We tend to perceive the Great Resignation and burnout as collective events, since they’ve been so pervasive, but it helps to keep in mind that they are a series of individual ordeals. James Kinney went through a struggle of his own that now helps shape the corporate culture of well-being at the ad agency Ogilvy, where he is the global chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer and North American chief people officer. “At Ogilvy, we’re not immune to the problem,” he acknowledges. But his personal story offers even more candor.

Early in his career, while working at a law firm, Kinney was coping with the stress that came from long hours and demanding tasks by eating and drinking more than he should–whatever it took to stave off the symptoms of burnout. Then, after a day spent at a music festival, he ended up in the ER because of a combination of dehydration and heat stroke, an experience that in turn triggered an anxiety disorder.

When he got back to work, he white-knuckled it, but the symptoms did not subside, to the point that he developed agoraphobia. Medication only led to depression. Then one day, Kinney flushed the meds and decided it was his job to manage his anxiety, just as people do when living with chronic physical conditions. “I already lost three years of life through my avoidant behavior. I love myself too much to keep going through this,” he told himself.

Kinney proceeded to quit his job, go to church often, and got certified as a yoga teacher. He pivoted to consulting work and eventually to HR. Now, in his position at Ogilvy, he tells his story as part of his effort to shape a culture that deals frankly with mental-health issues, he told CNBC correspondent Sharon Epperson in a fireside chat at From Day One’s October virtual conference, “Promoting Employee Mental Health, Wellness and Stress Reduction.”

“I shared because there's always someone who needs it,” Kinney said. Epperson responded that she couldn’t agree more. As a brain aneurysm survivor, she too had to make her health her job, especially in the gradual recovery process that comes with the condition.

While the average American worker might not have dealt with these specific health issues, nearly 80% of workers are worried about their mental health, according to a recent Conference Board survey of 1,800 U.S. workers, most of them citing burnout and stress as the causes. That’s up from about 55% just six months ago. At a time of intense competition for workers, this puts the onus on employers to show that they care about this kind of suffering–and to find practical ways to address it. Kinney shared some of the insights from Ogilvy’s workplace:

The Importance of Investing

Those who can afford to leave, quit; the ones who stay behind often have to do the job of two to three people. Conscious of this dynamic, Ogilvy created a partnership with Calm, which offers meditation and relaxation apps, to create a program called Mindful Manager. “When you look at behavior and emotional contagion, managers are driving the day-to-day operations and change,” Kinney observed. “The warzone is in the middle.” The company’s aim was to change the behavior of 840 key people across 44 teams by providing them with a ten-minute guided meditation each morning. “As a culture, it’s OK not to be OK, but give employees the tools,” Kinney said. “You can town-hall something to death, but you have to engineer it into the operation structure of the business.”

Setting up a new program costs money, but so does replacing someone who quits, which typically amounts to 10% of their salary and 60 days of hiring effort, said Kinney. That’s the hidden cost of failing to retain workers, which he calls “ghost money.” If leaders aren’t conscious of the impact of their failed relationships with employees, “the ghost money is going to get you. It costs money to replace people,” Kinney said.

“Over time, I’d rather have someone that I worked with for ten years than to burn them out after two, so you can think about that in a linear way,” he said. With the departure of employees, “you’re paying recruiter fees, you’re losing knowledge transfer, you're losing the productivity in your business. That’s ghost money. You can’t see it in the P&L or in the balance sheet, but it’s money that you’re losing.”

The solution, said Kinney, is to invest in well-being that goes beyond the typical medical coverage. “Basically, each employer should invest about $1,000 per year per person,” he said, to be distributed in subscriptions, days off, and other considerations. “It costs you far more to lose a person than to invest in $1,000 per year per employee.”

Understanding the Impact of Technology  

“I don't think that when Steve Jobs invented the iPhone, he knew it would become an appendage,” said Kinney. “The phone is now a hand, an arm,” he said, referring to the psychological attachment brought by push notifications. “We weren’t meant, as human beings, to be constantly notified,” he said. “The news is gamified, shopping is gamified. We're all rewired to always have dopamine triggers,” he observed. This model also translated to workplace management, where email chains have now been supplanted by multiple Slack channels and countless other bids for the worker’s attention.

Calendar apps, meanwhile, enable schedules to become even more densely packed with meetings. “What we find that in the virtual environment, we didn’t have rules of engagement, just like social media. So people are booked every 30 minutes, or every single hour for 10 to 15 hours a day, where folks can’t even use the restroom or get something to eat,” Kinney said. “So the burnout has been exacerbated with that. You have people that are just saying, ‘I don't want to do it, I’m not coming back.’ The sad thing is that they’re having to choose between their health and work and making a living­–and they shouldn't have to.”

Appreciating How the Human Mind Works

Humans, Kinney observed, are usually either chasing pleasure or running from pain. “If you don’t want people on your team to leave, use pain in the conversation,” in the sense of being observant of where those pain points are–and who should be responsible for knowing about them. It’s really the manager’s job to retain staff, not HR, he said. “If you don’t want all these people to leave, give managers the practice tools, and give them the how. Give the time they need, build the infrastructure,” Kinney said.

That means being thoughtful about the structure of workdays. In the case of project management, for example, it makes little sense to have a standing meeting every day for 30 minutes, Kinney said, because it means constantly stopping and starting he conversation. “Instead of having five, 30-minute meetings, block two hours straight just once,” he said. “Start and finish the project in two hours.”

This also means giving people the flexibility to work when it feels best to the worker. A mother with two young children could be the most productive at night, once she’s done taking care of them for the day, while it’s inadvisable to force someone in London to keep U.S. business hours, Kinney said.

These pieces of advice don’t apply only to a creative business like Ogilvy, Kinney believes. “It’s an agnostic practice: within all knowledge workers, it will work. It’s about reengineering the habit loops of the organization. Culture can be shifted, but that happens over time.”

Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Milan and Brooklyn.