OneDigital’s Shira Wilensky Talks Mental Health Initiatives on RecruitingDaily Podcast

Workplace conversations on mental health are no longer out-of-bounds.

Two years after the covid-19 pandemic isolated millions of workers in their homes and one year after pent-up employee dissatisfaction launched the still-ongoing Great Resignation, employer-sponsored mental health initiatives are finally at the top of the HR agenda. Companies everywhere are waking up to the fact that they have a critical obligation to support all aspects of employee wellness. It is widely understood that employers who don’t sponsor mental health initiatives as part of a holistic wellbeing strategy will be left behind by those who do.

Shira Wilensky, OneDigital’s National Practice Leader for Health and Wellbeing, has long been on the cutting edge of addressing mental health in the workplace. Shira sat down with William Tincup on The RecruitingDaily Podcast to examine how compassionate mental health initiatives can boost productivity, prevent attrition, and create virtuous cycles that help entire organizations.

We talk a lot about the relationship between employee engagement and total wellbeing…But despite the highest level of engagement we saw [during the pandemic], do we think that employees were super well over the past couple years? Employees were engaged because they were on the edge of their seat waiting to hear about the sustainability of their employer, the livelihood for themselves related to their job. Were they going to be going into the office? Were they going to be wearing a mask? What was the next step? So they were very, very engaged, but struggling and suffering across the whole spectrum of total wellbeing. And so what we figured out is engagement is one thing, but it’s not enough. If what we’re ultimately after is having our employees thrive as humans, then we have to address both. So you can have a great communication strategy, a great message, we know that especially the millennials and the Gen Z, they want to feel valued, they want to feel cared for. So you can say it a hundred times, but boy, you better show it.
 
— Shira Wilensky, National Practice Leader, Health and Wellbeing

Listen to the full RecrutingDaily Podcast here.

For more from Shira Wilensky, visit the Engagement & Wellbeing Calendar to discover timely resources to support the wellbeing of your workforce.