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At M. Grisafe Architects, we’re passionate about architecture. It’s what we do. We’ve been in business as a boutique architecture firm in Long Beach since 2005, and while we obviously love the challenges of designing spaces that inspire our clients and improve their home or work lives, it’s our love for people that truly drives us.

If you were to ask any of us how our firm has grown and remained successful over the years, we would probably all have a similar answer: Because of the people involved, and that includes each other as colleagues as well as our clients. Our approach with clients, which we sum up with

three words—advise, advocate, and collaborate—not only results in finished projects that fully address clients’ needs and solve their problems, but that also drives our inspiration and creativity as a firm.

When the Client Wins, We Win Too

We’ve learned over the years that our clients are at the heart of what we do. They’re the most important part of our business. We’ve also learned that when we go above and beyond for our clients—when we really dazzle them—our job is more fun! It’s so rewarding for us to know that a client is thrilled with their new space, and that goal keeps us excited to come to work every day.

When we begin a project, our very first step is to get to know the client we’re working for. Whether we’re working on a residence or a commercial space, meeting the people who will be using the space and understanding them on a deeper level is essential for us.

And we understand that not all architects agree

! Plenty of architects enjoy designing spec homes (which are designed and built without a specific buyer in mind), and plenty of architects enjoy doing large-scale commercial work in which there may be multiple intermediaries involved and not much direct interaction with the person or people who end up using the space on a daily basis. Those types of projects simply aren’t our preference because we believe we achieve better end results when we work with our clients rather than for them.

Relational, Not Transactional

Everyone has had the experience of feeling like “just a number” or “just a consumer” when interacting with a business, and it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t matter where it happens—getting a fast-food burger or navigating a car insurance claim—if a company is treating your interaction like a transaction to “get through,” you’re probably going to think twice about spending your money with that company in the future.

Because of the personal and permanent nature of what we do, that attitude is unacceptable for us. For one thing, it creates unhappiness all around. If our clients were repeatedly unsatisfied, we at the firm would all be unsatisfied, too. People generally don’t enjoy working for companies that don’t treat their clients well.

But more importantly, our clients have to live and/or work in the space we create. We might be able to get to “good enough” without inviting them into the process, but to get to their hearts and leave them with a space that inspires them for years to come? That requires building a strong relationship with them. It’s not the easy way, but it’s far more rewarding in the end, and it makes clients more likely to work with us again and refer us to their friends and families!

Advise, Advocate, Collaborate

Every business is different, but there’s always a way to invest in building relationships with clients. It takes time and energy, but the payoff is well worth it. For us as a Long Beach architecture firm, we have developed a three-pronged approach, and we’ve found it to be a good balance between establishing our expertise, which makes clients feel confident in choosing us for their project, and treating clients like valued members of the team who can provide input and participate in the process:

• Advise: This is essential to building confidence and trust. We provide information and transparency right from the beginning, and we continue to do so throughout each phase of our work together. We believe well-informed clients ultimately make the best decisions, so we make communication a top priority from day one.

• Advocate: As we gather information and fully understand what the client wants and needs in their new space, we work towards it wholeheartedly. We strive to reach the finish line with as few complications as possible and while meeting every client need. If problems or complications arise (which is not uncommon in our line of work, especially dealing with permits and codes), we jump in and solve them. It’s our job to navigate those stressors, not the client’s.

• Collaborate: Just like we work with our clients throughout the scope of a project, we also have to work with agencies, city governments, and other various stakeholders to keep a project on time and on budget.

This may all sound novel or even crazy. We know that our exact approach may not be appropriate for every business—after all, different types of businesses require different levels of closeness with clients. What we are saying is that we create win-win results when we treat clients like team members, and we believe that most businesses would benefit from finding ways to do so too.

Health practitioners always seem to remind their patients to exercise as well as eat healthy all the time to keep up a healthy body.  Though this is great, they forget one more significant aspect that unless the patient is mentally healthy, physical health does not matter.  The World Health Organization describes health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not the absence of disease. This brings us to the conclusion that mental health is as important as physical health.    Without it, people are unable to live their lives to the fullest due to the mental health struggles.

