OHSU researcher focuses on workplace well-being and mental health

Leslie Hammer, Ph.D., has been, “screaming for 30 years” that workplaces need to pay attention to the mental health of their workers. For a long time, she felt like her message wasn’t getting across.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened. Suddenly, everyone wanted to know what Hammer had to say as worker burnout and stress reached a tipping point.

In the 2021 Mental Health at Work Report, 84% of U.S. workers said their workplace conditions contributed to at least one mental health challenge. U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murthy, M.D., M.B.A., made workplace well-being one of his top priorities. 

“We know we don’t have enough mental health resources,” Hammer said. “And we also know from decades of research that workplace conditions and workplace psychosocial stressors are a critical link in addressing mental health from a population health perspective. We need other levers to pull to deal with this beyond behavior health specialists, including prevention of mental health crises.”

Hammer has done applied research in workplace settings for 33 years, first at Portland State University and now as the associate director of applied research and professor at OHSU’s Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences and the director of the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center.

“My entire career has been focused on understanding ways of improving psychological health and well-being for workers,” she said.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. As the pandemic highlighted, workplace well-being and awareness of how much individuals' jobs contribute to their state of mental health is higher than ever.

At PSU, Hammer and colleagues developed a training to reduce family and work stress. That training was evaluated in three different randomized controlled trials with funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In each trial, she found that training supervisors and managers on basic supportive strategies positively impacted worker well-being. At OHSU, Hammer continued this research, this time with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense. Those studies involved the development and evaluation of the effectiveness of the Readiness Supportive Leadership Training, or RESULT, with active-duty U.S. Army soldiers. That training showed a positive impact on service member readiness, resilience and psychological health. It also showed significant reductions in anger and loneliness among the soldiers, two main risk factors for mental health outcomes.

This research led to the development of the Workplace Mental Health Training for Managers, an evidence-based training for supervisors and managers to give them supportive tools to improve employee well-being and mental health. The training was licensed by OHSU Technology Transfer, and is available free to all Oregon state agencies, and at a cost outside the state. The free training is available to all OHSU supervisors and managers through Compass.

In January 2024, Hammer and colleagues published a paper in Occupational Health Science outlining the framework used in the training. The researchers identified six mental health supportive behaviors that can be used by supervisors and managers to protect and promote the mental health of employees, including: emotional support, practical support, role modeling, reducing stigma, warning sign recognition and warning sign response.

Hammer said none of these behaviors are “earth-shattering,” but they have been proven repeatedly in her work and that of her colleague Jennifer Dimoff, Ph.D., associate professor at  University of Ottawa and affiliate member of the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences, to be related to improved well-being outcomes for employees. These behaviors range from role modeling — where a supervisor leads by example (for instance, showing a healthy work-life balance), to emotional support — such as following up with an employee who confided in them about a distressing life event.

“We know supervisors have a range, from those who really don’t know how to interact with people to those who are very competent in supporting their employees,” Hammer said. “What we want to do is bring everybody closer to the middle so that managers and supervisors have those basic skills. The data show clearly that this approach works. It has an impact on improving psychological health and reducing risk factors for mental illness, and it lasts over time.”

This work was supported by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, through the Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury Research Program under Award No. W81XWH-18-PHTBIRP-R2OETRA; the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences at Oregon Health & Science University via funds from the Division of Consumer and Business Services of the state of Oregon (ORS 656.630), and Grant #T03OH008435 awarded to Portland State University, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the National Institutes of Health.

In the interest of ensuring the integrity of our research and as part of our commitment to public transparency, OHSU actively regulates, tracks and manages relationships that our researchers may hold with entities outside of OHSU, and other financial interests. With regard to this research, Dr. Hammer may earn royalties through OHSU Technology Transfer’s licensing of the training. Review details of OHSU's conflict of interest program to find out more about how we manage these business relationships.