How tech giants are handling the unprecedented mental health crisis in the workplace

Betsy Sutter has over three decades of experience in human resources, but nothing has prepared her for the widespread mental turmoil currently afflicting her colleagues.

As chief people officer for business software firm VMware, Sutter has the challenging job of helping manage over 30,000 employees amid a coronavirus pandemic, a major recession, and a national reckoning over racism. With so much to worry about, it’s no surprise that workers are experiencing an unprecedented mental health crisis, experts say. 

Just days after widespread protests over racism and police brutality kicked off throughout the U.S., Sutter sounds overwhelmed. VMware employees were already struggling with COVID-19 and ensuing requirements to work from home. “I can honestly say, I have never been this challenged, taxed, and emotional, as you figure out how to navigate this,” Sutter says. “I’m seeing people really crumble.”

Sutter isn’t alone.

Her peers at tech giants like Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise feel similarly as the drip of distressing news and feelings of isolation drain employee morale and increase mental health problems. Cisco chief people officer Fran Katsoudas says the pandemic has “magnified” the need for frank discussions about mental health, frequently a taboo in the American workplace. “You have a high level of stress and you have people who are to an extent isolated from one another,” she says. 

Understanding Black trauma

For Black employees, life can be particularly difficult these days. George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody added to an already long list of African-Americans who have died at the hands of law enforcement, including Breonna Taylor,  Stephon Clark, and Philando Castile, and a painful reminder of the many struggles fellow Black Americans face. 

The current financial crisis, for one, is impacting Black workers more than their white colleagues. For example, a recent survey by Fortune and SurveyMonkey found that “Black adults are twice as likely to have been laid off or furloughed as white adults.”

Black Americans are also more likely to know someone who has died of COVID-19 than white Americans, according to research by the Non-partisan and Objective Research Organization, NORC, at the University of Chicago for the Data Foundation think tank.

Trey Boynton, Cisco’s global lead for inclusion, describes her feelings in recent weeks as a mixture of grief coupled with the “inability to express.” “We gather in times of grief,” says Boynton, who is Black, about the importance of funerals in the Black community. But restrictions on large crowds and fears of contracting the deadly virus mean that traditional places of gathering like churches are closed, causing isolation and loneliness.

Although Boynton is exhausted by the “the sheer overwhelmingness of the loss of life that was so unnecessary,” she doesn’t think she’s “ever heard our country talk about systemic racism” like now.

Michael Lopez, the chief diversity officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, says HPE “had to ensure that our Black and African-American team members felt heard and seen.” As part of that effort, HPE CEO Antonio Neri, who recently tested positive for COVID-19 but is doing well and is still working, has been on a virtual “listening tour” with Black employees.

While Lopez declines to comment about the specifics of those meetings, he says they highlighted the “importance of engaging the broader organization about having uncomfortable, or what I call courageous” discussions about race. 

Healing from pain

HPE chief people officer Alan May says management has been trying to encourage employees to take care of their mental health. Managers have been undergoing training to spot warning signals so they can urge employees to access mental benefits. “We are encouraging our leaders to connect with every one of our employees every week—not about work, but to see how they are doing,” May says.

He adds that HPE is providing free accounts to the Headspace meditation app, which can be helpful to unload stress. Around 9,000 employees signed up for the app in the span of a month, May says, underscoring how workers are in need of relaxation.

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