Masawa Minute 42
Surprising benefits of working in crisis mode | Does your workplace need mental health apps? | More!
This is the Masawa Minute — mental wellness, social impact, and impact investing snippets from what we’ve read the last two weeks + where you can get active.
This week we’ve been reading about different ways to take action. Regardless of the level on which the action is being taken, the important lesson learned is that we should act together, with urgency and without ego. We will surely be even more mindful of this in our work from now on — hope you will too!
Get Active!
🛼 Attend
How to Implement Mental Health & Wellness in the Workplace
It’s the latest event in Comparably and Entrepreneur’s Leadership Lessons series hosted by Jason Nazar. During the webinar, he will speak to CeCe Morken — the CEO of Headspace — about successful leadership, organizational health, and more. Morken will share best practices on these topics and the most important lessons she learned in her 35-year career building and growing organizations.
If you want to learn more about what makes a successful leader, how to improve performance in the workplace, best practices to mindfully return to in-person/hybrid workplaces, and how to incorporate mental wellness in technical aspects of work, this event is for you. Tune in on August 10 at 12 pm PT / 3 pm ET / 9 pm CET and enjoy!
📞 Listen
Kathleen Tullie on the Power of Aligned Missions Between Nonprofits and Business
It’s the latest episode from Masawa’s good friend Kathy Varol and her podcast Purpose and Profit! Her guest is Kathleen Tullie — Senior Director of Social Purpose at Reebok International and Founder & Executive Director of BOKS, a nonprofit on a mission to make physical activity and play a part of every child’s day. They talk about the failures of the sports industry, the power of collaboration across a shared mission and the often overlooked link between mental and physical health, among other things. We loved it, so give it a listen!
What we’re reading…
🧑💻 Should you offer apps to your employees?
Throughout the pandemic, mental health apps have been flooding the market. Promising to ease the symptoms of depression, anxiety, OCD and other mental disorders, they are demanded more than ever as global mental health keeps rapidly deteriorating. Mental illness is set to cost the world $16 trillion in lost productivity by 2030, and CEOs, senior executives and human resource managers are waking up to the fact that their employees need support. That’s a promising step towards healthier organizations, but a question remains: should you offer mental health apps to your employees, and if so, which ones?
“Yes” might seem like an intuitive answer — after all, the success of those apps proves that people want to use them and find them helpful. Yet many factors need to be considered when it comes to implementing them in workplaces. To begin with, the best thing a company can offer its employees to improve their wellbeing is robust health coverage that includes mental health care and offers face-to-face therapy with a licensed counselor. A mental health app on its own is not a substitute for this, as to this day, the evidence of whether self-help apps alone are effective in treating mental illness remains limited. They should be used in combination with therapy and other forms of self-care, like exercise, a healthy diet, and restful sleep. Also, just like any complementary therapy, the apps will not be able to tackle the underlying causes of psychological distress in the workplace if they’re related to systematic factors like toxic culture, discrimination, or abuse.
However, all this isn’t to say that the apps can’t be useful. While it’s not yet certain whether they on their own can treat a mental condition, they can provide employees with access to new tools, skills, and resources that can help them cope and work on their mental wellness. There are hundreds of apps to choose from, and each can be useful for reducing stress, negative thoughts, or anxiety symptoms. There’s no single app that would be the best for everyone, and therefore, it’s recommended to seek apps tailored to employees’ specific needs. What is contributing to stress and anxiety in the workplace? Figure out the answer and go from there.
Should Your Company Provide Mental Health Apps to Employees?
🏋🏼 How working in crisis mode can benefit organizations
Stress demands a lot from us, but our brains are known to be resilient and can adapt remarkably well. So well that, according to experts in health psychology like Laurel Mellin, if we train our brains for the high-stress times by replacing our mental patterns with strategies for action and high resilience, it will improve almost every aspect of our lives. Most importantly, the same can be true for social impact organizations. Becoming proficient in the strategies that help us during a crisis can improve the way our organizations function long after the crisis has passed.
Speaking of strategies, there are a few. The first one is forming loose partnerships, which refers to partnerships and networks that strike a balance between independence and support. In such a case, the group neither follows a single member’s lead nor speaks for every member all the time, as both tend to prevent initiatives from capitalizing on all expertise and activities available to them. This allows the team to act fast on multiple fronts and leverage each member’s strengths wherever possible, unlocking broad and deep impact. The second strategy is putting the ego aside. It shouldn’t take a crisis to remind us “there is no ‘I’ in team,” but the pressure of a crisis does a great job revealing all the ways ego can sneak into our work. Prioritizing the common mission within a team or even a broader ecosystem allows a far greater impact and progress than we could achieve otherwise — that’s the main thing that matters.
The third strategy is acting with urgency. Effective response means meeting the speed of the problem, but acting with urgency can be helpful when facing long-term challenges as well. For collaborations in social impact, it means proactively tackling challenges instead of waiting for big global organizations to address them or invite you to join. It means setting deadlines and proceeding to do our best with what we know now rather than waiting for a perfect plan. A crisis like Covid-19 forces organizations to move away from their conventional practices and embrace plans that help them take meaningful action right away — but we can adopt these plans by choice. Regardless of the mission, structural limitations and selfish impulses hinder progress, and therefore, we shouldn’t make space for them in our work. Taking action together, with urgency and without ego, helps us prioritize impact and focus on achieving the change we want to achieve.