Why is Mental Health Important?

Mental health is a critical part of a daily healthy lifestyle, because:

• It is the very crucial factor behind the rational decision-making process that each person has.
• It is equally as important as the physical health, but most people do not know or understand this.
• It is part of what everybody uses for their daily lives without even recognizing.
• It is good for business – mental health is associated with better performance, higher productivity, and lesser workplace accidents.
• It eliminates absenteeism from ailing employees.

What Causes Mental Illnesses

Mental illness is caused by stressful conditions that the patient has been living under.  All these conditions depend on how we receive them and the thoughts we build up in our minds.

These conditions may include:

• Anxiety and stress
• Addictions and compulsions
• Panic
• Anger
• Loss, bereavement, and grief
• Depression
• Infidelity, divorce or marriage issues
• Sexual problems
• Domestic violence or physical abuse
• Fertility issues
• Insomnia
• Life choices, e.g., career choices,
• Phobias
• Chronic pain or illness
• Eating disorders

The Stigma behind Mental Illness

Mental illness is highly associated with suicide with many people not seeking treatment.  This is because, in the 21st Century, mental illness and suicide attempt patients still face a lot of stigmas.  The stigma is openly played both at home and in the workplace making it hard for the patients to get help.

• In the workplace – Anxiety and stress in the workplace are commonly known to affect the physical health.  This is physically evident with the patient losing or gaining weight depending on how they deal with this kind of stress.  Stress and anxiety that affects the mental health are not visible until the adverse effects have taken a toll on the patient.     
• At home – Both younger and older adults are affected by mental illness.  It is shocking to discover that younger adults are mostly the ones encouraged to seek a mental health professional compared to the older adults.  Older adults are prone to committing suicide or living with the psychological illness condition because most do not get the attention or help they require from those around them.  Older adults who are rejected by their close loved ones always feel ashamed to open up to strangers and speak about their mental health. Fear stops them from getting the assistance they require ending up destroying their lives.      

How to Take Care of Your Mental Health

Most ordinary people have been ignorant of their mental health until something drastic happens that awakens them to the truth.  Do we care about what we can do to keep ourselves mentally healthy? Just as we work out our physical bodies, do we work out our mind to ensure it remains healthy throughout?  Doing so is important! But how would you work out your mind?

There are plenty of ways available to improve your mental health especially if you are already ailing.   They include:

• Meditation – in Yoga training is highly recommended for the better functioning of the brain making it an essential tool to deal with the mental health.  Joining a Yoga center where you can be motivated by others can be of great help.
• Counselling and professional help – When someone is going through a rough phase of mental health, it is essential to go for counseling.  Such treatments can help those who are suffering from emotional and behavioral problems or even those with mental health disorder. This kind of professional help also known as talk therapy or psychotherapy.       
• Care and Concern – People dealing with mental illness have been hurt, rejected or physically harmed.  It would be ideal to love them, care for them and show concern over their health. Be the one to encourage rather than stigmatize!  
• Medication – Though most do not want to be subjected to a daily dosage, it gets to a point where the patient cannot do without medication.  At this point, the doctor prescribes something to help them come down. It is essential to follow the doctors prescription to get treatment.  

For those who are not suffering from mental illness, the best way to take care of your mental health is by:

• Maintaining a healthy lifestyle every day – A healthy lifestyle means eating well, sleeping enough hours, developing healthy coping skills, staying positive and connecting with others to keep the optimism.  

The modern organization is defined by stress. The workplace doesn’t just have stress, it’s saturated with it. There is ‘good’ stress – the kind that motivates people and is an integral part of any busy working life. And then there is bad stress – the kind that impacts people and erodes at organizational productivity. Organizational leaders need to know one thing: bad stress in the workplace is categorically not inevitable. But it is in their hands to ensure that stress defines their organization positively. Leadership and development trainers need to know that – and act accordingly in their training interventions.

