Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER AUGUST 2018 6 NEWS Are we facing an anxiety epidemic? Employers, leaders must act quickly to confront costly problem: CEO BY JOHN DUJAY CANADIAN employers must face up to a growing crisis of anxi- ety among workers — and leader- ship can help. That's according to Stephen Liptrap, president and CEO of Morneau Shepell, talking about an "anxiety epidemic" and how it can aff ect a business' bottom line. "The Conference Board of Canada states that anxiety costs the economy — just in Canada — $17 billion a year," he said. And in looking at people using employee assistance program (EAP) servic- es, there are twice as many now as there were seven years ago. e size of the problem is mul- tiplying across the continent, said Liptrap. "Anxiety aff ects some 45 mil- lion people in North America. And what scares me the most is that 40 per cent of those have not received one iota of treatment." It's important for businesses to realize the scope of the problem, so they can properly tackle it, he said. "If we think about an epidemic in any other sense — and I think about (diseases like) SARS or… H1N1 or those things — we re- acted to all those really quickly and I just really want people to understand that these are actu- ally bigger than any of those, and therefore we should as a society be reacting in the same way." But stress and anxiety are a far more complex issue than some would think, said Kathryn Brohm- an, associate professor at the Smith School of Business at Queen's Uni- versity in Kingston, Ont. " ere is a positive element of stress, which is the idea that you need some stress in an organiza- tion system to drive productivity; if you don't have stress, I guess the opposite of that would be compla- cency," she said. " e idea of the ability to sus- tain high levels of stress for a long time, I think, leads to anxiety." Brohman and Liptrap recently spoke at a conference in Halifax — put on by Financial Executives International (FEI) Canada — that highlighted how eff ective leader- ship can be used as tool to fi ght the anxiety epidemic. Workplace anxiety growing Young workers are suff ering even more than other age groups, said Liptrap. "Millennials, for the most part, are twice as likely to have stress, anxiety and mental health issues than any other age group that ex- ists in the workplace today." "They suffer from isolation more than any other age group as well," he said. But young workers don't ignore anxiety when it strikes. "On the positive side, they are twice as likely to reach out for help," said Liptrap, citing Mor- neau Shepell numbers. "When they come in and they get help, they're more likely to take advice than any other age group as well, so they're better at listening." Overall, not enough organiza- tions are addressing the issue, according to Christine Korol, psychologist and director of the Vancouver Anxiety Centre. "Even the ones that might care, they have their own pressures running their businesses. ey have to look at how they manage their own stress." ese days, workers are more willing to consider going on dis- ability, she said. But a lot of the stress and anxi- ety at work comes directly from the person people report to. "Some of the research is pretty clear: It's your manager," she said. "How happy you are at work really depends a lot on the manager that you have, and companies don't know how to deal with this." Most companies don't have HR policies for handling the bad eggs, said Korol. " ey don't know how to deal eff ectively with workplace bully- ing when it happens." A lot of employers feel their performance is being tracked at all times, said Brohman, which can also lead to an increase in anxiety. "So many of us operate with this idea that the world around us is constantly assessing our per- formance, and the drive towards certain metrics-based manage- ment, but it's a sort of high need to achieve," she said. "People get very fi xed on that outcome. And if they don't achieve it, they determine that they're ei- ther stupid or lazy or not as good as everybody else." What employers can do " e fi rst thing that employers need to do is really start track- ing what's going on; they've got the data — whether it's looking at health surveys, looking at en- gagement scores, looking at how many people are going off for what type of sickness — but it re- ally is taking a look at the data," said Liptrap. Then, companies are better able to manage the level of anxiety among employees. "How do we actively support in- terventions for any of those who are suff ering? You essentially tell people 'It's OK (to talk about anxi- ety),'" he said. The negative connotations of workers admitting they suf- fer from anxiety or stress has dropped, which makes tackling the problem easier than in past years, said Liptrap. "We just see, time and time again, when CEOs and leaders of organizations talk about stigma, and the fact that it's OK to ask for help and we're able to help and get those people back to work very quickly." One of the easiest ways to fi x the problem comes down to edu- cation, he said. "Organizations really do need to train their managers, and the reason I say that is the front-line managers are the ones who've got to be able to spot people in crisis, and then they've got to know what resources are available and they have to be able to point people to those resources when they need them," said Liptrap. "Doing that little bit of train- ing — and it can be done through webinars, and it's not hard to do — really does make a diff erence." By sharing experiences, em- ployers positively show employ- ees they are not alone, said Lip- trap. It's similar to how celebrities and sports fi gures tell their stories and talk about mental health. "A couple of the Canadian banks — I've read some of their internal HR newsletters — and they've actually had employees come up and talk about their own battles and what they've gone through, and I always think that's more meaningful than any- thing else because if I read about what one of my colleagues has gone through, or have someone tell a story that just is really, really meaningful to me." HR should also be given more of role, according to Korol. "I see a lot of stressed-out HR execs who are really frustrated with how they're limited in what they can do in their role," she said. "But they often don't have good policies put in place or if they do have good policies in place, (they don't know) how to implement them." More training for HR depart- ments would also go a long way to addressing the problem, said Korol. "It would make my job a lot easier if they actually knew how to handle this, because we don't really get a lot of experience in dealing with very negative people or people who yell and scream at you in the workplace," she said. "I've had three people last week in my private practice who each had a manager or director yell at them." "Knowing what to do with a diffi cult manager or diffi cult co- worker, having clear policies in place, role-plays for HR manag- ers and directors so that they can practise talking down somebody who's aggressive or setting bound- aries in what's acceptable are very important," said Korol. Stress versus anxiety Prevalence rates for anxiety are fairly consistent but it's possible people are getting more comfortable reporting, according to Christine Korol, psychologist and director of the Vancouver Anxiety Centre. "We're not really seeing increases in the overall prevalence. But there's certainly more people willing to come to therapy," she said. "There's certainly a lot more stress and that would be due to economic factors and housing prices being high, and being asked to do more with less at work." From a clinical perspective, stress and anxiety are different, said Korol. "The way we look at anxiety is that it's a problem of perception," she said. "So there really isn't a true danger but you're overestimating the danger of a situation or you're underestimating your ability to cope with it." "Stress is different. Stress could be that you have a dinner party the night before, and wake up in the morning and there's dishes everywhere — you're not afraid of it, it doesn't cause anxiety, but it's draining. It's one thing that you have to do," said Korol. "Often, most things that cause anxiety are also stressful. But not everything that's stressful causes anxiety." "Millennials, for the most part, are twice as likely to have stress, anxiety and mental health issues than any other age group that exists in the workplace today."

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