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Welcome to the Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources
podcast. I'm Tracy Chernoff, and I've
spent my entire professional career in HR.
Each week, we'll explore the delicate balance between people
and business with the aim to reconnect the two and create
meaningful outcomes. Listen in as I share my own
experiences, challenge the status quo, and chat with guests
from various industries about our mission to bring the human
back to human resources. Hi, everyone.
Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here
for another week. This week we're going to be
talking about a fairly heavier topic for the podcast.
It's something that, you know, we'll be talking about mental
health and we will likely get into the topic of prevention of
suicide because tomorrow is actually World Suicide
Prevention Day. So by the time this podcast
comes out, it will be ahead of that.
And really in the month of September, which is the month of
world suicide prevention. And so if this content is
triggering for you or something that could be upsetting, this is
just basically a trigger warning for you.
But we are going to be talking about, and when I say we, it's
because I have an esteemed guest with me who I'll introduce you
to in a moment. But but we are going to be
talking about how HR professionals can really think
about mental health in the workplace differently.
So it's not, it's certainly not something that I hope that you
turn away from. I hope that you really dial in
and take a lot of advice and insights away from this
conversation and appreciate that you are here listening to this
episode. So without further ado, I'll
introduce you to my esteemed guests that I had already shared
and that is Matthew Megson, who has spent 21 years working in HR
in several different sectors, including manufacturing,
government, retail and not-for-profit.
In all of his roles, Matthew was responsible for the return to
work and accommodation process and worked with the
organizations and staff to accommodate mental health
struggles. In addition to HR, Matthew has
lived with bipolar disorder which has caused its own
workplace accommodation issues. Sadly, Matthew has been
terminated on 2 separate occasions almost immediately
following disclosure and asking for support.
Both the HR and personal experience LED Matthew to see a
gap where HR could use specific strategies to help accommodate
staff, and accommodation analyzed was then created.
So now Matthew leans into mental health as a founding member of
the Bipolar Peer Group, an international online support
group, and is continuing his education and mental health with
a Master's degree in Counseling and psychotherapy.
Matthew, thank you so much for being here, and thank you for so
openly sharing your own story. Thank you so much, Tracy.
I look forward to this conversation.
Yeah, me too. And hopefully for the listeners
out there who are interested in getting some more insight into
how to really effectively manage and deal with people who need
support in the workplace or, you know, just kind of all of the
above, whatever that kind of brings into context.
Hopefully they'll walk away with a lot of additional information
and insight that they can then apply in their own experiences.
So with that, maybe we start at the top.
I mean, I did share in your bio that you've experienced your own
mental health, you know, challenges and diagnosis
personally, but that you've also dealt with an unfortunate 2
circumstances of being terminated after disclosing what
you have been diagnosed with. Do you mind sharing a little bit
more about your experience with that?
Absolutely. As I mentioned in the bio,
mental health has been a persistent factor throughout my
career, and it started really early in my HR career.
Actually. We're talking about suicide
prevention being this month, and it's something that hits very
close to home for me because I was not diagnosed with bipolar
disorder for a long time and struggled with suicide ideations
and one of my first experiences with mental health in the
workplace. I was very early in my HR career
and I actually was in a very deep depressive episode and had
a suicide attempt. I ended up missing a week of
work and coming back after a week of being in the hospital
and at the time was working for an HR manager.
I was in a in a junior role and I said to the HR manager, I
can't be at home by myself. I need to be at work.
I'm going to struggle right now, but I need to be at work.
And this was the first time I noticed that.
OK, there's no understanding here because after a few days he
handed me short term disability paperwork and said I need I need
the job to be done better than you're doing it right now.
So you're off work. And that was again, I navigated
through that and moved on in my career.
And yes, unfortunately the ups and downs of mental health can
be difficult sometimes for staff and even for HR.
So in HRI would have staff come to me and, and disclose and say
I, I, I don't know what I need or this part of my job is, is
stressing me out. And it made me realize from the
HR standpoint that oh, OK, yes, I live with this.
But as HR I I'm having to figure out on the fly how to deal with
this. This wasn't part of my education
at all. And in two of my senior HR
roles, both times I opted to go to senior management and say,
I'm going through this type of episode right now.
I'm really struggling. I need you to be patient with
me. And yeah, two separate occasions
after doing that because I didn't know.
