10 October is World Mental Health Day
Almost a million employees globally die every year due to the mental health risks of work and, while organisations continue to invest in more wellness programmes and add-on perks, employee well-being remains stubbornly low and rates of burnout continue to climb.
The disconnect calls for a shift from corporate wellness programmes designed to help people survive unhealthy workplaces to healthier work design that protects both psychological and physical safety at work.
Prof Renata Schoeman, head of the MBA Healthcare Leadership programme at Stellenbosch Business School, says wellness perks such as gym memberships, on-site baristas and padel courts, chill zones, free health food and mindfulness apps cannot compensate for chronic overload, poor management, job insecurity and harassment from colleagues or supervisors.
“Locally and globally, companies have spent decades investing in employee wellness programmes. The uncomfortable question is, what if the workplace itself is the problem?” she asks.
October 10 is World Mental Health Day and Prof Schoeman argues that “we need to stop asking only what employees can do to become healthier, and start asking what organisations can do to make work healthier”.
She said that concern for employees’ mental health needs to move from the Human Resources department to the boardroom, as an issue of governance and leadership accountability.
“Organisations that take accountability at the top for workers’ sense of psychological safety and stability benefit from a workforce that is not only healthier, happier and more satisfied, but more productive and able to contribute to organisational sustainability,” Prof Schoeman said.
In a report earlier this year, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that work-related psychosocial risk factors, including long hours, job insecurity, effort-reward imbalance, and workplace bullying, are responsible for the deaths of 840 088 workers worldwide every year.
The estimated economic losses of human capital and productivity are equivalent to 1.37% of global GDP.
In South Africa, one in four employees have a clinical diagnosis of depression, with the direct costs of absenteeism due to depression estimated to cost the economy R19 billion annually.
The 2025 Deloitte Well-being at Work report highlights the “executive blind spot”.
While two-thirds of senior executives stated that employee well-being had improved over the past year, only a third of employees reported actual improvement, with up to 30% saying it had worsened.
At least one in five employees are trying to prove their value to their employer by working while sick, skipping breaks, taking on additional projects or cancelling holiday plans, at the expense of their own well-being and relationships, the report found.
The disconnect between executive perceptions and employees’ reality has been “stuck” over the past four years of the report, with companies continuing to invest in new wellness benefits while employee engagement remains low and levels of burnout and other mental health problems remain high.
“Only one in five employees report that wellbeing is genuinely embedded in their job or workplace culture. This points to the fact that you cannot compensate for bad work design with wellness perks.
“For too long, corporate mental health has focused on helping people survive unhealthy systems. The next frontier is to design healthier systems,” Prof Schoeman said.
She said companies should treat psychosocial hazards of work in the same way as ergonomic, physical and occupational hazards: “identify them, assess them, mitigate them and monitor them”.
“The ILO report places psychosocial risk firmly alongside occupational health and safety.
“Poor supervision, lack of support, unreasonable demands, lack of control, bullying, unclear roles and unfair processes are recognised psychosocial risks.
“The causes of these risks are all factors that organisations can actively control and manage: workload, working hours, autonomy, role clarity, supervision, job insecurity, harassment, fairness and clear organisational processes,” she said.
Prof Schoeman pointed to the World Mental Health Day 2026 theme “Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change”, which emphasises moving beyond listening to people to actively involving them in decisions.
“The annual engagement survey or pulse checks are meaningless if we are not prepared to change something. The employee voice needs to become part of organisational decision-making rather than something collected once a year and presented as evidence of action.
“Organisations need to be working to improve overall working conditions rather than relying on individual interventions when an employee reports that they are not coping or are at risk,” she said.
Prof Schoeman said the emphasis of wellness and employee assistance programmes (EAP) need to shift from helping people to cope with the demands of work, to designing and managing work that is psychologically safe.
“Companies have historically focused downstream: EAPs, counselling, sick leave, disability management and return-to-work programmes.
“The new conversation is upstream and focused on first-line prevention rather than building resilience or managing the fall-out of work-related mental health risks,” she said.
Key issues of psychological safety to address include workload and clear job expectations, managing working hours and digital overload, giving employees control and a sense of autonomy, and demonstrating fairness through action not only policy.
Prof Schoeman recommended steps that organisations can take to improve psychological safety and the effectiveness of wellness interventions.
- A real-time measurement approach, shifting from annual surveys to ongoing assessment of employee wellbeing that goes beyond “pulse checks” to personal engagement.
- Give employees a voice in person through open forums, team meetings and one-on-one meetings, emphasising open communication on mental health challenges and enabling employees to contribute meaningfully to policies and change.
- Get a full picture. For example, while some companies monitor sick leave and absenteeism, and the number of hours worked or employees’ self-reported well-being, other factors such as employees taking up their paid time-off, hours worked after-hours, or the volume of emails sent after hours or on weekends are also key indicators of overload.
- The effectiveness of wellness programmes should also be assessed by monitoring employees’ uptake of wellness benefits and actual participation in wellness activities.
Prof Schoeman will be hosting a special wellness edition of the Stellenbosch Business School Leader’s Angle series of leadership and networking events on Friday 9 October, focused on the energy, recovery and resilience needed to support leaders in their own performance and in enabling them to create the organisational conditions that enable others to thrive.
