If you don’t have a solid business reason for your policy, the rest of us will question your ability to make any decisions about the company going forward. Employees who have other options will take them when they don’t trust leadership.
Why give them a reason to distrust you?
Psychological safety in your workplace environment cannot be achieved without training your managers on mental health.
No matter how much technical skill you have, eventually, you will have to communicate your knowledge to someone who isn’t as skilled in the technology. If you can’t do that, your career will hit a ceiling. Even if you have no plans to get up in front of an audience, learning how to tell a story, influence others, educate others, etc., will serve you well when you have to explain a complex technical concept to someone.
You will have to explain what you know someday. Learn how to do it well.
Think of it this way: As a technology trainer, I can teach you everything there is to know about a specific technology, but it won’t solve anything if it’s not the proper technology for the job that needs to be done or if the job isn’t well-defined. That’s a different problem.
Have you been asked to provide training when the problem wasn’t a lack of employee knowledge before?
As I mentioned, I’ve left some jobs for reasons that had nothing to do with more money. Whether it was relocation, a desire to travel, a need to travel less, or the desire to work remotely, the one thing those changes had in common was that they were specific to my situation and preferences.
The other thing they had in common was that the place I was leaving did not have the flexibility to offer me what I wanted. Could the role have centered on doing more online training so I could travel less? Could a little remote work availability have kept me there longer? Could a fully remote position have allowed me to continue working and relocate?
We’ll never know because that wasn’t offered. Thus, I’ve switched jobs a few times.
However, what I want to talk about is the 46% of employees who are not “confident that employers care at least moderately about their mental health.”
That’s a lot of employees at risk of leaving. After all, why continue to work for an employer who doesn’t appear to care about you? Consider the wording of that survey; they only asked if you feel confident that your employer moderately cares. Not that they care deeply. Not that you feel important to them, just whether there is evidence that you moderately care about their mental health. How much effort does it take to show that you care just a little? Yet almost half of employees don’t see it from their employers.
That’s a shame. The improvement is nice, but there’s a long way to go on this