At the Kyan Health – Swiss Corporate Wellbeing Summit, Outlive’s founder Nathalie Agosti and the CEO of Elipslife Patricia Mattle, explored a simple idea: mental health should be part of your performance system, not separate from it. Switzerland is estimated to lose about CHF 17 billion each year to sick leave and lower productivity linked to mental health, around 6.5 million directly impacting companies. The question isn’t if this matters, it’s how to build it into day-to-day management.
Below are three questions to locate your starting point, each followed by a few practical actions.
1) Is mental health embedded in your performance system or treated as a perk?
If mental health shows up only as an app or a campaign, it stays optional. When it’s part of planning and review, it becomes how you run the business. You should see it in leadership goals, risk logs, and quarterly reviews, just like cost, quality, and delivery. Example: before a busy season, teams confirm capacity and recovery time, not just deadlines.
Try this
- Add one leadership expectation to manager goals:g., “Run a monthly 30-minute workload check and escalate risks within 48 hours.”
- Put psychosocial risk on your nextquarterly business review agenda: one slide with trends and two actions (e.g., shift staffing; simplify a process).
- Build a capacity check into project kick-offs: confirm scope, people available, and a plan for peak weeks (e.g., support from another team).
2) Do leaders have clarity, tools, and time to act?
Managers need to know what to watch for, what to say, and where to send people—and they need space in the calendar to do it. Example: a team lead notices rising weekend work, opens a short check-in using a script, then uses a clear path to adjust workload or route to support.
Try this
- Ship a two-page “Manager Micro-Kit”: a simple conversation guide (“I’ve noticed X… how is this affecting your work?”) and a one-page escalation map (self-help → coaching → clinical).
- Protect one focus block per day per team: for example, no meetings 13:00–14:00, and no “silent” Sunday deadlines.
- Run a monthly team pulse (5 questions, 10 minutes): ask about workload, clarity, and energy; agree on one adjustment (e.g., pause a low-value report).
3) Can you measure progress in business terms?
What you measure shapes decisions. Balance leading indicators you can influence quickly (psychological safety; workload fit) with lagging indicators you want to reduce over time (absenteeism; regretted turnover). Example: if a team’s workload score drops for two months, you add temporary headcount or cut low-impact tasks.
Try this
- Choose 3–4 simple numbers to watch.
For example: workload fit (do people have enough time for their tasks?), absence rate, who is using support (by team or location), and follow-up rate (did managers act on flagged issues). - Review these metrics in the same meeting where you review cost and delivery. Even if “sick leave” isn’t a line on the P&L, its effects show up as missed deadlines, overtime, rework, and lost capacity—which are on the P&L. Treat the health signal like any other operational signal: discuss it, decide, and track the result.
Let’s turn intent into impact. Outlive helps organisations define social sustainability ambitions, translate them into leadership standards and KPIs, and embed them into day-to-day operations—fully aligned with your overall ESG strategy. If you’d like support building or stress-testing your approach, get in touch and we’ll shape a focused plan with you.