I mean, I knew obviously from the HR standpoint, while I need
to give some kind of restrictions, but I have no
idea. So I would often try and
describe it as, you know, heavy, you know, if I'm working on
writing a, a policy that's heavy in legislative requirements,
that's going to be difficult right now.
But again, no one has the tools for this.
And so unfortunately I was terminated on 2 separate
occasions and that in itself is, is difficult.
We know it's HR that any time there's an an adverse impact on
an employee, we're also impacting their personal life.
So that was certainly the case for me.
And that's what led me to really after the second time look at it
and say, OK, I understand from the employer standpoint that
there's just no training. They have no idea what to do
with this. And I've seen this where
supervisors will come in and you'll see the I just need this
job to get done. And the switch to this employee
is it is very important to this organization.
Let's, let's see how we can still utilize that hasn't,
hasn't been made yet. And and it often does lead to,
to termination just due to frustrations of the job not
being done the way it was previously.
And that's what led me to realize there's a gap here
between HR not knowing what to do and employees not knowing
what to do or, or exactly how the process is going to work for
them. And so that's that's how I came
to start the organization. Thank you so much for sharing
that. I mean, it's not easy to be
vulnerable. It's not easy to share really
difficult personal stories. So I really appreciate that
you've done so even in the 1st 5 minutes of our conversation, and
I'm sure the listeners appreciate it too.
You're not, you're certainly not alone.
You're not the only person who has stories like this, hence why
you've created accommodation analyzed.
I mean this one of the thoughts that I had when you shared your
first story around, you know, your suicide attempt and, and
the lack of support that you received at work and that you
were just basically handed short term disability papers and sent
on your way. My first thought is knowing what
you know now for any listener who maybe doesn't know what to
do in order to manage someone's you know, need for
accommodations or even know which questions to ask, what
would you say someone should have done what he should have
done in that situation rather than just hand you short term
disability papers? It certainly should have been a
deeper conversation. So one of the things that we
don't realize is that you don't have to be a therapist in HR.
And often times we're cast as that in a way for certain things
with with employees. And in that particular
conversation, I feel like if the HR manager had gained some
understanding, some training around mental health, the
conversation could have looked like asking me, for instance,
OK, so I'm noticing that you're struggling in this area and this
area we need to focus on on getting these.
How can I support you to to navigate through getting these
areas up to where they need to be?
And what are the areas you feel you could be strong right now,
just given how you're, you're feeling?
And the other part of the conversation too, is
understanding that a lot of doctors, they just, they don't,
they don't get a lot of training, especially GPS, They,
they're not specialists in this. So understanding that there is
other supports and it's, it's no different than finding supports
if let's say as HR we're conducting mass layoffs and we
want to offer support to those employees that are being laid
off. So we would go digging for
supports. There's supports, for instance,
exactly like the support group that I run.
They're fairly prevalent. They're free in a lot of cases.
And that could be something that HR could have that tool just
available of, OK, these are something that if somebody comes
to me with an issue, then they, I can offer these types of
supports. And the other thing we should
know. And it again, you don't have to
be a therapist to, to know this, but asking questions around the
topic of suicide is, is, is crucial because there is
obviously, let's say in my case, there could have been a
potential liability risk if if I had just taken the paperwork
and, and gone home and try to gain.
So in that case, just understanding in your role kind
of, OK, how serious is this? And so just asking questions to
see, you know, do I have a plan? Do I seem like extremely
distraught all the time and, and really just kind of figure that
out because that'll inform you whether or not you need to call
external help. And so that kind of questioning
would be would have been helpful in that case and and doesn't
need medical expertise to to do. Yeah, this is a great advice and
really helpful. The thing that stood out to me
that you said, which was having a deeper conversation, and this
is something when I whenever I talk about accommodations and
what we do, how we manage them, or really how we deal with an
employee who's come to us and share this type of information,
is that we should always ask questions.
Asking questions is is the first step to understanding what
someone needs, what they're experiencing, how serious to
your point, how serious the matter is.
And this is for anything. It could be for someone who says
that they need to sit every 15 minutes and you might not know
why, to someone who is struggling with mental health.
And when we think about having a deeper conversation, asking
questions, I think that most of the time people are taught.
So with with, I should say, with a lens that is so heavily
focused on preventing liability, mitigating risk, that they
sometimes forget to to practice empathy.
