Podcast: Boosting manufacturing safety and productivity through mental health training
Key takeaways
- Mental health challenges in manufacturing stem from high stress, repetitive tasks, and stigma around asking for help.
- Early intervention and open conversations improve employee well-being and reduce safety and productivity risks.
- The ALGEE action plan teaches workers how to recognize, approach, and support colleagues in mental distress.
- Mental Health First Aid training helps create a culture of support and boosts retention, safety, and performance.
In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Lynn Hennighausen and Rob Vallentine join Anna Smith, news editor for IndustryWeek, to explore how mental health challenges uniquely affect the manufacturing workforce. The conversation highlights the persistent stigma surrounding mental health in industrial environments and the measurable impact that programs like Mental Health First Aid at Work can have on safety, productivity, and retention. Through real-world insights and an overview of a structured training framework, the episode emphasizes the importance of creating psychologically safe workplaces. Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of how cultural shifts in mental health literacy can transform manufacturing organizations from the inside out.
Below is an edited excerpt from the podcast:
IW: The Mental Health First Aid at Work program serves manufacturing as well as a couple of other different industries. I was wondering, why do you think the manufacturing industry specifically needs mental health training? Is it lack of awareness? Is there a stigma around those conversations—just anything about discussions in the manufacturing field?
LH: There are any number of reasons it makes sense for us to look at the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing is consistently named as one of the most challenging workplaces when it comes to mental health challenges, substance use disorders, and even suicide.
And there are a lot of reasons for that. Some include repetitive action, the monotonous tasks that are sometimes required, safety hazards, irregular schedules, concerns about layoffs—all of those things contribute to this space where it's really important to start these conversations.
IW: So, I know you mentioned along with mental health, substance abuse issues. What kind of mental health challenges do you see facing employees? Are there some trends in this industry that stand out more than others, because—like you said—it’s such a high-pressure work environment?
LH: There are for sure some things that stand out. I think one of the things we really need to talk about and focus on is the stigma that is front and center—not just for all of us oftentimes, but specifically in industries like manufacturing.
There’s this idea that asking for help means we’re weak—that reaching out for help means we can’t handle our job. So, there’s this internal stigma many of us have that says: “If I just tried harder, if I just worked harder, if I just prayed harder, I’d be OK.” And then we feel this pressure that says: “If you just tried harder, if you were stronger, if you prayed more, you’d be OK.
”What if we were in a culture where asking for help was OK? Because we know that early intervention works. And when we get hope, recovery happens. Recovery is expected in 2025—with early intervention.
IW: So, specifically, the Mental Health First Aid at Work training program consists of four courses called Intro, Certification, Champion, and Transform. I was wondering if you could tell me just about these courses and how they build on each other?
RV: Yeah, absolutely. I'd be happy to jump in on this one, Anna .We know that not only is certification important, but it's really just the beginning, if you will. So when you take Mental Health First Aid—imagine a world where we didn’t have CPR, imagine a world where we didn’t have physical health first aid. Mental Health First Aid is really a training that allows people to talk about noticing signs and symptoms, and then how to respond.
When we start with a company or an organization, we begin with a self-paced, two-hour course that people take on their own. It’s a great opportunity for them to start talking about stigma, to learn more, to educate themselves about the power of first-person language and how it might impact them.
By offering something like Mental Health First Aid—another tool in that safety toolkit—those things can change. And they’re measurable.
- Lynn Hennighausen
They then come to a course, whether on Zoom or in person, called Mental Health First Aid Certification at Work. There, we spend about four hours with a group of folks. We use videos and all kinds of ways to interact with the class. We talk about noticing signs and symptoms and then again, taking a five-step action plan on what you can do to help someone.
As I look back on my journey—my mental health journey—I realize a lot of people around me didn’t notice and didn’t know how to respond when certain symptoms or signs were happening in my life. I spent 31 years in a manufacturing company, and it was sort of an environment where we focused a lot on physical safety, but not always on psychological safety.
So, that first segment—or the first course—is the Intro. Then comes the Certification course.
Then we jump into what's called Champion. I've had the opportunity to teach and facilitate the Champion course. These are folks that have gone through Certification. They feel really good about it. They've been trained, they understand how to notice, they know how to respond.
Champion really refines those skills but also helps them learn how, in their organization, they can be a better champion. That might mean telling their own journey. Maybe it’s being a champion because they understand the resources, the benefits their company offers. Maybe it’s about supporting and volunteering in a community.
Out of that Champion program, they really learn what they can do to help others who might be struggling in their organization.
And then the fourth one is Transform. It’s not just Mental Health First Aid that changes an organization—they also need to take a look at their strengths and where opportunities for change might exist.
So in Transform, usually it’s the HR team and other leaders who look at how they can update policies and procedures to make sure they're addressing mental health. For example, if an organization realizes that their benefits aren't equal between physical and mental health, Transform helps them tackle that.
IW: Just to go over a little bit—a quick snapshot of the program content—can you tell me about one of the biggest themes, which is the Mental Health First Aid action plan you teach about, called ALGEE?
LH: Yeah. So, ALGEE is the action plan, and it really starts with that approach. How are we going to approach someone who we think might be experiencing a mental health challenge?
We’ve noticed some signs and symptoms—some changes in a colleague—and we’re ready to say, “Hey, I’m wondering if you’re OK.”
The "L" in the action plan is Listening non-judgmentally. That means active listening—listening to learn instead of listening to fix.
Giving reassurance and information is my favorite letter. It’s the unsung hero. It’s the “I see you and I care about you. I'm connected with you.”
Then we move on to the two E’s. The first one is Encouraging appropriate professional help, which highlights the resources that a manufacturing organization has available to employees. Most organizations have an employee assistance program. They have medical benefits people can use.
But we also know that most of the time, EAP gets mentioned on the first or second day of employment—and people don’t retain that. So, how do we continue to offer those resources and make sure people understand that they’re confidential and underutilized?
Then finally, Encouraging self-help and other support strategies—that’s about what we can do for ourselves to cope when things are hard. And that is the ALGEE action plan.
IW: So, I know we've talked about this—this has also been talked about—how mental health literacy can, along with boosting personal things going on inside a person, also benefit the manufacturing company as a whole in terms of operations, like employee retention, safety, and productivity?
RV: Yeah, I can jump in on that one. Think about what many manufacturing companies go through: employee burnout, decreased productivity—because someone is struggling on the inside. They’re distracted because of a relationship issue, or they’re anxious because they just went through some type of trauma.
You think about absenteeism, turnover, workplace conflict—all of that shows up. And a lot of times, organizations recognize that if people come in to work healthy, they’re just better employees. It really does affect the bottom line.
If employees feel like they can bring their whole self into the workplace, they can ask for help from the people around them. Like Lynn was talking about, if they know what resources are available—do they have an EAP? Do they have benefits that cover therapy, not just a physical exam?
And do they understand their community? Do they know there are resources out there to support them? That’s one of the reasons more and more companies are bringing in this training.
About the Podcast
Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers from chemical producers to automakers to machine shops can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.
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About the Author
Anna Smith
Anna Smith joined IndustryWeek in 2021. She handles IW’s daily newsletters and breaking news of interest to the manufacturing industry. Anna was previously an editorial assistant at New Equipment Digest, Material Handling & Logistics and other publications.