Mental Health and Rest Culture

The Opportunity

Organizations that actively support mental health and build cultures where rest is normalized rather than penalized see lower turnover, reduced absenteeism, and stronger performance across the board. The return on this investment is among the highest available to employers. The barrier to entry is lower than most companies assume.

The Business Case

Every dollar invested in mental health support returns $5.82 in improved productivity according to WHO research.⁵ Employees at companies that actively support mental health are twice as likely to report no burnout or depression.⁶ In 2024, 59 percent of women reported burnout compared to 46 percent of men.¹ That gap has measurable consequences for retention, engagement, and output.

Only 53 percent of employees know how to access mental health care through their employer.³ A benefit that half the workforce cannot find is not delivering on its investment. Communication is often the lowest-cost, highest-impact lever available.

What the Research Shows

Women experience burnout at higher rates than men and are 8 percentage points more likely to report feeling like they are struggling or in crisis at work.² Burnout for women is not simply about workload. It is about accumulation. The combined weight of caregiving, emotional labor, and the ongoing effort of proving competence in environments that did not originally expect them creates a different kind of exhaustion than overwork alone.

Forty-two percent of employees refrain from discussing mental health concerns at work.⁴ A benefit that exists but carries stigma is not fully available. Culture and benefit have to work together.

On Meeting Culture and Rest

Unnecessary meetings are a form of cognitive tax. Every meeting that could have been an email withdraws time and attention from someone's day without a clear return. Organizations that create feedback mechanisms allowing employees to evaluate meeting value, and that treat a well-written summary as equally legitimate to a room full of people, signal genuine respect for how their workforce spends its energy.

Proactive PTO monitoring is another underused tool. When a manager notices an employee has not taken time off in several months and initiates a check-in, that is not surveillance. It is care. It shifts the burden from the employee having to advocate for their own rest to the organization actively protecting it. One-on-one templates that include a standard wellbeing question, and quarterly check-ins that include a brief PTO utilization review, make this structural rather than dependent on whether an individual manager happens to think of it.

What Good Looks Like

Good represents accessible baseline practices. Better reflects more intentional investment. Best describes what the most forward-thinking companies are doing right now.

Questions Worth Asking

• Do our employees know how to access mental health support without having to navigate a complicated process?
• How long does it take to get an appointment through our EAP or mental health benefit?
• Do our managers know how to respond when someone comes to them struggling, before it becomes a performance issue?
• Are there recurring meetings in our organization that could be replaced with a written update?
• When did someone last check in with employees about whether they have taken time to rest?