Rising mental ill-health and social isolation in Australia are changing how work and wellbeing connect, especially as traditional forms of community decline. This raises questions about whether current structures and leadership approaches are equipped to support long-term workforce resilience as workplaces become a primary source of connection for many.
In Australian author Nevile Shute’s 1955 novel, Requiem for a Wren, a young woman struggles to find her place in the world after the end of the Second World War. Through her wartime service with the UK’s Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), she discovers work that she is very good at and takes pride in (purpose) and is part of a close-knit community that cares for her (love).
She also, however, suffers trauma and personal loss which affects her mental health and leads her to believe she is personally responsible for a number of incidental fatalities in the course of her work. Consequently, her employer judges her unfit to contribute further service and discharges her. She repeatedly badgers the WRNS to take her back, confident in her own mind that, if she could get back in, then everything would be alright. With no close family left to support her, and unable to adapt, re-train, and find new work, she embarks on a journey to Australia with ultimately devastating results.
Requiem for a Wren is a harrowing read, not in its depictions of trauma itself, which are mild by today’s standards, but in its forensic exploration of deterioration in a person’s mental health following extended periods of loneliness and disconnection. It is also an unusual novel for its time in depicting the importance of a functioning work community to a young person’s mental health; a topic on which there still remains limited research, although studies have highlighted the impacts of loneliness on the workplace, in terms of costs and loss of productivity.
Getting real about mental challenges
The themes would be familiar to many people today, whether they experience mental wellbeing challenges themselves or care for someone who does. One in five Australians experience a mental illness in any given year, but this does not include those who care for that group, nor those who struggle with mental wellbeing challenges in an ever-changing world but are not classified formally as having a mental illness.
Studies also report a general pattern of increasing loneliness and isolation, particularly amongst young people. And, for young people who are of an age when they are likely entering the workforce, either full-time or part-time, mental health issues have dramatically increased in the last 15 years; in 2007, 26.4% of those aged 16 to 24 had experienced symptoms of a mental disorder in the past 12 months; by 2023, this had risen to 38.8%.
Work and wellness are intertwined
For many people, the breakdown of traditional forms of geographical community across Western society means their work community is their primary form of community.
If that community is lost, compromised, or degraded, then there may be significant consequences for the individual’s wellbeing and for society as a whole (even if the person keeps showing up). For those who have close family, or are part of active volunteering groups, then they may not be lonely even if the workplace is inadequate.
However, volunteering rates continue to decrease in Australia, from 30% in 2019 to 25% in 2023 – a 5% drop in less than five years. And even those in close relationships may experience loneliness particularly when they need to devote considerable time to support others in battling health challenges.
This is a very difficult reality for leaders and workplaces to understand, let alone respond to. The role of the workplace has evolved, but fundamental structures and principles remain untouched since the 1980s. For a host of good reasons, including legal requirements, most workplaces continue to require strict boundaries between the personal and professional.
Workplaces also tend to reward leadership styles that focus on external and highly visible achievement of individuals, as opposed to maximising the collective ability of all team members to contribute their gifts and talents to a shared purpose. Leadership author and speaker Simon Sinek has been one of the most vocal modern-day champions of the latter approach. In his book, Leaders Eat Last, he describes how he was originally inspired to develop his philosophy by observing instances of loving and trusted relationships within military units where individual contributions were amplified and extended through an unrelenting focus on the bigger concepts of team, duty, and country.
Outside of exceptional work environments like the military, which struggle with their own serious welfare challenges in any case, teams can and do provide support and care to one another. This usually occurs, however, within tightly prescribed limits, particularly around privacy. Fundamentally, despite being a ‘default’ community for many, the workplace remains strongly prioritised around individualist concepts. This is a true and proper reflection of the weight society places on individual choice, drive, initiative, character, and skill.
Across a healthy population, perhaps there is no issue with this approach. But if there is an increasing trend towards significant mental wellbeing issues nationwide, then it may be worth asking whether adjustments are needed to how we view the workplace and its contribution to a functioning society.
There are also bigger strategic questions at stake. As demonstrated during the pandemic, human capability is vital in times of national disruption and crisis. No AI product or service – at least not yet – can replace the essential human capability which, across all sectors and all industries, underpins the smooth running of daily functions and services across the country and guides decision-making.
