RU OK Day – Cupcakes without Change?
It’s that time of year again, the time when corporates across Australia (and perhaps more internationally) don yellow LinkedIn profiles, then dish out a cupcake to each employee and encourage employees to ask each other “RU OK”. Then back to your desks, nothing more to see here (but hey, we also have a weekly fruit bowl throughout the year).
At its inception in 2009, RU OK Day started with an important premise and goal. Bringing mental health out of the shadows, increasing interpersonal connections and normalising conversations about mental health and distress. I think in the early days it achieved that. However, I wonder whether RU OK day looks a bit tired and is counterproductive now.
My view is that it has now become one of the many examples in corporate Australia turning employee distress and organisational psychological safety into an employee-driven tick-box compliance exercise. Allowing businesses the ongoing licence to carry on business as usual without meaningfully engaging in change to improve company culture and thereby employee wellbeing. This article will conclude by asserting that is a clear financial imperative for directors and management to genuinely engage with employee wellbeing in a manner which goes beyond this mere compliance exercise.
The excellent book: “Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis” by James Davies (Atlantic Book London, 2022) persuasively asserts the position that blaming sufferers of mental ill health, instead of viewing mental distress as an understandable reaction to wider societal problems (including with our workplaces), is dangerous. The book addresses the UK context, however it is largely analogous to the Australian context.
A section that really jumped out to me in the context of the workplace wellbeing and RU OK Day relates to Mental Health First Aid courses (MHFA) (pg 86 and following). MHFA is intended to train up a number of colleagues in the office who have done a 1 or 2 day course to “identify, understand and help a person who may be developing a mental health issue”. Marketing itself as a strategy for businesses to mitigate the billions of dollars a year that worsening employee mental health costs employers every year. Particularly in lost productivity, increased absenteeism and staff turnover. All for the bargain price of only AUD$400 per participant (in Australia).[1]
Upon attending one of these courses, Davies recalls a case study where the participants looked at an employee who said that she was sleeping poorly, was feeling low and tearful. Everyone in the class agreed that the employee was depressed. Davies identifies that the focus was very much what was wrong with her as opposed to what happened to her. The course’s participants were then instructed to direct her to seek appropriate professional help. Then, if that person showed reluctance toward seeking professional help, the course addressed how to discuss their reluctance.
Davies then recounts an interaction with the course facilitator (which I would have enjoyed being a fly on the wall for) where he says (p 90):
“What concerns me…is that the general thrust of MHFA training is not about encouraging or empowering us to challenge managers and the organisational culture of our workplaces, but is rather about asking us to manoeuvre people towards mental health services that generally do not explore these things, and that invariably end up medicalising our distress as a problem and treating it accordingly – as a problem rooted in self rather that the environment.”
…
Davies continues (meanwhile my popcorn supply is dwindling):
“[MHFA] doesn’t question the rules. You could even say that it advocates for them, despite the fact that if we start uncritically advocating medical understanding of employee distress, other serious questions much follow: what happens to the idea that our jobs may be responsible for our misery? Any what about the fact that more and more people find their work dissatisfying or meaningless; would this not affect their mental health? By not mentioning these things, is not MHFA simply colluding with – or even worse becoming an ambassador for – the uncritical medicalisation and thus depoliticisation, of widespread worker distress”.
Popcorn finished.
Unfortunately, even at its highest level of usefulness, I think in 2024 RU OK Day is marred by the same core issues. It contextualises employee distress as a problem rooted in the self and not in the environment.
RU OK Day says that people should: “Use these four steps and have a conversation that could change a life:
Ask R U OK?
Listen
Encourage action
Check in”.
If you are being asked this by a colleague and the problem is the workplace itself or the people in it – you may be hesitant to say something for fear of retaliation or because it is futile (things will never change anyway). If it is a non-work related personal matter, save for the rare exception, people generally don’t share personal matters with colleagues on a mere 4 syllable suggestion.
Each of the RU OK exemplar “action items” is an action item on the impacted individual as opposed to the organisation or society. The website has the examples: “have you tried x?”; “what helped you before”; or “what is helpful or relaxing for you”.[2] Put bluntly, you can’t mindfulness your way out of an inescapably distressing work or home life.
As with MHFA, the approach is then to direct the individual to a professional. However, there is no recognition of the fact that just about every mental health professional in Australia has either closed their books or has a waiting list which is the length of the numbers in pi.[3] Even if that individual shows a willingness to engage with professional help, that professional help is just not there.
Glaringly absent in the in the RU OK messaging is any reflection by companies on the conditions of corporate culture and employee wellbeing within their organisation and its impact on employee distress. Also, absent is any year-on-year commitment to improve the conditions of work and employee satisfaction by providing concrete initiatives. But look, an annual cupcake is better than nothing.
Yet, companies continue to point to RU OK Day and mental health first aid training (and the weekly fruit bowl) as examples of promoting employee wellbeing and having a psychologically safe workplace. Job done. Box checked.
But a cupcake is much easier and cheaper?
My view is that cupcakes are not enough. Directors should genuinely engage with corporate culture and employee wellbeing through measures like reading a selection of randomised exit interview notes; watching for trends in churn rate; maintaining a high-level oversight of employee claims and periodically walking the grounds and speaking to a diverse range of employees in a genuinely open and curious manner. Directors should have the expectation that management will implement genuine, measurable initiatives toward driving meaningful improvements in culture and employee wellbeing. Managers should communicate these initiatives to employees so that employees can also reflect and comment on the efficacy of such initiatives.
The financial benefits to a company of having a satisfied workforce are almost so obvious they go without saying. People who are more satisfied with their work, do better quality work. People who like each other, do better work with and for each other. People who like where they work, don’t leave for other opportunities readily. People who feel in control of their work, do not act out of control when performing their work. People who feel like the work they are doing is valuable, want to do more of it. People who feel appreciated and rewarded appropriately, continue to seek appreciation and reward. People who feel listened to, continue to feel valued. It’s a virtuous cycle.
And, all of that has nothing to do with an annual cupcake.
[1] Mental Health First Aid - Australian Red Cross
[2] How to ask "Are you OK?" | R U OK?
[3] 9 in 10 psychiatrists say workforce shortages are risking patient care in Australia | RANZCP; 1 in 3 psychologists are unable to see new clients, but Australians need help more than ever | APS (psychology.org.au).