Workforce Brain Health: What Matters and What Works
This session emphasizes the vital transition from acknowledging brain capital to actively implementing workforce brain health strategies. It underscores the employer's crucial role in mitigating risk factors like stress and sleep deprivation to boost performance. The discussion also highlights the importance of leadership training, tailored interventions for diverse workforces, and integrating mental health into employee benefits, with future plans to establish a regional brain fitness center in Houston and foster inter-company collaboration.
Discussants:
Krystal Sexton, PhD, Global Health Analytics Manager, Shell Oil Company – Moderator
Sandra Bond Chapman, PhD, Chief Director, Center for BrainHealth; Dee Wyly Distinguished University Professor, The University of Texas at Dallas
Kana Enomoto, Partner, McKinsey & Company; Director of Brain Health, McKinsey Health Institute
Ron Goetzel, PhD, Senior Scientist, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Brian Jebb, Global Co-Head of Compensation, Employment, and Governance, A&O Shearman
In a session focused on workforce brain health, discussions highlighted the critical shift from merely understanding brain capital to actively implementing strategies within business contexts. Experts emphasized that employers have a significant role in addressing key risk factors such as sleep deprivation, stress, social isolation, and chronic disease to foster brain-healthy environments that support resilience and promote higher workplace performance. The conversation underlined the importance of recognizing brain health not just as the absence of impairment, but as the continuous promotion of optimal brain skills, applicable to everyone from top performers to those struggling across all age groups. Discussants shared that organizations can gain leadership buy-in by reframing the conversation—shifting from “brain health,” which may encounter resistance, to a focus on “sustaining high performance,” a concept more likely to resonate with decision-makers.
Practical strategies and challenges to implementation of brain health workforce initiatives were also explored. These included implementing "elephant and rabbit" prioritization techniques to combat multitasking, refuel mental energy, and improve focus, measuring employee well-being through surveys, focusing on equitable work allocation, and training mental health allies within organizations. The panelists also addressed the integration of mental health promotion and services into employee benefits, emphasizing a need to move towards a more holistic view of health that ensures mental health services are as accessible and integrated as other healthcare services. Challenges in reaching diverse workforces, particularly blue-collar and frontline workers, were also highlighted, necessitating tailored approaches for measurement and program delivery.
Also discussed was the importance of expanding interventions from those that are solely directed at individual employees to the broader factors influencing brain health. These include organizational influences such as job demands, job autonomy, social support networks, work-life balance, and the feeling of being on a treadwheel – where the faster you run the harder it is to hit your and the organization’s goals. Anxiety coupled with depression leads to the inevitable burnout. In addition to organizational factors, environmental stressors need to be accounted for. They include exposure to toxins (chemical and biological), excessive heat or cold, poor indoor air quality, access to healthy food and exercise facilities, quiet spaces for deep thought and meditation, and a well-designed physical plant where productivity is enhanced along with facilitated social support spaces. The holistic model is referred to as a POE framework, where P stands for psychosocial, O for organizational, and E for environmental interventions to promote brain health. In the even broader context are the social determinants of health which have an enormous influence on health and well-being. These include poverty, lack of affordable housing, high crime, poor education, food deserts, high unemployment, and structural racism.
"We set out to do the rigorous science to figure out, can we measure the complexity of your brain, and can strategies guide individuals to optimize it. Not just to focus on injury and disease, but really wherever you start, whatever age you are, whether you're a peak performer or low performer, the science is clear that brain gains are possible and they can be measured behaviorally and neurally."
- Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman
"We cannot take the human out of the loop…We have to foster that social connection because we know that people's social health, their spiritual health, is as important to them as some of these other areas of help." - Kana Enomoto
Recommendations
Prioritize leadership training: Educate leaders on the impact of their own brain health on their effectiveness and as role models for the organization.
Tailor interventions for diverse workforces: Develop and deliver programs that cater to the specific needs of blue-collar, frontline and dispersed employees, beyond traditional office-based staff.
Promote neuroplasticity and strategic thinking: Encourage employers and employees to take advantage of annual brain performance metrics to learn how to outperform themselves with activities that challenge their brains and develop new skills, such as strategic thinking and embracing change, rather than just routine tasks.
Integrate mental health into employee healthcare benefits: Advocate for a shift from compartmentalized mental health services (like EAPs) to a more integrated approach within other healthcare services.
Address the impact of multitasking: Educate employees and leaders on the negative effects of multitasking on productivity and brain health, encouraging focused work periods.
Foster social connection: Recognize and actively foster social connection within the workplace to combat loneliness and social isolation, which can impact brain health.
Cultivate employment engagement: Explore various means of fostering team leadership and spirit with a champion model and compensation.
Next Steps
Regional center for brain fitness in Houston: Establish a center in Houston to develop skill sets for companies, aiming to make it the "brain fittest" region globally through purposeful implementation and measurement.
Increase collaboration among companies: Encourage large companies to be less proprietary with their brain health initiatives and instead collaborate to share best practices and collectively improve employee well-being.
Evaluate managers on employee well-being: Implement systems where managers are evaluated on their contribution to employee well-being, aligning rewards with desired outcomes for brain health.
Research economic gains of brain health interventions: Conduct economic studies to quantify the financial benefits for companies that implement brain health initiatives, such as stopping multitasking.
Establish a measurement and evaluation (M&E) framework that considers Structure, Process, and Outcome variables using a logic flow model. Structural factors include the inclusion of evidence-based interventions necessary to improve population brain health. Process variables establish the extent to which interventions are implemented as intended. Outcomes can be broken out into health, financial productivity, and “other value” elements such as employee morale, attraction/retention of talent, company reputation, stock performance, and alignment with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance metrics. Specifically, the social pillar should be broken out separately as a measure of organizational health (S-Health) incorporating such elements as provision of fair wages, health benefits, anti-discrimination policies, training, and other physical, mental, and social support elements.
