How this Google exec is approaching mental health benefits in today's world

Newton Cheng has committed himself to being vulnerable at work, empowering his staff at Google to do the same. 

As the director of health and performance at the tech company, he was used to prioritizing other people's well-being needs. But a moment of vulnerability months into the COVID pandemic changed everything about his role, and his life. 

"I was in a meeting with my vice president and all his direct reports, and we were doing a check in, and there was a lot of like, 'I'm good, fine, hanging in there,'" he says. "And someone sends me a direct message and says, 'I feel like people aren't being real. When it gets to you, say something real.' I started crying, and I said, 'Right now, I'm honestly struggling because the number of days that I'm proud of how I'm showing up as a father is going down, and I don't know how to turn that around." 

Read more: What mental health benefits should your company offer?

Cheng says he was "horrified" by the admission, but his teammates were supportive, reaching out to him offline to check in. Yet months of overwork and burnout came to a head when Cheng said he was eventually unable to get out of bed, and needed to seek professional help.

Tapping into his employee benefits led him to a therapist who said he was showing major symptoms of depression and anxiety. Eventually, Cheng took a leave of absence from his job, and came back committed to changing the narrative around mental health at work. 

"I keep sharing my story, because what I found was that while I worried so much about what people would think of me, it turns out the best I can do is be a mirror for someone else, for them to say, 'Oh, I'm going through that too,'" he says.  

Cheng shared his story with EBN, and how getting vulnerable about mental health changed his approach to benefits and leadership. He will be this year's keynote speaker at EBN's annual Benefits at Work conference, happening September 3-4 in Las Vegas. Interested in attending? Find out more information right here. 

Talk me through your mental health journey and when you realized you needed to step back and seek help. 
If I go all the way back to March 2020, everything gets upended overnight. My team is responsible for overseeing a lot of our amenities around health and well-being for the employees, and we knew it was our job to make sure people are taken care of. And so in times of crisis like this, I was taught you show up, you lean in. We converted as many of our programs as we could to digital offerings that would reach people at home. It felt like the right thing to do, but we were running unsustainably. 

I kept trying to power through. By November, that's when I really started to struggle to get out of bed in the morning, and then February was the first time I actually felt like I physically could not get out of bed because I was paralyzed by a sense of dread. The pandemic was a catalyst. It was just an accelerant for something I struggled with for a long time, but didn't have awareness of. We can't solve a problem that we won't even talk about. Once I [started talking about it], I feared it would ruin my reputation. It didn't. I started to get invitations to tell my story, first on podcasts, then via interviews and talks. And so I just kept going. 

Read more: Paycom's on-site Wellness Center makes well-being part of the workday 

The discussion around mental health has changed so much over the last several years, and the expectations people have around their benefits has changed, too. How should leaders manage this among their own current priorities and challenges? 
This is the period where I feel like what actually works is going to get shaken out. We've really had to prioritize and it is not going to feel good. But we're going to come out with something stronger and more authentic. 

But you still need the basics — people need to know they have healthcare plans they can rely on. They need financial well-being like, especially as the world is getting scarier. I think a lot of companies are taking really good steps of doing things via their employee assistance provider, helping people get access to things like cognitive behavioral therapy or other therapeutic modalities. And what I've heard from a lot of people is when they have that freely available to them, or at a very affordable price, it suddenly becomes a viable option, and that opens up a whole new world of possibilities for that person to manage their mental health. So employers are playing a really important role in terms of not just providing access, but normalizing use of mental health support services. 

How do you advise leaders to tap into the vulnerability that you found, and use it to support their employees and their business? 
We have a disconnect between this topic of mental health in terms of how leaders talk about it. When people bring up the topic of mental health, what they're actually trying to indicate to me is to say, 'I'm really struggling and I need help. I need relief.' One of the next bridges that we need to cross is that leaders need to learn how to talk about this in a way that connects them as a human.  

Read more: What is 'resilience training'? The newest tool against burnout 

When I talk to people who come to me behind the scenes, what they really want to hear is not that just their organizations could support them. They want to know that they're not in this alone, and that their leaders struggle too, and we're all in this together. When we come to this conference for a conversation on mental health, look around the room, remember what we're talking about is helping each other carry all the same struggles that we have. Please show up. And if you do and you want to have real talk, we can do something transformative.

Interested in hearing more? Attend Benefits at Work September 3-4 in Las Vegas. Details can be found right here.