Beyond Wellness Perks: How To Design a Mentally Healthy Workplace

Workplace mental health is increasingly recognized as a business and organizational design issue—not simply an employee benefit. SHRM’s 2026 research found that stress and anxiety remain significant concerns among U.S. workers, while companies continue to wrestle with employee burnout and the underuse of mental health benefits.

That raises a more fundamental question: What if organizations stopped asking employees to cope better with unhealthy conditions and instead examined the conditions themselves? Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank bring expertise in psychology, HR, organizational design, leadership, culture and workforce strategy to that question.

Their answers point toward a common idea: A mentally healthy workplace is not created by adding another program to the benefits portfolio. It is created by deliberately designing work so people can perform without continually sacrificing their psychological well-being.

“An app can’t fix a calendar with no breathing room. A wellness week can’t undo 11 months of back-to-back meetings.”

– Aida Figuerola, Neuropsychologist at Lift

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Start With the Design, Not the Employee

The concept begins with a fundamental shift in responsibility. Rather than treating burnout as evidence that employees need more resilience, organizations can examine whether the way work is structured is producing unnecessary strain.

Aida Figuerola, Neuropsychologist at Lift, frames the issue as a design problem rather than a people problem. “A ‘burnout culture’ isn’t a people problem. It’s a design flaw.”

Figuerola says organizations often hire resilient people and then create environments that undermine that resilience. “They treat mental health as a benefit,” she says, pointing to wellness apps and similar offerings that sit on the work rather than changing it.

“An app can’t fix a calendar with no breathing room,” Figuerola says. “A wellness week can’t undo 11 months of back-to-back meetings.” Instead, she advocates building recovery into the operating model. “Recovery is scheduled, not squeezed in,” she says, while psychological safety should be measured rather than assumed.

The practical implication is that leaders should examine whether employees can realistically say, “I’m at capacity,” without fearing professional consequences. Autonomy also needs to be substantive rather than symbolic. Figuerola points to choice over how work gets done as an important component of stress resilience.

Managers have a role, too. Rather than being trained solely around performance metrics, they should understand how to recognize signs of strain and respond before those problems become crises. The broader lesson is straightforward:

“They ask people to be more resilient inside a design that was never built to hold them,” Figuerola says.

“People don’t show up as blank slates. They show up with personalities, anxieties, assumptions and lived experiences that shape how they work.”

– Dr. Ariel Shivers McGrew, Business Psychologist and Founder of Tactful Disruption®

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Design For Humans, Not Idealized Employees

If work design creates the conditions for mental health, leaders also need to account for the fact that employees do not experience those conditions in the same way.

Dr. Ariel Shivers McGrew, Business Psychologist and Founder of Tactful Disruption®, emphasizes the human complexity organizations must accommodate. “People don’t show up as blank slates,” McGrew says. “They show up with personalities, anxieties, assumptions and lived experiences that shape how they work.”

That makes emotionally intelligent leadership a critical part of workplace design. Leaders determine, in part, whether those differences become sources of understanding or friction.

“Emotionally intelligent leaders matter because they set the tone for how those human factors are interpreted instead of ignored,” she says.

McGrew notes that organizations benefit from different kinds of talent: “Personality hires bring energy, technical hires bring expertise and generational hires bring perspective.” But those differences need support structures that allow teams to navigate the friction that naturally accompanies them. The objective, she says, should be “designing for cohesiveness—not just productivity.”

That distinction matters because an organization can technically optimize workflows while still creating an environment where employees feel constantly defensive or uncomfortable. “Mental Health by Design,” McGrew says, is “creating an environment where humans can function without bracing for impact.”

“It’s easier to sponsor a mindfulness workshop than to ask whether our own leadership, expectations, incentives or culture are making people sick.”

– Sarah Noll Wilson, President of The Noll Wilson Group

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Ask What Leadership Is Contributing to the Problem

Designing for human differences also requires leaders to examine their own role in creating workplace conditions.

Sarah Noll Wilson, President of The Noll Wilson Group, challenges organizations to move beyond talking about mental health and examine how their decisions affect it.

“I worry we’ve become more comfortable talking about mental health than examining our contribution to it,” Noll Wilson says.

That can mean asking uncomfortable questions about leadership expectations, incentives and culture instead of immediately reaching for another wellness initiative.

“It’s easier to sponsor a mindfulness workshop than to ask whether our own leadership, expectations, incentives or culture are making people sick,” she says.

