Wow, just look at the state of us…

I thought it was ok to not be ok now?

Mary Paslawski, Client Services Director, Marketing, Harvard

Covid impacted the world in so many horrible ways but from my perspective, one (very faint) silver line was that suddenly, people were opening up about their mental health at work. Countless articles were written about the effects of lockdowns, social distancing and spending more time at our desks simply for the want of something to do. It was suddenly ok to say that you weren’t ok – because most people weren’t ok.

Poor mental health went from being a taboo subject that plagued the few to the spotlight. And in a way, I’m grateful to the pandemic for that result – because I’m not sure we’d have the positive reception to what we’re doing now without it.

However, our research, undertaken in partnership with Coleman Parkes, surveyed 1000 PR, marketing and comms professionals and revealed some grave concerns about our industry’s ability to handle employee mental health – even with the major shifts the pandemic brought.

Half of respondents reported having experienced severe stress, anxiety, or burnout in the last twelve months – up to three times on average.

To me, all the positive changes around talking about mental health that came from the pandemic, felt completely undone by that one stat. Years ago, I personally struggled massively with work-related burnout so the fact that even with those shifts, 50% of the industry is still struggling, hit home for me.

In our industry, there are specific factors that can put an additional strain on people’s mental wellbeing:

• Our work surrounds us everywhere we go, making it all but impossible to fully switch off

• Our work is highly subjective, so our sense of status, job security and achievement can feel intrinsically linked to the opinions and preferences of others

• Working for clients or internal stakeholders means we’re rarely in control of timings, deadlines, approval and expectations

• Across the industry there has historically been a “work hard, play hard” culture that can also fuel mental health problems

While there are so many reasons I love my job, we simply have to be kinder to ourselves and our peers. We have to be more supportive, and we have to recognise that we do put ourselves under a lot of mental strain to do what we do.

Half of the us experiencing severe stress, anxiety, or burnout in the last year? That shouldn’t be the state of our industry. Frankly, it’s not good enough.

I hope that by recognising the ‘State of Us’ and bringing together both agencies and in-house professionals together to educate, support and ultimately be a force for change, we will be able to forge more supportive environments which enable people to thrive.