This was a very special episode. Our friend Andrew Morton joined us to talk about his recent blog post on his own mental health journey. Andrew showed some vulnerability in sharing his story and, in doing so, opens the door a little more for others to feel better, comfortable in telling their own.

We have a long way to go with normalizing the conversation around mental health, but what better way to start than in the HR office? We likely provide options in our benefit packages to help with mental health issues that may arise, but how many times do we actually talk about them? Do we do more than mention that we have an “EAP” [how many of your employees even know what EAP stands for?] Do we talk about what services could be covered? Or do we just add it with the rest of the literature and hope no one asks too many questions because we aren’t sure about it either?

There aren’t a lot of answers in our conversation with Andrew, but that’s not the point. The point is to HAVE the conversation with each other. The more we step outside of our comfort zone to participate, the more comfortable we will become with the conversation and the more likely we’ll be able to have the conversation with our employees.