For HR and senior leaders, that means building organizational self-examination into the process. Noll Wilson recommends asking directly: “What are we doing that is negatively impacting psycho or social safety, even if unintentionally?”

The question changes the conversation from whether employees are taking advantage of available resources to whether the organization itself is creating conditions that make those resources necessary.

Build Well-Being Into How Work Is Governed

That examination becomes more concrete when organizations translate it into decisions about jobs, workloads, leadership and measurement.

Britton Bloch, VP, Global Talent Acquisition Strategy and Head of Recruiting at Navy Federal Credit Union, sees “Mental Health by Design” as an organizational operating principle.

It “does not treat well-being as a benefit, campaign or individual responsibility,” Bloch says. Instead, it “builds the conditions for psychological health into how work is structured, led, measured and governed.”

That starts with the jobs themselves. Bloch points to “manageable demands, clear priorities, appropriate autonomy and realistic capacity” as essential design considerations.

Leadership expectations matter just as much. Leaders should create psychological safety, respond constructively to challenges and recognize signs of strain before they become personal crises. Employees also need to know that seeking help will not carry a professional penalty. Bloch says employees should be able to access support “without stigma, retaliation or career penalty.”

Perhaps most importantly, organizations need to look for root causes. Workforce data, employee feedback and lived experience can reveal where workload, ambiguity, inequity, exclusion or poor management practices are causing preventable harm. The ultimate goal is not simply helping people recover from work. It is creating work that people can “sustainably perform, contribute to and grow within.”

Give People Clarity, Trust and Agency

Bloch’s emphasis on job design connects with another critical element: how employees experience the daily conditions of work.

Kelly Weber of The Wander Project focuses on those everyday conditions.

A “Mental Health by Design” organization, Weber says, “looks beyond programs and benefits to the system itself.”

That means examining “how decisions get made, how priorities are set, how much ambiguity people are carrying, whether managers have the capacity to lead well, whether people have agency and feel trusted to exercise judgment and whether the pace of work is sustainable.”

Importantly, Weber does not suggest that healthy organizations eliminate pressure.

“Healthy organizations can ask a great deal of people,” Weber says. The difference is that they provide “the clarity, trust, agency and space people need to navigate that pressure well.” That makes mental health less of an initiative running alongside the business and more of an outcome of good organizational design.

Treat Mental Health as a Leadership System

The emphasis on systems naturally brings the discussion to leadership. Maureen Metcalf, CEO and Founder of Innovative Leadership Institute, advises boards, CEOs and executive teams on leadership, culture, strategy execution and organizational transformation.

Metcalf’s perspective is informed by more than two decades of leadership work and 11 books, including Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. Her institute works at the intersection of strategy and culture, helping organizations translate leadership practices into measurable performance.

She defines “Mental Health by Design” as an environment where “psychological well-being is engineered into how work actually happens.” That includes “structures, decision rights, workload, culture” rather than relying on EAPs, wellness stipends or resilience training after problems emerge.

“The distinction matters,” Metcalf says, because “most companies treat mental health as an individual coping problem; a by-design organization treats it as a systems and leadership problem.”

For executives, that distinction is particularly important. If leadership is itself a system, then psychological health needs to be considered when that system is designed, measured and changed.

Connect Mental Health and Performance

A systems approach does not require organizations to choose between employee well-being and high performance. In fact, James Davis sees the two as fundamentally connected.

James Davis, Dawson Davis LLC, brings experience as a former professional football player, champion powerlifter, speaker, author and performance development coach. His work connects performance psychology, leadership and mental health, and he teaches Leadership and Ethics at Saint Xavier University.

Davis says there is “an unfortunate discrepancy in the way professionals view performance psychology and mental health.”

Driven professionals may resist conversations about mental health because they associate the term with something separate from performance. Davis sees it differently.

“Anyone tackling challenges of self-talk, performance anxiety, imposter syndrome, motivation or any conversation regarding professional stress or strain is already talking about mental health,” he says.

That reframing matters because it makes mental health part of the performance conversation rather than a competing priority.

Davis describes “Mental Health by Design” as a proactive workplace that recognizes “the burnout, overwhelm and other challenges that interrupt performance” and gets ahead of them.

Such organizations, he says, can “set new norms when it comes to healthy communication, healthy living and high performance.”