Shifting from vague sentiments to concrete action
Most leaders understand that workforce and culture are important matters that deserve time and attention. But a continuing proliferation of concepts and initiatives in the workplace culture space may obscure the deeper issues that organisations need to tackle around workforce.
In the same way as societies of past eras devised elaborate language to cloak uncomfortable truths about concepts like sex, pregnancy, and mental illness, so, too, does the modern corporate workplace use prim euphemisms that obscure fundamental human needs at work. So, a will to be part of something bigger than oneself and achieve a shared goal translates into ‘employee engagement’. The desire to be part of a community that loves you and you love back becomes the need for a ‘positive workplace culture conducive to employee wellbeing’. And the craving to be seen and heard as a person worth of dignity and respect, and to contribute hard-won professional expertise, becomes a requirement for ‘inclusion’. Some would argue this language allows leaders who are uncomfortable with dealing with the ‘messiness’ of human dynamics to be able to make small strides towards better workplaces. However, these concepts, unless underpinned by very clear accountabilities and goals, can be vague and imprecise in their execution. They either allow people to keep doing what they are doing (even when it is not working) or else they encourage the bureaucratisation of initiatives that are disconnected from the bigger picture of human belonging. Initiatives like providing support or counselling services, corporate social events, and personal development opportunities are very important and worthwhile, but lasting success may require a culture that prioritises suitably people-centred leadership.
Presented with the arguments above, many workplace leaders may well take the position that these are questions for governments, charities, or faith-based communities to deal with, and that it is sufficient to meet legal obligations for the health and wellbeing of employees. But even this argument is a difficult one to advance in an era where the law in Australia – and increasingly other Western countries – has now enshrined the right to a psychologically safe workplace. Mental health claims at work also continue to increase significantly, accounting for nearly a tenth of all claims in 2021-22 in Australia. Consequently, there are pragmatic reasons for leaders to pay closer attention to the feelings and wellbeing of their people and to intervene swiftly if culture takes a turn for the worse.
Against this backdrop of social change and the workplace, overall national workforce challenges are unlikely to go away anytime soon. There are external risks to Australia’s security arising from global strategic realignment, and social, economic, and technological change continues to accelerate with deep implications for Australia’s overall workforce.
And, in a more contested strategic era, questions of the staffing and resilience of national institutions, including resilience for service delivery, are increasingly pressing.
Ultimately, as Shute’s novel on the lonely ex-Service member shows, strategic and national considerations are bound up with individual stories. In fact, Shute was most famous for his book, On the Beach, which describes the impact of a coming nuclear apocalypse on a group of individuals, and which has enjoyed a resurgence in relevance with a generation anxious about war and climate change.
The mental wellbeing issues facing Australia’s workforce may not form a visible apocalypse, and some would argue issues like conflict, burnout, or stress at work don’t justify catastrophic terminology. But it is fair to say that they are issues which increasingly occupy space in national conversation. And the best and simplest antidote in workplaces may be leaders who do their best with what they can control, which is the environment they create for their people. In the same way as nations at war or during a disaster work out how to provide continuity of service during disruption, so, too, do leaders need to work out how to reliably provide assurance of their care and support to their staff, both throughout periods of suffering in their own lives, as well as the suffering of those they lead.
Like the protagonist in Shute’s novel, most human beings seek both love and purpose in their daily work.
Organisations are often good at providing purpose and some organisations, like those that serve the national interest (e.g., military, intelligence, public service) or protect communities (e.g., police, health, emergency services) are brilliantly good at providing it. But it’s frequently the love that is in shorter supply. At Queen Elizabeth II’s 2022 funeral, with many powerful people in the audience, the Archbishop of Canterbury made the pointed observation that ‘people of loving service’ are rare and ‘leaders of loving service’ are rarer still.
Love remains a largely verboten word in the modern workplace. Yet, perhaps, it is time to cast aside that taboo to identify, encourage, and reward ‘leaders of loving service’.
In a potentially long and complex national battle with declining mental wellbeing across populations, and in an era of unprecedented strategic challenges, it may be this element that is decisive to success.
First published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/workplaces-communities-fostering-love-purpose-uncertain-joseph-nmuuc/?trackingId=sKQhW%2BZTSL2M%2FNmp0zFM8g%3D%3D
