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Can you walk us through the thinking behind framing mental health as a leadership responsibility rather than only a human or wellbeing issue?
Mental health becomes a leadership issue as soon as it affects performance and risk, which it does long before organizations usually acknowledge it.
Of course, individuals remain responsible for recognizing their own limits and seeking support. But in organizations, the main drivers of mental strain are structural: how work is designed, how pressure is distributed, and what leadership rewards or tolerates. Those are leadership decisions.
That is why we framed mental health as both an individual and a leadership responsibility. When it sits only with wellbeing or HR, symptoms are managed while root causes remain untouched.
From a business perspective, this is social sustainability in practice. In Switzerland alone, someone drops out of work due to mental strain every 90 seconds, costing around CHF 17.3 billion annually. Sustainable performance depends on leaders taking ownership of the conditions people work under, and enabling individuals to speak up before pressure turns into loss.
What reactions stood out to you most, particularly in your conversations with CEOs, and what do they reveal about how organisations still approach mental health today?
Many CEOs immediately recognized themselves in the situations shown. One said, “As a CEO, it feels terrible when someone in your team burns out. You also feel guilty.” Others pointed to fear as the main barrier, with employees staying silent because they worry about career consequences.
These reactions reveal a clear contradiction. Mental health is widely acknowledged, yet many organizations still lack the psychological safety to address it openly. Silence persists not because leaders do not care, but because leadership structures and norms have not caught up with the reality they are facing.
So, what is the real cost - for people and for organisations - of maintaining the silence around mental health at work?
For individuals, silence delays support. Pressure accumulates, people speak up too late, and recovery becomes harder.
For organizations, the cost shows up in reduced decision quality, weaker collaboration, higher attrition, and avoidable burnout-related absences. What is often overlooked is the opportunity cost: teams under chronic pressure do not perform, innovate, or lead at their best.
Silence may feel efficient in the short term. In reality, it quietly erodes performance and resilience — and becomes far more expensive over time.
Do you see differences in how leaders across countries acknowledge, or avoid, mental health issues, and what do those differences say about leadership maturity today?
Yes, there are differences, often shaped by cultural norms around hierarchy, performance, and privacy. In some contexts, mental health is more openly discussed; in others, it is still seen as something that should remain separate from professional life.
What we observe, however, is that this is less about geography and more about leadership context. Leaders who operate in high-pressure environments often focus on results and resilience, sometimes without clear frameworks for addressing mental strain.
Where organizations are more advanced, leaders tend to see mental health as part of sustainable performance. They focus on creating enough transparency and trust for early conversations, without lowering expectations.
The shift is not about changing ambition, but about enabling leaders to manage pressure more consciously - before it becomes a risk for people and for the organization.
