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Mental Health Awareness Week – what does this actually mean to a Gen Zer with their fair share of mental health challenges?
I’m Jasmine, I’m 26, I work in the Marketing Team at Amberjack, and I’ll always be one of the first people in the room to talk about mental health.
Why? Well, over the last decade I’ve encountered some difficult situations with my mental health. They were immobilising, embarrassing, and even scary at times. Despite this, I wouldn’t go back and change a thing, these challenges have made me into the person I am today, and I think this version of Jasmine is kind of cool. She’s open, honest, caring, resilient, and she knows how to get others talking about their own mental health too.
I believe that mental health is an incredibly important conversation to be had, not that it needs to only be about mental health, but as humans we only have ourselves for constant company, there’s always something happening in our head. As a result, I don’t think we need to avoid the topic in everyday conversation. Just as we Brits love to talk about the weather, everyone everywhere should feel comfortable enough to drop in a line here and there about their own internal weather of sorts.
This is perhaps representative of the generation I’m a part of.
At 26, I fall within the older cohort of Gen Zers, and to be Gen Z is something I am proud to be. We’re accepting, we stand up for a better world, and we love to talk about mental health.
I’ve been through a lot (and love to talk about it) but you don’t have to have had a lot of stress and/or trauma to chat about mental health. How are you feeling today? How does your workload feel right now? Are your friends and family okay?
Everyday things are critical to the mental health conversation, and this is a conversation which Gen Z hold as a high priority. At Amberjack, I lead the research that we undertake with our very own Gen Z Advisory Board; a cohort from Generation Z, born from 1996 to 2010, with various backgrounds, workplace experiences, and education types.
Our Gen Z Learning and Development Survey was our very first research project with our Gen Z Board, and revealed stark findings about the opinions and desires of the most recent generation to enter the workforce.
We asked our survey respondents; ‘what support do you expect from an employer?’, to establish what today’s Early Careers candidates are looking for when they join your organisation. Wellbeing and mental health support took the top spot, even above financial support, opportunities for shadowing and learning, and being introduced to the team.
Mental health is a priority for your incoming talent.
We also asked our participants about the most helpful training modules offered by Amberjack services, as well as what additional topics they’d like to see within training modules offered in the workplace. Considering that mental health is such a clear priority for this generation, it is perhaps not surprising then that ‘Emotional Intelligence’ and ‘Self-Growth Mindset’ ranked highly on the most helpful modules. While, ‘Corporate Mental Health’, ‘Anxiety Management’, and ‘Work/Life Balance’ were some of the most desired topics to be covered by employers during training.
These results paint a picture of a stressed and overwhelmed generation, which is easy to understand when a lot of us struggle day-to-day with the cost-of-living crisis, had educations impacted by the isolation that came with the Covid-19 pandemic, and are constantly at the mercy of what we see in the media.
It is therefore sad to see that, according to our Gen Z Careers Report with Springpod, 71% of current students say that thinking about their future career is a source of stress, rising to 75% for neurodivergent students. Before Early Talent even enters the workforce, they are already stressed about their career.
Organisations trying to increase the presence of Early Talent in their workforces don’t have to take this lying down though – there is plenty that can be done to not only support incoming talent, but also build their resilience, self-confidence, and emotional intelligence.
Learning and Development offerings mean that the support you offer your candidates doesn’t just stop when they join. Allowing them to grow and strive towards their full potential; on-the-job training and development programmes are critical to a more efficient and effective workplace and building employee loyalty.
I speak from experience when I say that having mental health support does exactly that. My boss is understanding of the ways my challenges can impact my workload, my coworkers are happy to chat about how mental health impacts the day-to-day and then move on to talking about what’s for dinner, the wider business checks in on me from time to time, and it makes the world of difference.
