After thirty years of clinical work, I’ve heard about a lot of workplaces from the inside. The healthiest ones are not the ones with the best wellbeing app or the most yoga vouchers. They tend to have other things in common.
Senior people model emotional honesty. Somewhere near the top, a leader can say in a meeting, “this week has been a lot,” without it being a career-limiting move. Once leaders can say that, the people below them usually can too. And those leaders tend to be askable, and tellable: easy to bring a problem to, and honest about their own. Psychological safety isn’t built by policy. It’s built by demonstration.
They notice the quiet people. As covered in Edition 4, the people most at risk of burnout are often the least likely to put their hand up: calm on the surface, paddling hard underneath. Healthy workplaces check on them proactively rather than waiting for visible struggle.
Recovery is built in, not left to willpower. Real lunch breaks. Genuine annual leave. Catch-up time placed in the diary after heavy stretches, not stolen from it. Moments in the working day where nervous systems can actually settle. There’s more to say about this one, and a later edition will say it.
A senior colleague or leader can reallocate work. They can say “your workload is too high, the next thing goes to someone else” before the person breaks, rather than after.
And the one that may matter most: they don’t glorify martyrdom. They don’t treat self-neglect as professionalism, or hold up the person who skipped their leave as the model employee. Every time we celebrate that person, we teach everyone else what gets rewarded here.
None of this is expensive, which is the awkward part for anyone hoping the answer to being a healthy workplace could be purchased. The wellbeing app is fine. It’s just not the thing.
The workplace culture is the thing.
Human Foundations is a weekly look at the science behind high performance and wellbeing at work, from keynote speaker, psychiatrist, comedian and author Dr Jo Prendergast. Subscribe to get each edition as it lands.
Next week: burnout or depression? They overlap, they get confused for each other, and the difference matters. A psychiatrist’s guide.
Dr Jo turns this thinking into keynotes for conferences and leadership teams.