Stress Contextualized

Dr. Susan Michie defines stress as “the psychological and physical state that results when the resources of the individual are not sufficient to cope with the demands and pressures of the situation”. Importantly, it does not occur in a vacuum – it is entirely situational and contextual. That is critically important when training leaders on how to develop a positive stress culture in an organization – people are not ‘spontaneously’ stressed. Nor is their stress always simply ‘personal’ or down to their ‘personality’. They are stressed for tangible reasons within a (usually) principally organizational context and it is that context which should determine how an organization combats stress as negative influence.

The Huge Dimensions of Stress

Eric Garton wrote in the Harvard Business Review that stressed-out employees cost an estimated $125 billion to $190 billion a year in healthcare spending in the United States – and that doesn’t even begin to cover what he calls “the true cost to business [which] can be far greater, thanks to low productivity across organizations, high turnover, and the loss of the most capable talent”. The American Institute for Stress puts the price tag for U.S. industry due to stress even higher, i.e. at over $300 billion annually. The Institute states this is thanks to factors such as:

• Accidents
• Absenteeism
• Employee turnover
• Diminished productivity
• Direct medical, legal, and insurance costs, including workers’ compensation awards as well as tort and FELA judgments

The workplace stress pinch is international. Padma et al. (2015) studied how employees working in India’s booming IT industry are prone to a swathe of health problems due to continuous physical and mental stress in their work.  The researchers also found that factors such as globalization and privatization, which have resulted in job insecurity and the constant threat of rapid obsolescence of skills, are also contributory causes of stress.

Stress as Organizational Canary

With regard to workplace stress, Eric Garton puts it very succinctly: “The problem is the company, not the person”. For too long stress had been seen as the purview (read: responsibility) of the employee – and they have been judged accordingly. That is contradicted by evidence, such as the extensive review of work factors associated with psychological ill health and absenteeism undertaken by Michie and Williams (2001) which found the principal causes of workplace stress to be:

• long working hours, workloads and allied pressure
• the effects of these factors on employees’ personal lives
• lack of control over work and lack of participation in decision-making
• poor social support in the workplace
• unclear management and poor management styles

All of the factors above are organizationally, not personally, derived. And leadership must never assume that just because people remain in their jobs that they are coping with stress, never mind happy in their work. People often feel compelled to stay in their jobs for a multitude of reasons, from the financial and logistical to the purely practical. For example, the American Psychological Association (APA) cautions that people may stay in a job they don’t particularly like or even hate solely because of the so-called “golden handcuff,” i.e. their salary, pension, benefits and ‘perks” that keep people shackled to a job regardless of how much stress they are encountering.

What Leaders Need to Do

The role of the facilitator in leadership and development is to guide leaders and potential leaders to a better understanding of how stress can make or break their organization. Thankfully, there is a wealth of information and studies online that can facilitate this learning process. To start, leaders need to get off their ‘high horse’ and stop assuming that they are the most stressed due to their high levels of responsibility. Karen Firestone makes the interesting point that the stress of those in leadership is comfortably offset by factors such as status, autonomy, and job security. Lower level employees can often deal with greater aggregated stress.

In another Harvard Business Review article, Eric Garton offers the following leadership pointers:

• Own up to their role in creating the workplace stress that leads to burnout
• Heavy workloads do not help – neither does job insecurity or frustrating work routines that include too many meetings and far too little time for creative work.
• Excessive collaboration occurs when there are too many decision makers and too many decision-making nodes. Organizational structures and routines need to be amended, even hacked, where needed. Free people up.
• Adopt Agile principles – leaders can motivate and energize teams, and individual team members obtain a way to ‘own’ their results.

Susan Michie advocates the hugely respected Scandinavian work model, which is based upon:

• Employees are given the opportunity to participate in the design of their own work situation / workplace
• Technology, work organisation, and job content are designed so that employees are not unduly exposed to physical or mental stressors
• Closely controlled or restricted work is avoided or limited
• Opportunities for personal and vocational development should be provided at all times

It’s the humdrum routines that shape organizational culture, not the pep rallies. Sue Pridham cautions that, “Culture is not determined by motivational words on a wall but by an organization’s day-to-day practices and routines”. And the UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) makes the pertinent point that change doesn’t always have to be organizational, i.e. simple changes in team members, line managers or the type of work or technology used can also assist in minimizing stress levels – and leaders need to know that.

