Don’t Make Your Employees Beg

Why the Companies That Win Aren’t the Ones With the Best Benefits.

They’re the Ones Their People Aren’t Afraid to Talk To.

The Conversation They’re Rehearsing

Right now, somewhere in your company, a parent is trying to figure out how to tell you their kid is struggling.

Not something easier to explain like the flu or a broken arm. Something harder to explain. Something they barely have the language for themselves. Their child’s mental health is unravelling, and they’re standing in the middle of it trying to hold everything together, at home, at work, and inside their head.

I’ve lived this world. And it’s not kind to parents.

It rips your heart out while simultaneously changing the way your brain works.

They need time off. They need flexibility. They might need to leave in the middle of the day without explaining why. They might need to fall apart for a week and come back slowly. They might need you to just not ask too many questions for a while.

But before any of that happens, they have to do the hardest part.

They have to come to you.

They’ve already rehearsed the conversation. Over and over. And it puts the fear of God in them. They’ve imagined your face. They’ve imagined the silence. They’ve imagined the follow-up email from HR.

And they’ve already decided whether or not you’re safe to tell.

Don’t Make Them Beg

There is nothing more humbling, more gutting, than a parent asking their employer for help during one of the most desperate seasons of their life.

They’re not asking because they want sympathy. They’re asking because they’ve run out of room to do this alone.

Don’t make them beg.

Make it easy for them to come to you. Because this is what leadership actually looks like when it costs you something.

They Already Know

Here’s the part most leaders don’t want to hear.

That decision, whether you’re safe, wasn’t based on your benefits package, or the EAP poster in the lunchroom, or the mental health webinar you hosted last October.

It was based on what happened the last time someone on your team was honest about something hard.

Did they get support? Or did they get a process?

Did someone check in on them the next week? Or did everyone just act like it never happened?

Your people have been watching. They’ve been keeping score. Quietly, out of self-preservation. They need to know the ground will hold before they step forward.

Unsafe by Default

Most companies aren’t unsafe on purpose.

Nobody made a decision to punish vulnerability. Nobody wrote a policy that says “if your kid is struggling, keep it to yourself.”

But nobody made a decision to protect it either.

And that’s the gap. The space between intention and experience. You might believe your door is open. But the parent on your team has already measured the distance between that door and their job security. They’ve calculated the cost of honesty. And if the math doesn’t work, they’ll manage it alone.

And in about 80% of the cases, they’re handling alone. Until they can’t anymore.

They’ll call in sick instead of telling the truth. They’ll burn through vacation days they were saving for the summer. They’ll sit in meetings half-present, half-terrified, and you’ll never know the difference.

Until they leave.

What Happens When You Get It Right

A parent will protect their family above everything. That’s just biology. That’s love. And it’s the most non-negotiable priority they have.

They will cordon off every part of their life until they know it’s safe to let you in.

But when they do let you in, when they trust you with the hardest thing they’re carrying. Something shifts.

They become the most loyal person on your team. Because you gave them room to breathe during the worst time of their life. And you let them be human.

And they will never forget it.

They’ll tell their friends. They’ll tell their family. They’ll speak about your company with a kind of conviction that no employer branding campaign could ever manufacture. They’ll treat your clients like gold because they know what it feels like to be treated well when it actually mattered. They’ll become your biggest advocates. They’ll be your loudest cheerleaders because you earned it at the exact moment they needed you to.

That’s a culture that people will fight to stay in.

Pick a Lane

So here’s the ask. And it’s simple.

Pick a lane.

Be the leader your people don’t have to rehearse for. Build the kind of environment where a parent in the hardest moment of their life doesn’t have to calculate the cost of being honest. Where asking for help doesn’t feel like a career risk. Where this is guarded with sanctity and won’t show up on their performance review.

Or be clear that you’re not there yet. Say it out loud as a starting point. Because honesty about where you are is better than a false promise about where you pretend to be.

Your people already know which one you are. They’ve known for a while. And right now, they’re not angry about it.

They’re just quietly planning around it.

The Ones You’ll Lose

The ones you’ll lose over this won’t slam the door, or send a scathing company-wide email. They won’t make a scene.

They’ll just stop opening the door to the conversation.

And by the time you notice, it’ll be too late to matter.

Make This Your Competitive Advantage

Unless you’ve been through it, you can’t fully understand what a family goes through when a child’s mental health is in crisis. It will turn your world upside down. And if the workplace is another source of fear during that time, you’ve lost that person, even if they’re still sitting at their desk.

But this is also an extraordinary opportunity. The companies that lead here won’t just retain talent. They’ll attract it. Because when word gets out, and it will, that your company was the one that showed up for someone during the hardest time of their life, people will want to work for you. For the proof.

Start here:

1. Audit the gap between your stated values and your employees’ lived experience. Ask them. Anonymously. And actually listen.

2. Train your managers to respond to personal disclosures with support, not process. The first sixty seconds of that conversation determines whether you’re trusted or tolerated.

3. Build flexibility into your leave policies for family mental health, as a standard practice.

4. Talk about it. Publicly. Internally. Normalize the conversation from the top. If leadership won’t say it out loud, nobody below them will either.

5. Don’t wait for a crisis to care. The trust has to exist before the conversation happens, or the conversation never will.

This isn’t about being a perfect company. It’s about being an honest one. One that your people would trust with the truth on the worst day of their lives.

That’s the competitive advantage nobody’s talking about. And the one your people will never stop talking about once you earn it.