Workplace Mental Health Training

The core essence of workplace mental health training has never been to "give employees blood and chicken soup" or "teach employees how to tolerate all grievances", but to provide employees with implementable emotional relief tools through layered intervention, output executable management optimization directions for the company, and ultimately achieve a two-way positive cycle of individual status and organizational efficiency. This is the consensus that I have worked as a corporate HR for 5 years, experienced three training pitfalls, and talked to more than a dozen industry senior EAP (employee assistance program) consultants.

The first time I took the lead in doing this kind of training was in 2021. At that time, Tubai found a popular "successful lecturer" on the market, and he said, "Be grateful to the company for the platform that pays you wages." "Young people should not be afraid of working overtime. All laziness will become a slap in the face." During the two-hour training, one-third of the people left halfway, and the final anonymous satisfaction was only 12%. At the end of the questionnaire, some employees wrote "It is recommended that the boss first conduct PUA identification training." I was almost scolded by the department director for being autistic.

Later I learned that there are still two quarrelsome schools in this industry. One group is the "individual optimization group", which believes that the essence of workplace psychological problems is employees' insufficient ability to withstand stress and poor emotional management ability. Therefore, the training content is all about mindfulness meditation, emotional ABC theory, how to maintain a positive attitude in the face of criticism from superiors, and even teaches you "how to use the boss's scolding as a ladder of progress." This type of training is extremely low-cost and does not affect the company's existing management system. It is the first choice of many small and medium-sized company bosses, but it is also the type that employees are most disgusted with. Many people directly classify this type of training as "new PUA."

The other school is the "organization optimization school". The core view is that 80% of workplace psychological problems are essentially management problems: ineffective overtime work that occupies personal time, unequal rights and responsibilities, a serious mismatch between salary and effort, and rising channels blocked by related households... If these root problems are not solved, Tiantian Jiao will Adjusting the mentality of employees is tantamount to "being beaten and being taught how to endure the pain." This is the consensus of many OD (Organization Development) and EAP departments of many large companies. However, it is extremely difficult to promote. After all, few bosses are willing to admit that "there is a problem with my management." If we really need to adjust the system, there are too many interests to move.

I later complained about this to a friend who had been working as an enterprise EAP consultant for 7 years. She pointed out a middle path to me. The training I promoted at the company in 2023 was based on this idea. In the end, the satisfaction rate reached 87%, and some employees even took the initiative to ask if there would be similar activities in the future.

In fact, it is simple to put it bluntly. We split one training session into two completely separate sessions. In the session for ordinary employees, I specifically made a request to the lecturer: don’t talk about big ideas, and all the content should be “easy to use”. At the beginning, the anonymous stress survey results collected in advance were shown. When "82% of people's recent source of stress is cross-department communication and cross-department communication" and "67% of people have been blamed for leadership mistakes in decision-making" popped up on the screen, I saw many employees nodding underneath. The content of that day was also very practical: it is not to teach you "don't be angry", but to teach you how to use the 10-second breathing method to quickly calm down your emotions when you encounter unwarranted accusations. Don't be so angry that your hands are shaking and you can't do your work. ； It’s not about teaching you “to obey the leader unconditionally”, it’s about teaching you how to keep chat records, meeting minutes and other evidence when you are blamed, so that you can retaliate on the spot without suffering any internal injuries. ； He even taught everyone how to judge whether their emotional problems have reached the point where they need to seek professional counselors, and gave everyone a free EAP consultation voucher without mentioning "gratitude" or "dedication" throughout the process.

The meeting for the management was closed-door. I directly put all the heart-wrenching issues anonymously reported by employees on the stage. There were no vague "management skills" but only specific requirements: for example, do not send work messages to employees after 10 pm in non-emergency situations. For example, when assigning tasks, you should clearly state the deadline, expected results, and available resources. Don't just say "I don't care about the process, I only want the results." During that training, the management also made comments, saying, "Why are young people today so squeamish?" I directly showed him the list of core employees who had resigned due to emotional problems in the past six months, and he shut up on the spot.

Of course, many colleagues now accuse me of "harmony", which means that there is a problem with the company's management. Why do I still need to teach employees how to adapt? I completely agree with this. If you encounter a company that does 996 every day, lays off employees at every turn, and the boss treats employees like livestock, no matter how good the mental health training is, it is useless. It is better to advise everyone to run away. But the reality is that most companies are not outright black-hearted workshops. Many management problems are historical issues accumulated over the years. It takes time to change them. However, employees’ emotions are current. We can’t wait for the company to perfect all the systems to prevent everyone from suffering from depression, right?

A week after the last training, a little girl who worked in operations came to the office to see me. She said that her direct boss had always rejected her plan every day and would criticize her even if her ideas were used in the end. She had been suffering from insomnia for half a month and even thought about leaving her job. During the training that day, she listened to the little method of "listening only to specific work suggestions from the leader, and directly and automatically filtering personal attacks and emotional vents." When the leader scolded her again that day, "Why are you so stupid?", she just stared at the leader's hairline and was distracted. She didn't go home and cried for half the night like before, and slept for a full 6 hours that night.

To be honest, workplace mental health training is never a panacea. You can’t expect that a two-hour class will solve all the troubles in the workplace. But as long as it can help someone who is struggling to sleep for half an hour longer that night, save half an hour of being in trouble, and take it less seriously when being scolded, then the training is not in vain.