Moving from Stressed out to Healthy and Fulfilled.

When I was in high school, I really struggled with my mental health. Fortunately, I had a mentor who kept their eye on me, and helped me learn how to navigate through my experiences. After I finished my undergrad, I got to take on that role as a mentor while working with kids with emotional and behavioral challenges.

When I was promoted into my first big kid job, the HR Director for a statewide behavioral health provider, I found myself struggling with mental health again. I was working late one night – because that’s what I thought I was supposed to do – and a person who had just taken over a role I was promoted out of came to my office and started sharing with me his own experiences of mental health challenges. As he shared with me his thoughts of suicide, he helped me understand how it was the experiences with our clients that was affecting him, but it was the expectations placed on him to produce services, navigate work relationships, and to perform.

As we got him the help that he needed, I began to realize that the way we build systems at work can be inadvertently designed to maximize the output of others, and leave them feeling sucked dry. This phenomenon wasn’t unique to our organization here in Montana.  

In 2021, the surgeon general issued a report that nationally, 76% of the workers across industries have symptoms of a mental health condition. 8 in 10 of people attribute their mental health symptoms to their work environment.

 As I rumbled with my own experiences of mental health and supported the people around me, I began to question what it would be like if we could build a work environment that fueled people. What if we didn’t need a work life balance, because we didn’t need to protect our life from our work. So, I have been on a mission to transform work into a source of fulfillment and joy so people in our organizations can have a greater impact, with less effort for their communities. I quickly realized, I didn’t know what I was doing and decided to get a PhD in psychology where my research has focused on stress and the organizations’ role in burnout.

Process the Emotions

In 2023, I partnered with the University of Montana’s Center for Children Families and Workforce Development and the BHDD bureau at DPHHS to work with six behavioral health organizations around the state to solve their workforce challenges.

As part of this project, we conducted a survey of 485 behavioral health and developmental disability workers to better understand our workforce. The survey indicated that half of the behavioral health workforce would change jobs in the next 12 months.  

To address this, the Center and I worked with 6 organizations across the State of Montana to address their workforce challenges. It became clear that what we were building was focused less on the outcomes the organizations were seeking to achieve and instead, it was focused on the process.

The manner an organization looks at and responds to its workforce challenges predicts their ability to weather the storm. That seems pretty obvious, yet so many organizations lack a constant process to just that.

Effective processes should look at market trends and internal data but they need to also dive into the emotional side of our workforce challenges. Losing people from our team and not being able to replace them is painful. Creating a process for managers, directors, and people from all levels of the organization to rumble with these challenges creates a deeper sense of engagement. This engagement provides the necessary nutrition to fuel the interventions an organization hopes to use.

Leadership & Burnout

Burnout is the result of chronic exposure to workplace stress. And it’s rooted in the way we shape our work environments. Using data from the Center, we predicted that a one unit decrease in burnout would decrease the risk of turnover by 48%. As part of this work, I was able to publish findings of the organizational factors that contribute to burnout for behavioral health organizations in Montana while earning my PhD. It was clear in the data

Leadership plays a critical role in shaping the work environment to prevent burnout. Many leaders, like me, stepped into supervisory and managerial roles from working directly with clients. They likely were promoted because they are rock star clinicians or dedicated direct care staff. However, the skills it takes to be a rock star clinician differs from the skills we need to support a member of our team. For example, the way we create a treatment plan for a person with autism or PTSD is very different than the way would create a professional development plan for a worker to thrive. The way we create behavior changes in families is different than the way a manager holds their people accountable.  

We must invest in leadership development for middle and entry level managers can increase their skills and give them tools that directly reduce the experiences of burnout.

I’ve piloted a leadership development program that focused on developing transformational leadership skills and saw a 6-point decrease in burnout across their teams. – The data from the Center predicts that a one-point decrease in burnout would reduce the risk of turnover by 48%.

People Analytics

Another way we can help organizations is to begin preparing for the next workforce crisis. Developing an internal people analytics porgram would help to keep fresh data and allow us to create early warning indicators that the next workforce crisis is approaching. This dashboard could gather turnover risk, provide insight into what people are looking for from organizations, and give us clear metrics, like burnout, of how working in these organizations is affecting peoples lives.

We are hearing more and more that our workforce is thirsty to make a difference. Investing into the development of organizations and their leaders can improve their impact in the community and the well-being of thousands of workers.