In today’s fast-paced environment, mental health can easily take a backseat to all the other demands society places on us. Work is easily the number one stressor people have, and that stress can quickly turn into a mental health crisis. It takes so much mental and physical energy to work, and when you pile mental illness on top of that, employees can start feeling helpless and burnt out.
While wonderful bosses exist, the majority of companies work their employees to death just so they can increase their bottom line. However, when one woman needed a few days off work to focus on her mental health, she was reminded just how great her company and bosses are.
Madalyn Parker, a web developer who works for live chat software engineering company Olark, wrote a powerful essay in 2015 about her ongoing battle with mental health problems and how they impact her career. She believes every company should be supportive of employees with mental health issues and is open about her own personal struggles. In the corporate world, the emphasis is often on productivity rather than the health and well-being of employees, and while both are important, the former cannot exist without the latter.
After sharing the email thread with her boss, Olark CEO Ben Congleton, the exchange quickly went viral and Congleton became a hero in the corporate culture. Over 9.5 thousand retweets and 32 thousand likes later, Parker showed the world that compassion is essential to getting the job done. See what Congleton said in the emails below, and let us know how your boss would react in this situation!
Here’s why all companies should offer employees mental health days:
This is Madalyn Parker, a web developer from Michigan who works for Olark
When she needed a few days off work, she emailed her team immediately
Her boss’ response was the highlight of the story, though
Madalyn quickly shared the email on Twitter to let the world know how awesome her boss is
People started sharing their experiences with asking their bosses for a mental health day
Madalyn’s tweet started a positive discussion about what type of leave mental health should fall under
The last tweet really sums up this whole article. Without looking after your mental health, your ability to perform at work or anything else in life will plummet. Perhaps this email exchange will spark a much bigger discussion about how workplaces can provide better accommodations to employees dealing with stress, burnout, and mental health issues. As most of us know, positive thinking alone cannot eliminate mental illness, so compassion is critical to providing support.
Maybe more companies will start seeing the importance of having healthy, happy employees instead of only caring about profits. Without people, there would be no profit, so hopefully the work culture will start changing so that the health of employees and health of the business will be one in the same.
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