Your people are the most critical asset of any services firm. While the employer-employee relationship might seem simple — “I pay you to use your expertise to help our clients, so please do your job” — it’s more complex than that.

Here are some surprising statistics:

• People working in the Professional, Scientific, and Technical industry in Australia were reported to have the 2nd highest rate of depression compared to other industries.*

• They were also reported to have the 3rd highest rate of mood disorders (affective mental disorders) in Australia.*

• Consultants experience the highest rates of depression compared to executives from other industries.**

Why is this? It’s often due to the high-stress nature of these jobs, client-facing roles, and sedentary work environments. This probably doesn’t surprise anyone working in a services company. And no doubt it’s not just limited to executives…

Even though these reports are a little dated, the numbers are still alarming. It means that on any given day, your business likely has people who are highly stressed or dealing with mental health issues.

Why should this matter to you? Besides the obvious humanitarian reasons, these people represent your business and interact with your clients. And you’d agree that someone who is highly stressed or has a mental health issue won’t be performing at their best.

What Can You Do About It?

The first step is to understand who might not be operating at their best. In many cases, you might not see your staff frequently—they’re either working on client sites or from home, with occasional office visits. So, spotting issues won’t be easy.

We decided that Employee Satisfaction was a metric we wanted to track. We found that a simple weekly pulse check sent via a Slack bot worked well. It took less than a minute to complete and asked the same questions every week:

• How are you feeling in general? (1-5 rating)

• How are you feeling about your work? (1-5 rating)

• How confident are you that your project is on track? (1-5 rating)

• Why is that? (Text)

• Anything else you want to tell us? (Text)

For this to work, we set some ground rules:

• Who will have access to the results?

• How will the data be used?

In our case, only the People team and senior leaders had access to the data. If someone scored below 50%, the People team reached out to see if they wanted to talk. If they didn’t, that was okay. At least we knew they weren’t at their best. If they did, we dug deeper.

When there seemed to be mental health concerns, we provided a list of resources and encouraged them to talk to a GP. Our goal was to support, not to diagnose or treat.

We used the information to understand the root cause. Were there issues the business was responsible for? Problems with the client or the team? Issues with the project?

The goal was to understand how our people were feeling and see if we could help. Sometimes we could. And sometimes we couldn’t.

Why Go to This Effort?

When people feel supported and the business can address problems causing issues, everyone wins. Happy, productive people working with your clients likely lead to happy clients. And happy clients often mean good business outcomes (assuming you’re running profitable projects).

The Moral of the Story

Your people are at the coalface every day. If they’re not happy, you might be able to learn from that to improve their working environment, leading to better business outcomes. If you’re not regularly checking in on your people, you might not find out the problems until it’s too late. At best, you lose good people. At worst, you lose good people and clients. Not many services firms can survive that happening regularly.

So if you’re not already doing it, start checking in on your team today. You can set up a Google form and share a link in less than 5 minutes.

What’s the worst that could happen?

TL;DR Summary

• Employee Well-being Matters: Employees in the services businesses risk experiencing high stress and mental health issues, impacting their performance and your business’s reputation.

• Simple Solutions Work: Implementing a weekly pulse check can help identify and allow you to address employee well-being issues promptly.

• Benefits of Support: Supporting your employees can lead to happier, more productive teams, better client satisfaction, and improved business outcomes.

* PWC - Creating a mentally healthy workplace - https://www.pwc.com.au/publications/pdf/beyondblue-workplace-roi-may14.pdf

** Executive Health Index - https://www.afr.com/companies/professional-services/consultants-feel-the-psychological-pressure-20171024-gz6w30