While some workplace stress is normal, excessive stress can interfere with your productivity and performance; impact your physical and emotional health. In such situations, we have to continuously push ourselves towards bringing out our best at work. It’s natural to feel the lack of mental health and concentration. But, the problem that is pretty serious is, people don’t take mental issues as serious as physical ones and they tend to often ignore some subtle symptoms of bigger issues.
Madalyn Parker, an engineer and web developer wanted to take some time off to bust off her emotional stress. So she wrote an email titled “Where’s Madalyn” to her team explaining why she wouldn’t be into work for a couple of days.
She wrote-
“Hey team,” she began. “I’m taking today and tomorrow to focus on my mental health. Hopefully I’ll be back next week refreshed and back to 100 percent.”
To this, the reply of the CEO Mr. Ben Congleton won everyone’s heart.
“Hey Madalyn,” he said. “I just wanted to personally thank you for sending emails like this. Every time you do, I use it as a reminder of the importance of using sick days for mental health – I can’t believe this is not standard practice at all organizations. You are an example to us all, and help cut through the stigma so we can all bring our whole selves to work.”
Checkout the snapshot of this thread-
Happy with the sweet gesture of her boss, Madalyn decided to share this incident in her Twitter account.
When the CEO responds to your out of the office email about taking sick leave for mental health and reaffirms your decision.
Her tweet went viral soon and people started reacting. Let’s check what people said:
The CEO added his thoughts through a blog post titled “It’s 2017 and Mental Health is still an issue in the workplace”
“I had no idea my response would become so visible. The reactions revealed that my stance on mental health in the workplace is unconventional, to say the least. I started realizing how impactful my email had been after I began reading some of the responses to Madalyn’s tweet. Some of the responses brought tears to my eyes. There were so many stories of people wishing they worked at a place where their CEO cared about their health, and so many people congratulating me on doing such a good thing. This should be business as usual. We have a lot of work to do.”
That was really a sweet gesture from the CEO. What do you think?
