Google Says Greatest Challenge with Employees is Mental Health

Mar 27, 2022


According to a recent article from 2020, Google admits that mental health is an ongoing crisis among its workforce. and one that they are actively addressing through remote work options, resilience training, and by encouraging Googlers to have authentic conversations about their feelings and emotions. Asking employees to discuss their feelings is not something we often hear from the tech industry, let alone from a company with the size and stature of Google.


However, the fact of the matter is that both large and small firms in Silicon Valley have extremely high expectations from their stockholders and investors to create world-changing ideas and disruptive technologies. The downside to this is the employees pushing themselves to meet these expectations often do so at the expense of their mental well-being.


Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important in our tech-centric culture to focus not only on outward growth and achievements, or the extrinsically "hard" goals of an organization, but on the "soft" intrinsic ones as well, which include feelings, emotions, attitudes, and empathy, or the affective domain of one's consciousness.


To give you a simple analogy, recruiting and hiring employees with the hard skills, but who lack the soft skills, is like buying and driving a car that is missing half of its tires. You will not get very far on two tires, or if you do, it will not be a very comfortable or productive ride.


There are many articles on the web which discuss this topic. If you have an experience to share or would like to comment, please let us know.


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