And by the time this episode comes out, I'll be able to
reference that earlier in the year in the spring.
So it was like around May something that I released an
episode with another guest where we talked about how the two
weeks notice kind of framework is one that doesn't necessarily
work. And one part of our conversation
is that when, when in order to have a more open transition kind
of program in a, in a company, there has to be a movement away
from being so afraid of litigation and so afraid of
risk. Because what ends up happening
is someone just delivers a performance improvement plan
because they think they have to. And then they find themselves in
that risk or that that those mucky waters that they were
trying to avoid. Similarly, obviously, on a more
serious note, I do think that people tend to shy away from
asking some of those questions because they're afraid that the
more they know, the deeper they're involved and the, you
know, the more risky that is for them or the company.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
HR leaders can certainly, if someone comes to them and says,
you know, I'm really struggling with my mental health, they can
ask, what do you mean struggling?
What does that mean? What, how can I, you know, how
can I support you? What would what does what does
coping look like for you? Like do you need time off?
Do you need today out of work? Like what you know, asking when
someone says I'm struggling with my mental health.
You have almost no information. So it is similarly to the to the
story that you shared with us at the top of our discussion.
Your manager didn't have any information other than something
that was attempted. And you know, you, you were
there in front of him. And at that point, he instead of
practicing empathy, he chose to just assert what he probably
thought you needed instead of actually asking you what you
needed. And I think that that's like the
most, not the most important thing, but if if the listeners
can walk away with one thing that they practice tomorrow, I
think asking questions and being empathetic, being unafraid to be
empathetic is a good place to start.
Do you? What are your thoughts on that?
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Empathy is just such a great
place to start. And even if you were to ask, a
great way to show empathy as HR is to in a way, take the focus
off the job. One way to make an employee feel
really comfortable is to say to them, you know, wow, this, this
sounds terrible. How is it impacting your
day-to-day life? And that'll give you an under
that in a way, at least for me, makes me feel like I'm helping
the employee to, to feel comfortable.
Because you talked about risk. Well, the, the risk is there on
the employee side too. That's why we often see vague
notes from doctors is because the employees are terrified to
to let on at all that that there's this mental health issue
because of the the fear that they're going to just look for
ways to to get rid of me. I hear that often with members
of my support group. So being able to more humanize
the conversation and take it away from that approach of just
how can I get you to, how can I tackle this so that you just get
back to doing your job and really focus on that empathy
and, and building that rapport where they feel as though, OK,
I, I can trust that I can disclose and talk about this
more. Yeah, that's, it's a great
point. I was reflecting on a time in my
career where. You know, employees confided in
me particularly about some of these topics that we're talking
about. And, you know, I think that when
I think about like those experiences being in person
versus now where I'm remote, I think that there is, at least
from my perspective, it seems that the adoption of more widely
acceptable remote work has made it a little bit easier for
people who generally would need to request accommodation to
manage without having to request it.
It's not to say that they aren't, but generally speaking,
like, you know, if someone has a flexible work environment and
they're having a difficult day or they're having an episode or
something like that, they can call out sick.
And it's generally not something that really offers any further
discussion, depending of course on the length of time and things
like that. But you know, reflecting on my
in person experiences, it's not. So it wasn't so easy to avoid
that conversation because it's so obvious and noticeable when
someone isn't themselves or isn't in at work and in the
office. What are your, what are your
thoughts for HR leaders on how they can stay connected even in
a remote or distributed environment so that they have a
pulse on how people are feeling? Because while to your point, we
are not counselors or therapists, we do still have a
responsibility to, to have a pulse on what's going on in the,
in the workplace, which includes, you know, home offices
and how people are just generally doing.
What's your what are your pieces of advice there?
My piece of advice is you don't have to do anything
groundbreakingly different. It can be as simple as just
checking in regularly. Just just saying, how about we
have a 15 minute call? Maybe it starts out every couple
of days, Maybe maybe it moves to once a week just as a check in,
just simply to say, Hey, how are you doing?
I see you, I'm, I'm here to, to help you through this.
And you'll find too that your, your solid superstar employees.