Design Work to Help People Thrive

Amy Douglas, Chief, Culture and Connection at Levata Human Performance, extends that performance argument by placing mental health within the broader architecture of work. She has more than 28 years of experience in corporate and consulting leadership, including organizational design and development. Levata works across people, work, change and culture to help organizations translate human potential into performance.

Douglas puts the distinction plainly: “Mental health is not an employee issue to solve, it’s a system to design.”

That means reducing workplace stressors through “realistic workloads, psychological safety, meaningful connection, clear priorities and leaders who foster trust, empathy and belonging.”

Her perspective also incorporates technology. From a Human + AI Performance perspective, she says “Mental Health by Design” can involve using technology “to remove friction and administrative burden,” giving employees more capacity for creative, collaborative and purposeful work.

The question, therefore, shifts from “How do we help people cope with work?” to “How do we design work so people can perform, grow and stay healthy while doing it?”

That shift captures much of the larger movement from reactive wellness to intentional work design.

Make Every Workplace Decision a Mental Health Decision

Nicole Cable, Chief People and Experience Officer at C3 Health, takes the idea one step further: If work design affects mental health, then mental health needs to be considered across the organization rather than assigned to HR alone.

Cable brings more than two decades of executive leadership across healthcare, hospitality and customer-centric organizations. Her expertise spans HR, employee experience, culture strategy, measurement and human-centered operating models, and she has advised C-suites, boards and investors.

She says employee well-being “is not created by wellness programs. It is created by the way work is designed.”

That means organizations need to examine decisions involving “workload, staffing, communication, technology, meeting culture, leadership expectations and change management.”

“Every decision either adds friction or removes it,” Cable says.

That makes mental health a consideration in ordinary operational choices. A meeting policy, staffing decision, technology implementation or change initiative can either increase strain or reduce it.

Cable’s goal is not to help employees continually recover from work. “The goal is to design work that people can sustain,” she says.

Make Career Sustainability Part of Mental Health

The design question also extends to whether employees can sustain their careers without sacrificing their well-being.

Tyler Crebar, Founder and CEO of Crebar Career Consulting, draws on recruiting experience across finance, technology, health care, higher education, sports and nonprofit organizations, including work with LinkedIn, JPMorgan Chase and the NCAA.

Crebar says “Mental Health by Design” means considering “the impact on employees when designing how work actually gets done.”

That includes practical questions: “Are workloads sustainable? Are expectations clear? Do employees have autonomy and flexibility? Are managers equipped to recognize when their teams are overloaded?”

He also highlights the pressure employees can feel around disconnecting. Organizations need to consider whether people can step away without worrying that doing so will hurt their careers. Crebar identifies constant meetings, unclear priorities, understaffing, poor communication and an “always-on” culture as conditions that wellness benefits cannot fix.

“Organizations should also examine whether their own processes are contributing to unnecessary stress,” he says.

Benefits and resources remain valuable, but they should complement—not substitute for—healthier expectations, management practices and ways of working.

Build Mental Health Into the Physical and Cultural Environment

A comprehensive approach also considers the environment employees enter every day.

Dr. Jonathan H. Westover, Founder and CEO of Human Capital Innovations, Chief Workforce and Learning Officer at Future State University and Professor of Organizational Leadership and Change at Utah Valley University, combines academic research with two decades of organizational leadership and development consulting.

Westover describes “Mental Health by Design” as an organization that “intentionally weaves wellbeing into its structure rather than treating it as an afterthought.”

That begins with leadership. “Leadership models vulnerability and prioritizes psychological safety in team dynamics,” he says.

It also includes sustainable workloads, boundaries around after-hours communication and realistic deadlines. But Westover’s definition extends beyond policies and management. The physical environment matters, too, including “natural light, quiet spaces and areas for movement or meditation.”

Mental health literacy should also be incorporated into onboarding and management training. Employees should be able to discuss struggles and seek support without stigma.

At the systems level, organizations should “measure and address systemic stressors like unclear expectations or toxic behaviors rather than just offering wellness perks.” The measure of success, Westover says, is whether employees feel genuinely supported—not simply told to become more resilient.

Make Well-Being Part of Performance Infrastructure

Dr. Curtis Odom, Managing Partner at Prescient Strategists and Associate Teaching Professor of Management and Organizational Development at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, brings the discussion back to accountability. A “Mental Health by Design” workplace cannot rely on good intentions; leaders need systems that reinforce healthy behavior.