Leaders need to view an organization as a living, organic thing. It is not static and it is not devoid of the human experience therein. It is the sum total of all that human endeavor, talent, experience, and interaction. As such, organizational leaders need to be trained to fully understand that how their staff is valued and how employees are able to cope with stress is of paramount importance. In fact, it can be the very difference between an organization’s success or failure.

It is estimated that one out of every five American adults experience some form of mental illness in a given year. So, this means that at any given point, it is likely that close to 20% of the workforce experiences some form of mental illness. With such a large number of people who have a mental illness in the workforce, it is important for businesses to have the resources and accommodations to efficiently respond to the needs of their employees.

Contrary to popular beliefs, people who have mental illnesses often get better with improved treatments and services. Additionally, many people who have mental illnesses can and do work effectively and with the proper workplace accommodations.

Impacts of Mental Health on Businesses

It is approximated that mental illness annually costs employers upwards to $100 billion in indirect costs. Specifically, employees with depression cost employers close to $44 billion per year in lost productive time. In fact, one study showed that depression and stress were more strongly linked to higher medical expenditures than smoking and a lack of exercise. More days of work loss and work impairment are due to mental illnesses than to other chronic diseases such as asthma, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and arthritis.

Highlights from the Workplace Stress and Anxiety Disorders Survey show that on the job, employees self-reported that stress and anxiety most often impacted their:

• workplace performance by 56 percent
• relationship with coworkers and peers by 51 percent
• quality of work by 50 percent
• relationships with superiors by 43 percent

More alarming is that employees often feared repercussions as:

• 34 percent of employees had fears that their boss would interpret it as a lack of interest or unwillingness to do the activity
• 31 percent of employees had fears of being labelled as ‘weak’
• 22 percent of employees had fears that it would affect promotion opportunities
• 22 percent of employees had fears that their discussions about mental health would go in their file
• 20 percent of employees had fears of being laughed at or not being taken seriously

Furthermore, mental health diagnoses are the fastest growing sector of short-term disability claims. These claims account for up to 30 percent or more of the disability burden for employers and are growing by 10 percent annually. Difficulties in securing health care benefits can result in employees having more difficulties in returning to work. Because anxiety and depression are just as important as one’s physical health, they are covered by Social Security Disability which can help keep employees on board.

Additionally, employers should be cognizant of stresses which might impact the mental health of their employees. It was identified that 53 percent of employees reported that their work responsibilities triggered symptoms of their disorder–specifically meeting deadlines and dealing with problems. 46 percent of employees stated that interpersonal relationships triggered symptoms, 37 percent of employees stated that changes in their work situation–such as leaving a job, starting a new job, and getting fired– triggered symptoms and 35 percent of employees stated that staff management triggered symptoms of their mental health disorder.

From a legal standpoint, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects individuals with mental health disorders from workplace discrimination. Qualified employees who have a prior record of mental health disorders and disabilities are also prohibited from workplace discrimination and termination under this act. This law applies to private employers with more than 15 employees and state and local government employers.

On a positive note, there is research that suggests that disability costs related to mental health can be substantially reduced when access to early intervention and treatment is available. Employers play a substantial role when it comes to the mental health of their employees so, through educational programs and events aimed towards mental health awareness, promotion of a work-life balance and time off, employers can help educate their employees and urge them to balance their lives to ensure that their job productivity remains high.

What Businesses Can Do

As stated above, employers can ensure that they practice efficient employee management by providing accommodations to employees to help them manage their mental health and keep up their morale. Here are some tips for employers to practice:

• Educate yourself about mental illnesses and make yourself approachable so that employees feel comfortable about disclosing information
• Set the tone for mental health inclusivity by sharing information, awareness events, and other opportunities which highlight mental health
• Implement an effective Employee Assistance Program, Disability Employee Resource Group, or other form of support to help workers who have mental health illnesses
• Inform the workplace about mental health to reduce potential harassment and bullying
• Build trust with employees and make the work climate enjoyable to keep up morale and employee satisfaction
• Promote a work-life balance to reduce overworking employees