What Working in Crisis Mode Teaches Us About Collaboration and Impact
🌿 Mental health is a must for public health, now more than ever
It’s not news to anyone at this point that the pandemic has taken a significant toll on global mental health. During Covid-19, nearly half of US adults reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, up from one in 10 observed before the pandemic. Similar trends have been noticed worldwide. Understanding that the psychological impact is likely to linger for years, nurturing mental wellness has evolved into a collective social responsibility rather than a luxury it’s been perceived as for so long. As we slowly begin to consider what the new normal of living with the pandemic might look like, we need to find solutions to support and improve mental health on a global scale.
It’s reassuring to see many initiatives focus on mental health awareness. Numerous organizations started large-scale public campaigns to destigmatize mental health and raise awareness of available solutions. Yet it shouldn’t end there — it’s essential to start taking concrete action and building a supportive ecosystem. The first step is improving accessibility. Due to our lives largely shifting to the digital world, internet platforms have become key actors in empowering self-care. As people can find out more about their health conditions and learn about solutions, it provides them with an opportunity to manage their health in a more effective way. The rise of teleconsultation in medicine and the evolution of e-pharmacies need to extend to mental health services as well if we are to make mental health for all a reality.
But not all mental health problems can be addressed with self-care alone. Multiple studies have demonstrated that screening and early professional intervention following major trauma (such as a global pandemic) will prevent more severe conditions from developing and keep people away from more worrisome clinical outcomes. With governments, industry and patient groups playing a role in strengthening knowledge in this area, people can become their own strongest advocates. Taking care of mental health doesn’t only benefit the individuals — it also benefits public health systems and society as a whole. Therefore we need to continue identifying symptoms, taking part in the right solutions, and advocating for policy change so that mental wellbeing truly becomes part of public health. Now is the time to start unlocking our collective potential and building a better future for all of us.
The pandemic has made mental well-being a public health must
🥇 Making space for mental health in sports
With the Olympics coming to an end, we have a lot to consider. Simone Biles’s withdrawal from the competition once again brought our attention to the importance of reflecting on our mental wellbeing, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and making decisions in favor of our health. Ten or even five years ago, an elite athlete likely would’ve been reluctant to admit they are struggling with pressure, let alone to withdraw in the middle of the competition. Luckily, there’s been a shift in cultural acceptance that emerged in 2015–2016 when the National Collegiate Athletic Association created a mental health initiative and Michael Phelps brought up his struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts right before the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. Since then, multiple athletes have come forward to share their experiences with anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems.
While sports psychologists say that stigma surrounding athletes’ mental health remains well and alive, Biles was largely embraced as the latest athlete to be vulnerable about her struggles. According to Sian L. Beilock, the president of Barnard College in New York and a cognitive scientist who studies why people succumb to pressure, her withdrawal was an attempt to take back control after losing the sense of positioning in the air during a twisting maneuver. He added that mental health issues affect everyone, and the experiences of Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka and the others are really important for regular people as it indirectly gives them permission to do the same thing,
These Olympics have been challenging to many — Tokyo Games being postponed for a year made it extremely difficult for gymnasts who were deprived of regular access to gyms, coaches and national training camps. Next to that, the lack of regular competition prevented athletes from practicing certain skills. Regular competition teaches athletes how to deal with adrenaline and allows them to get into a particular state of calmness and centeredness, said Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a lawyer and a three-time gold winner at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Since last week, multiple former and current athletes have shared their experiences of dealing with losses and health problems in the competition and how it has affected their mental health long term. We hope this leads to a shift in the tradition of sports and long-term action that leads to a culture where athletes are comfortable speaking up, and their mental health is just as valued as their physical abilities. But there’s still a long way to go.
Simone Biles Rejects a Long Tradition of Stoicism in Sports
🌳 Tech leaders are in a unique position to further ESG goals
Investors love startups that focus on ESG, and sustainable investing is skyrocketing. The reason for this is that consumers no longer want to support companies that don’t care about sustainability — according to research, the pandemic has increased consumers’ focus on sustainability as well as the willingness to pay more for sustainable products. Next to that, action on climate change is increasing on the policy level, with the US rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and a recent executive order on climate commitments. Organizations are also increasingly setting sustainability goals. However, these goals set by CEOs and sustainability officers are often long-term and aspirational, leaving it to operations and technology teams to implement sustainability programs in the nearer future. That’s why CTOs are a particularly important part of the planning process and can be of real help to their organizations when it comes to ESG targets. There are some immediate actions CTOs and technology leaders can take to achieve sustainability and positive impact.
In the category of environmental impact, as more businesses digitize and more people turn to devices and cloud services, the energy used by data centers continues to rise. Currently, they account for around 1% of worldwide electricity usage. One thing CTOs can do to reduce carbon emissions is to make compute workloads more efficient. It will reduce costs and energy requirements and, as a result, carbon footprint. Another solution is deploying compute workloads in regions with lower carbon intensity — while the compute capabilities of different regions are similar, the carbon intensity varies, making it a rather easy step to take towards more sustainable services.
Regarding social impact, it’s important to include societal benefits in the design of products. For example, some companies add product features to make their services more accessible for traditionally underserved populations to make the process more efficient and equitable, or choose a waste-reduction route and offer sustainable packaging. Responsible AI practices also must be ingrained in the culture to avoid social harm. Clear principles of working with AI responsibly must be established and later translated to processes and procedures. Lastly, all of this will be easier to achieve if companies focus on creating diverse and inclusive technology teams. Not only does it significantly improve performance and employee retention rate, but also equitable hiring practices are inherent to any sustainability and positive impact efforts.
Tech leaders can be the secret weapon for supercharging ESG goals
Gabija works as a Marketing & Communications Coordinator at Masawa. She lets her vision of a more just, sustainable, equitable world guide Masawa’s story and inform the work towards transforming global mental wellness to make it accessible and accepted.
