Managers have more influence on employees’ mental health than their doctors or therapists, according to a new study. How can HR ensure middle managers have the tools to foster psychosocial safety among their teams?

New research has revealed that managers have more influence on employee mental health (69 per cent) than doctors (51 per cent) or therapists (41 per cent), and the same level of impact as their spouses and partners. 

The report, recently published by UKG, also found one in three employees say their manager fails to recognise the impact they have on their team’s wellbeing, and the majority (68 per cent) say they would like their manager to do more to support their mental health. 

Since last year’s introduction of a new Code of Practice to manage psychosocial hazards at work, HR has placed a renewed focus on employee mental health as a critical point of compliance. While it’s important for HR professionals themselves to understand psychosocial safety guidelines, these findings are an important reminder that, in many instances, mental health management hinges on the behaviour and capabilities of middle managers.

“In the past, we’ve thought about the skills to have conversations, particularly conversations about mental health, as the ‘soft’ stuff,” says Michelle McQuaid, Founder of the Wellbeing Lab and the Leaders Lab.

“Well, now these skills are legal requirements, and, unfortunately, most managers don’t have them.”

As a result, supporting and upskilling managers in addressing psychosocial hazards will be HR’s most valuable tool in managing them, she says.

How managers influence psychosocial safety

According to McQuaid, there are three main areas where managers can have a significant impact on employees’ sense of psychosocial safety. 

“​​The big one is: Do I feel safe with my manager?”

“We’ve seen in the Great Place to Work research for the past few years that trust is the number-one factor that makes for a great place to work. And that’s about transparency, honesty and vulnerability. These are all such important skills.”

The second area where manager behaviours are prone to creating psychosocial hazards is change management, she says. 

“Generally, when it comes to change, managers under-communicate by a factor of seven to what their employees need. So I always say to managers, ‘When you think you’ve communicated it clearly, keep going.’”

Ensuring employees are hearing about big changes directly from their managers rather than other channels such as office gossip will encourage trust in managers and the organisation. Even if managers aren’t able to share certain information with employees, it’s still important to be upfront about this and acknowledge employees’ concerns.

“The third and final one, I would say, is appreciation and validation,” says McQuaid. “We all share the same deep psychological need to be respected, valued and appreciated. And so we’ll often see inadequate reward and recognition as one of the most frequently reported psychosocial safety risks. 

“Sometimes it’s about fair pay for fair work, but it’s often not – it’s about [people saying], ‘I just don’t feel appreciated or valued in my job, and I’m not getting career development opportunities, training and support to keep learning and growing.’ So the other tool managers have is gratitude. It’s one of the most powerful business tools we have, and it costs us nothing.”

“Generally, when it comes to change, managers under-communicate by a factor of seven to what their employees need.” – Michelle McQuaid, Founder of the Wellbeing Lab and the Leaders Lab

Managers are also struggling

As HR works to upskill managers in psychosocial safety, it’s important to recognise that managers are struggling with psychological burdens of their own.

In fact, UKG’s research revealed managers are more stressed than their team members (42 per cent versus 40 per cent), and one in four say they “often” or “always” feel burned out.

Perhaps more concerningly, 57 per cent of managers say they wish someone had warned them not to take their current job, and 46 per cent say it’s likely they’ll quit their job within the next 12 months because they’re experiencing too much work-related stress.

“We’ve seen in our studies over the years that managers are highly contagious, and that if a leader has high levels of wellbeing, typically, you see high levels of wellbeing ripple across the teams [and vice versa],” says McQuaid.

“Middle managers are like the meat in the sandwich. They are pushed from above on KPIs and strategy, and there is push-up from their teams saying they can’t keep up… They’re stuck in the middle and they’re exhausted.”

The economic challenges of the past few years have put pressure on managers in many organisations to ‘do more with less’, and the scarcity of resources means they’re simply not set up for success, she says. 

To help address this, it’s important that any training in psychosocial safety focuses as much on the wellbeing of managers as on their reports – otherwise, the new requirements might be perceived by managers as another arduous task to add to their to-do lists.

According to McQuaid, this largely comes down to creating a culture of shared accountability, where managers feel comfortable flagging psychosocial hazards without fear of being blamed for them. 

“Every team has psychosocial hazards,” she says. “When human beings do complex work together, there will be hazards. That in itself isn’t the problem. The problem is when those hazards become high-risk because of frequency, impact and duration. 

“The way a good manager does their job is to report early where they have issues and not let those risks fester, so they can talk about it quickly and [address] it as far as is reasonably practicable, which is what they’re required to do. But that takes a big leap of faith for managers.”

The psychosocial hazards Code of Practice is new to all of us, and managers need to be given permission to view it as an exercise in learning and growth in order for it to be effective.

“Unfortunately, we know lots of workplaces are still led by fear and anxiety at the top. But this has to be led in a very different way,” says McQuaid.

“There are so many studies that show that when we incite change from a basis of fear, we get short-term compliance. And then we need to keep using sticks of punishment and carrots of reward to get people to comply with it. But you don’t get safety from compliance – you get safety from an ongoing commitment that we are all going to show up and not just be safe, but care for each other, even when the work is difficult.”

“I really think this legislation gives HR an amazing opportunity to redefine its role.” – Michelle McQuaid, Founder of the Wellbeing Lab and the Leaders Lab

HR’s role in empowering middle managers 

To ensure managers have the tools to manage employees’ psychosocial safety as well as their own, it’s crucial that they feel comfortable approaching HR for support. 

HR can act as an intermediary between managers and the C-Suite, as well as providing a safe sounding board for managers to flag concerns.

“If managers don’t feel safe with HR, these issues fester in the background,” says McQuaid. 

The best thing HR can do to nurture this dynamic of trust and transparency is to become middle management’s champion across the organisation, she says.

“If managers know that HR is their champion, not only will they be more likely to talk to HR about what’s going on and ask for support when they need it, but it also creates this opportunity to train and coach a generation of leaders who can deal with their own dirty work instead of dumping it on the doorstep of HR all the time.

“I really think this legislation gives HR an amazing opportunity to redefine its role.”

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