I mean, they're going to, they're going to latch on to
that and they're, they're going to, they're going to work hard
to, to get through it as well. Most employees, they don't want
to be off work. They want to be doing a good
job. And so feel like they're well
supported, then they're going to work much harder to remove some
of the barriers themselves. And part of it too is education
for the employees. Often employees, and I was
certainly guilty of this in my HR practices, is that employees
didn't really get the proper education on how things would
proceed if they disclosed or if it appeared as though they were
struggling with a mental health condition.
So they really had no idea where as if it was more of a physical
issue, say a say a back issue. People understood that we were
going to do, you know, work hardening going forward to to
get them back to where they were.
And so education is a big piece as well.
Yeah, that makes sense. We hear, I've at least I feel
like I hear all the time this analogy between, you know,
broken bone, you fix it versus, you know, a mental health
challenge. And then it's like there's the
stigma associated with it. And really the, the, the next
thing is to fix it and, and deal with it and, and for people to
get the resources that they need.
And I think that those stigmas that are associated are what
generally create these gaps between employees and employers
and how both can be supported. Because certainly there are
moments where employers can't support any further than they
have. And, and that's a conversation
too. But there's you get there over
time and there should be some kind of ramp up to what that
final, you know, either someone being fully supported and
they're doing great and everything's fine or whether
there's that conversation around, you know, a more
permanent disability option or leave or something like that.
My other kind of reflection point or thought too is that I'm
curious if you know, given the the two experiences that you had
after disclosing your own mental health status, if that has LED
you to feel differently about what employees should disclose
or how they disclose it. Or if there's generally a
recommendation that you have for someone whether they should
disclose, shouldn't disclose or again, how they should go about
it if they do decide to. Yeah, it's.
A great point. And for employees, you really
need to, I'll say, read the room and understand what, what, what
you feel safe disclosing and what you, what you feel might be
risky because you're under, no, in a lot of jurisdictions,
you're under no, you're not forced to disclose.
However, I, I definitely from an employee perspective.
And again, this is something that it's interesting because
you would think as, as HR for as long as I've been in HR, you
would think that I, I would have known right up front that, oh,
wow, I know how I have to present restrictions, but you
know, there was a gap for, for me as an employee as well.
And so I think having employees understand, and you touched on
this point and it's, it's very relevant just because I have a
disorder and it could be a disorder like mine that's
chronic, or it could simply be that I'm struggling with
depression because I lost a loved one.
And this might take four or five months to work through that that
part of the grieving process, but it's not going to be
permanent. So employees need to also
understand that they need to be part of the process.
They cannot just say I can't do this and pick certain parts of
their job that you know, should just be permanently eliminated
because that puts a strain on other staff members and, and
things of that nature. So being able to understand
that, yes, my employer does need to work with me, but I also need
to work with them because understanding they still do have
a business to run. And so figuring out that middle
ground is that some advice that I would give to employees, but
also for HR to be really clear with that, that yes, we're going
to support you, but this is a two way St.
We need to come up with a plan together.
Yeah, that's great. Advice that and I think that's
what happens when there is a deeper conversation and there
there are questions asked versus assumptions made.
And I really appreciate that you talked about, you know, just
your own reflection and what you've learned from those
experience experiences, but also what employees today can do in
order to get the support that they need.
And that to me, a big part of that is our knowing exactly what
you need or being able to articulate those needs.
To your point, if someone is, is struggling with depression or
anxiety or something that is atypical in their experience
and, and maybe it is something that's based on like this acute
scenario or, or moment in time, like the loss of a loved one
that they can frame it in that way that they have this
opportunity to say, hey, I lost so and so loved one.
It's been a little bit tough for me.
I'm going through some things. I really am going to need a
little bit more time off. I might even need to leave.
What are my options? Because then I think, you know,
to your point, like doctor's notes generally are vague
because employees don't really want to disclose things.
I think there's also good reason for them to be afraid of
disclosing things. Obviously, you had your own
experiences with that. Not to say that companies aren't
going to do the right thing, but sometimes they to your points
that you've made, they just don't know what the right thing
is. And we as employees, if we're in
those scenarios, we have to kind of guide them sometimes.
And also we as HR leaders, we also have to guide what the
business needs. Accommodations ultimately always
come down to what the business can tolerate.
And that's where all of those questions kind of come in.
And, you know, I, I've seen, I've seen businesses really bend
over backwards to accommodate someone that has gone through a
very difficult time in their life or they've had a major
health scare or whatever it might be.
And I think that's a great thing.
