Employees are Depressed. What Can Actuaries Do About It?

By J.D. Pincus

Innovators & Entrepreneurs, February 2024

We are living through a crisis of employee emotional wellbeing; an ongoing reminder that while the world looks very different than it did in March 2020, the global pandemic continues to impact our lives. This is clear when we look at data from the US workforce. The Leading Indicator Systems’ Workforce Listening Study Series, which uses the three-minute, image-based AgileBrain assessment, has shed light on an alarming trend. Over the past six consecutive waves of population-level research, we have seen a surge in emotional activation or intensity and a continued shift from majority positive (i.e., promotion-oriented) needs to majority negative (i.e., prevention-oriented) emotional needs.

As grim confirmation of this trend, the same study finds that most full-time American workers (working for companies with at least 20 employees) meet the threshold for clinical depression. Using the Center for Epidemiological Studies depression scale, 42% of American workers meet the criterion for moderate depression, and an additional one-in-seven met the criterion for severe depression. Importantly, the level of depression is significantly related to both stronger emotional activation and increasingly negative emotional needs. Chief among these are the needs for relief from feeling uncared for, psychologically unsafe, excluded, scorned, and disempowered.

The implications of this emotional well-being crisis are multifaceted and far-reaching. You’ve likely already seen the impact of emotional distress in your employees: Decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, a pervasive decline in overall employee engagement, and crises of leadership. This isn't just an isolated issue affecting a few firms; it's a systemic challenge with the potential to ripple across the workforce and destabilize the broader economic landscape.

Entrepreneurial actuaries understand that employees, the very lifeblood of any organization, aren't mere functionaries or replaceable parts in a vast machine. They are individuals with intricate emotional dimensions, aspirations, fears, and dreams. But what can they do? How can an employer address a collective crisis of wellbeing?

While there isn’t a “one size fits all” solution, employers can employ tools and strategies to help their employees.

Where Employers Fit in Circles of Support

It starts with understanding where actuaries fit into the larger network of support. The "circles of support" concept is a holistic approach to understanding and providing support to individuals, especially in times of need or crisis. It visualizes the different layers of support surrounding an individual, starting from the most immediate and personal, and extending outward to broader community and institutional levels. At the core is the individual, followed by immediate interventions they can employ, then planned personal strategies, intentional self-improvement efforts, peer and social support, employer-provided resources, state-level services, and finally, global organizations and bodies. Each circle represents a different level of support, emphasizing the importance of a multi-faceted approach to well-being and resilience. As the front line of risk assessment, actuaries can measure the relationship between the emotional well-being of workers and a variety of serious outcomes from productivity loss (e.g., the rise of “bare minimum Mondays,” “phone it in Fridays,” “lazy jobs,” “quiet quitting,” etc.) to grave matters of suicide and workplace violence, which, sadly, seem ubiquitous.

The Personal Level

At the innermost level is the individual employee, who needs a repertoire of “in emergency smash glass” type moves for responding to overwhelming emotions. By demonstrating the heightened risk for employees, you can convince employers to sponsor and make available self-help tools such as mindfulness apps like Headspace and Calm, extending to immersive solutions like Reulay.com emotion-calming VR experiences. In moments where emotional distress peaks, such tools can be a lifeline. Designed with the express purpose of offering immediate solace, they can guide individuals through episodes of heightened emotional stress, restoring a semblance of stability in moments of crisis.

In the longer term, models like James Gross’ emotional regulation provide a guide for maintaining emotional well-being. Employers can help employees choose situations beneficial for their emotional health and provide tools to adjust these situations. Training on diverting attention from emotional triggers, reframing negative thoughts, and selecting effective emotional responses can lead to a more emotionally resilient workforce.

Personal growth platforms like MagnifiU.com further augment this emotional support framework. By promoting such platforms, employers can pave the way for employees to embark on self-directed journeys of self-awareness, values clarification, and emotional fortification. Such platforms not only provide tools for self-improvement but also foster a culture of continuous learning and emotional learning.

Finding Social Support

Self-directed tools and platforms are just one piece of the puzzle. Wrapping around the individual is the role of social support, the impact of which cannot be overstated. By cultivating an environment where employees feel empowered to seek support from peers, family, friends, and coworkers, employers can create a robust support network. This sense of community, of not being alone in one's struggles, can be transformative. Employee-led resource groups (ERGs) can provide a vital source of community. Sadly, the same tracking study finds an unacceptable level of American employees living in emotionally unsupportive homes, feeling lonely, and even feeling physically and psychologically unsafe, suggesting that workplace emotional well-being monitoring can make a big difference.

How Employer-Sponsored Initiatives Can Help

At the next outer ring, we find formal employer-sponsored programs and benefits like employee assistance programs, mental health coverage, and one-on-one coaching. Specific emotional needs can be linked to specific employer-sponsored actions, e.g., meaningful recognition programs can be directed to employees who feel an unmet need for validation; quiet hours without meetings or interruptions can be directed to those who yearn for feelings of immersion in their work; those with concerns regarding fairness and ethics can connect with ESG initiatives and ombudspersons; those striving for greater autonomy can be connected to role expansion opportunities.

Whatever options you choose to offer your employees, it needs to be authentic; everyone can tell when a firm’s leadership genuinely cares about their employees versus when they’re just checking a box.  Taking the time to clearly align programs, processes, policies, and benefits with unmet emotional needs can pay huge dividends, signaling to employees that their emotional well-being is not just a passing concern but a core organizational priority.

Actuaries can also act at the outer rings by advocating for and coordinating with robust state-level social services to ensure access to the basic resources needed to sustain emotional well-being. Expanding wider still, by engaging with global entities like the World Health Organization, actuaries can be part of a global movement to address emotional well-being.

By taking the circles of support systems perspective, the role of actuaries in supporting the emotional well-being of their workers becomes clearer and, with any luck, closer to action.

Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the newsletter editors, or the respective authors’ employers.

J.D. Pincus, Ph.D., is a social psychologist and human capital thought leader focusing on emerging methods for measuring emotion and motivation, and a Fellow of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. His AgileBrain measurement technique is a peer-reviewed, published, and validated image-based assessment that cuts through noise and posturing to reveal the actual motivational-emotional state of the workforce. His new book The Emotionally Agile Brain: Mastering the 12 Emotional Needs that Drive Us will be published in 2024 by Rowman and Littlefield. For more information and to experience this innovative three-minute assessment, visit this website and click the "Try AgileBrain for Free" button.