.

22:54 Celie Valentin

Yeah, “The Daily” from the New York Times. I never, ever, ever miss an episode.

22:59 Matt Cranney

Love it. Jodi, what about you?

23:01 Jodi Riley

Mine is the “Mindset mentor”.

23:03 Matt Cranney

OK. You can’t live without it app on your phone.

23:07 Celie Valentin

Spotify, without a doubt, between the podcast, the Music, the audio books, I’m 100% hooked.

23:13 Matt Cranney

Love it, Jodi. What about you?

23:15 Jodi Riley

Mine is actually the wallet. I feel that the convenience is unmatched.

23:21 Matt Cranney

I agree with you and I’m learning, but I’m still have my wallet in my pocket even when I’m using my phone to pay because I’m, like, so scared that it’s not gonna work even though it works like every.

Celie, last thing you did that truly scared you?

23:34 Celie Valentin

I was recently on vacation in Colombia and I spoke very bad Spanish for an entire week and that scares the crap out of me and I did it and I was proud.

23:43 Matt Cranney

That’s awesome. Good for you. Jodi, what about you?

23:47 Jodi Riley

So mine is a bit more on the practical side. I gave up control to my kids to do their own laundry. Which is terrifying.

23:55 Matt Cranney

Yeah, we’ve heard some tips, some terrifying things on fast break, but that might be the most terrifying. So we’ll have when we have you back on for the next set of our conversation, we’ll find out how that’s working out for your kids and for you.

Last one. Celie we if you had to give a TedTalk, what would be the title?

24:13 Celie Valentin

In Our Mental Health Era.

24:15 Matt Cranney

Jodi, what about you?

24:17 Jodi Riley

I would say the Power of Balance As A Working Mom.

24:21 Matt Cranney

Love it. OK, before we close today, Celi and Jodi, we have people in our audience who listened today and would love to connect with you both, I’m hoping you can share with our audience where they can find out more about you, about Family Service and maybe the best way to get connected. And in full transparency, M3 has been a client for a long time and thrilled client. So we  are huge promoters of you Celie, and your team, but where can people find out more about you and your organization?

24:48 Celie Valentin

Yeah. Thank you so much for saying that. We value our partnership with M3 so, so, so much and are so honored to be a part of this today. Thank you again for having me.

So I’m kind of from like an older generation. I feel like where I’m not super invested in social media or having all the, you know, modern ways. However, you can absolutely find me on our Family Service Madison website which is fsmad.org, which stands for Family Service Madison. Again, that’s fsmad.org.  You can connect with me there, that has information about our employee assistance program, as well as our other programs at Family Service Madison. You can also find all of the therapists on our team there.

25:27 Matt Cranney

Awesome. Thank you, Jodi. What about you?

25:29 Jodi Riley

Yeah. And I can be reached at my e-mail jodi.riley@m3ins.com or on LinkedIn.

25:36 Matt Cranney

Awesome. Celie, Jodi. Thank you so much for being willing to be with us today for sharing your wisdom and insights with our audience on an absolutely critical topic for our current day and time, we really appreciate it.

25:49 Celie Valentin

Thank you again so much for having me.

This has been Fast Break brought to you by M3 Elevate. I’m Matt Cranney, thank you for joining me. Do you want more tips to grow protect your business? Subscribe now and catch all of our episodes and we’ll see you next time.