Business management and HR perceptions change in small increments over long periods of time. Given enough time, these small increments of change become accepted standards of practice. Here’s a prime example: The ridiculous term “Mental Health Day”. For some reason I cringe when I hear it used. 10 or 15 years ago this term was used somewhat covertly when confiding in a trusted coworker that you really weren’t ill when you called in sick last Friday; you just needed a day off and didn’t want to use up a vacation day. So you simply called in sick to have a paid day off.

So when did the phrase “mental health day” go mainstream and become a legit, openly stated phrase to justify not going to work but still getting paid?

Employers have long recognized that there were personal, unplanned circumstances that could require an employee to miss work. Yes, like it or not, employees did indeed have a life outside of the workplace. So employers granted a certain number of “personal days” to each employee as part of the benefit package to show flexibility and understanding for life’s stresses and curveballs.  What ended up happening was grateful employees were appreciative for the personal days and used them as fast as they could. Oddly there was no inverse reduction to the number of collective sick days being taken on an annual basis.  Employees it seems still felt entitled to use their ‘earned’ sick time however they wanted; even if that meant ‘wink, wink’ taking a mental health day every now and then.  But hey, thanks for the personal days. They are great!

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