And those companies are generally the ones that are not
so concerned about their own risk and are more concerned
about what that employee might need in that moment.
And I think, you know, my, my final point on this is that for
employees who are, you know, effectively deciding whether to
disclose or not, you, you made a great suggestion, which is to
kind of read the room and know exactly what type of waters
you're sailing in. And I could understand why even
from your perspective, you disclosed your own disorder
because you were in HR and you probably had this sense of
comfort also because you all are in charge of how people are
experiencing that organization. And so like I could, I could see
that, you know, you would probably operate under the
pretenses that HR is going to support HR because HR supports
people. And I think at the same time,
this is something that other people can learn from too, that
having you know, as much information in your kind of in
your hands to be able to articulate again, exactly what
you need while also being flexible to what the business
might need. Following your advice, Matthew,
that you know, companies might not be able to, to grant six
weeks off of unpaid leave if you haven't been there for, you
know, what qualifies you for another type of job?
Protected leave, depending on where someone lives.
Or you know, a company might say, look, we can't do this, but
we can do that. And being able to have the
flexibility or a more compromising nature around it
could be helpful. But obviously that's not always
afforded to everyone depending on the circumstances and how
severe someone's mental health condition might be, I suppose.
So I guess, you know, kind of to close out this conversation, I'm
curious, you know, where can, where can listeners who are in
HR start in terms of really being able to say that they are
supporting people, that they are taking the, the actions and the
steps necessary to encourage people to feel comfortable to
share what they're going through and, and ask for accommodations
if they need. And then on the flip side,
what's the first thing that an employee can do if they've been
kind of on the fence about sharing, but need accommodation
and need something from their employer.
So from the. HR side, and we've talked about
this empathy is that's it's the best starting point and often
employees look at HR to be that empathetic individual in the
organization. And so being able to start from
that standpoint and approach from the view of even if this
employee doesn't disclose clearly, they're going through a
hard time and need some kind of support through that hard time.
And if you approach it like that, you start to build that
trust and rapport and that employee over time.
When you think about it, we all know an employee that will come
in and just tell us everything. And it's because, and, and often
it'll be stuff we don't really want to know that, but they'll
just go because they trust us. And so to start to build that
with empathy is is huge for HR and for employees.
You need to understand that the business does need to run.
And so if you are unable to do your job in the effective way
that you have been doing it up until this point, then you do
need to take some steps to address that.
And it doesn't mean you have to go in and say, Hey, I've been
diagnosed with bipolar disorder. To your point about me, I
diagnosed, I disclosed because I, I took the stance of, well,
if they have an understanding of what's going on with me, I'll be
easier to work with. But for an employee, just being
able to go in and just say, I'm struggling right now and I'm
struggling with my job. Can we talk about ways to help
me get through this period that would be a a good starting
approach without really putting yourself at at huge amounts of
potential risk? Yeah, that's a.
Great point, great advice. And Matthew, I, I just want to
under score again, that I really appreciate your vulnerability
and your openness to talking about your own experiences and,
and also really appreciate what you're doing for your own
community. I mean, it's, it's really a
wonderful story that you're continuing to write that you've
kind of gone through some of these experiences yourself, and
yet you've found it in you to want to help others and really
to to help them learn from your own experiences.
I think that's a wonderful thing.
And knowledge sharing is so powerful.
It's one of the best parts of having a podcast is that and
really living in 2025 is that, you know, no information is
foreign to us. We can learn anything.
We can find out any information. And so I really appreciate what
you're doing and what you've shared today.
So thank you so much. Thank you, Tracy.
It's been a wonderful experience and I appreciate the opportunity
to get the message in. Amazing.
Well. For listeners who maybe want to
learn more about accommodation analyzed and what you do and
your support group and all of that and maybe who just
generally want to connect with you, where can they find you and
make that connection? So my website.
Is accommodationanalyze.com and that is one avenue.
I also do run webinars regularly to support this discussion and
so feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and that way you'll
be able to register for those if they're of interest.
But they're also on the website. Amazing, amazing.
I will make sure that all of your links are shared in the
show notes so that the listeners can very easily connect with you
and click all of those links. So, Matthew, thank you again so
much for your time and you're sharing everything that you've
shared with us today. Thank you, Tracy.
Hey, just before you. Go don't forget to subscribe to
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Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you next week.