Drawing on more than 25 years of Fortune 100 experience in leadership, transformation and workforce strategy, Odom says these organizations “build psychological safety into their systems, not just their slogans.”

That means leaders model vulnerability, workloads are “calibrated to human capacity” and feedback can flow without fear. Policies should also protect recovery time with the same seriousness organizations apply to deadlines.

Managers need training to “spot early signs of strain and respond with support instead of judgment,” while career paths should include “room to pause, not just climb.” Measurement is another important component. Odom recommends reviewing burnout and engagement data “with the same rigor as revenue.”

When these practices become part of hiring, promotion and daily management, well-being becomes infrastructure rather than a crisis response.

“In my experience, cultures like this outperform because people bring their full capacity to work, not just their compliance,” Odom says.

The final piece is equity: Even the best-designed workplace cannot assume every employee needs the same form of support.

Design for the Range of Human Needs

Christopher Bylone, Principal Strategist at Innovation Unbiased, brings expertise in belonging, employee experience and inclusive workplace strategy. He has led global belonging strategies at Krispy Kreme and IFF and uses data and storytelling to help organizations build cultures where people can thrive.

Bylone starts with a challenge to standardization. “Mental health by Design” starts with a hard admission: the programs most of us are proudest of were built for the average employee, and the average employee does not exist.”

That does not mean abandoning consistency. Instead, organizations should establish consistent commitments while allowing flexibility in how those commitments are delivered.

“Every person gets the same promise: Your care is resourced, and your job is safe while you use it,” Bylone says. “How that promise gets met should look different for each of them.”

That could mean different forms of clinical support, scheduling flexibility or manager intervention.

“Equal access to one door is not access,” he says. Organizations should “design for the range, then measure whether people used it, not whether you offered it.”

The result is a more individualized approach to mental health that still maintains organizational standards and accountability.

Turn Mental Health Into a Workplace Design Principle

• Treat burnout as a design signal, not simply an employee resilience problem. Examine workloads, meeting schedules, recovery time and autonomy before asking employees to cope better.
• Design for the whole person. Employees bring different personalities, experiences and needs to work, so support structures should account for those differences.
• Examine leadership’s contribution to workplace stress. Regularly ask whether expectations, incentives, management practices or culture are undermining psychological safety.
• Build psychological health into jobs and organizational governance. Define realistic capacity, clear priorities, appropriate autonomy and mechanisms for identifying systemic sources of strain.
• Give employees clarity, trust and agency. Healthy workplaces can maintain high expectations while providing the resources and discretion people need to meet them sustainably.
• Connect mental health with performance. Treat stress management, recovery and psychological health as components of sustainable high performance rather than separate wellness concerns.
• Use technology to remove friction, not intensify it. AI and other tools can support mental health by reducing administrative burden and creating more capacity for meaningful work.
• Make mental health part of everyday business decisions. Consider employee well-being when making decisions about staffing, technology, communication, meetings, change management and workload.
• Design careers people can sustain. Give employees reasonable opportunities to disconnect, manage capacity and grow without making constant availability the price of advancement.
• Measure systemic stressors alongside traditional people metrics. Treat burnout, engagement, psychological safety, workload and employee voice with the same seriousness as other organizational performance indicators.
• Build flexibility into the delivery of support. Maintain consistent standards for care and safety while allowing how those standards are met to reflect different employee circumstances.
• Make managers part of the mental health infrastructure. Equip managers to recognize strain, respond constructively and create environments where employees can raise concerns without fear.
• Judge success by whether people can sustainably perform. The ultimate test is not how many wellness resources an organization offers but whether its employees can contribute, grow and stay healthy while doing the work.

The Future of Workplace Mental Health Is the Work Itself

“Mental Health by Design” represents a shift from treating employee well-being as something organizations provide to treating it as something organizations create. The distinction is increasingly important as stress and burnout remain among the workplace issues HR leaders and workers identify as pressing concerns. SHRM’s 2026 State of the Workplace report found that stress and burnout are among the most significant needs organizations must address and that there is a strong relationship between workplace effectiveness, job satisfaction and retention.

For senior leaders, the opportunity is to move mental health upstream—to the decisions that determine how work is structured, managed and experienced. When organizations design for sustainable workloads, psychological safety, autonomy, clarity, connection and different human needs, well-being stops being a program employees must find time to use. It becomes part of how the organization works.