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Blog | Talent Insights Blog
April 14, 2022

Supporting Mental Health In The Workplace

Authors:

Does mental health affect productivity at work? Yes, it sure does and loss of productivity = loss of revenue = something leadership should care about. 

“The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that depression and anxiety cost the global economy $1 trillion per year in lost productivity. But WHO also found that for every $1 spent on treating common mental health concerns, there is a return of $4 in improved health and productivity” (Rawe Workplace Mental Health: 5 ways to support employee wellness). 

What can the company do? 

  • Implement unlimited PTO and encourage employees to use it
  • Encourage mental health days 
  • Provide insurance coverage for therapy
  • Talk openly about Mental Health and break the stigma
  • Implement half day fridays 
  • Plan company social events

What can managers do?

  • Model healthy behavior and work-life balance
  • Encourage PTO and mental health days
  • Conduct weekly check-ins with direct reports to ask how they are feeling
  • Create flexibility on team 
  • Plan happy hours, virtual or in person team building activities, and fun events

We all know that it is easier to log off early if your manager encourages it. A manager modeling healthy behavior can benefit the team’s work life balance. If you are a manager, I encourage you to share your healthy practices. Healthy practices = unreachable during PTO, logging off at a decent hour, taking your lunch and breaks throughout the day, etc. You should lead your team by example, and it could make a huge difference in the culture, productivity, and overall morale of your team. 

What can you do?

In general, there are many approaches to improving mental health and overall wellbeing. Many of these consist of common themes encompassing a holistic view such as the approach suggested by the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand. They use an approach called the “Five Ways to Wellbeing” (1) or as I like to share it with others “Taking 5.” 

There are five great pointers and most of these actions could literally take five minutes or less to do. You do not have to do all of them in one go in order to achieve the benefits. These are more like five different suggestions you can pick and choose from by weighing in with how you’re feeling, acknowledging what you need, and then doing that one thing! These can apply to both our personal and professional life, but let’s take a look at how we can use them in the workplace:

  • Be active: stand up and move your body a bit if you’ve been sedentary for hours at your desk. Studies suggest to take about 5 minutes of break time for every hour of focused, sedentary work (2). If you only have one minute, take that! One minute is better than nothing. A productive break might look like standing up and taking a mini stretch, walking over to the kitchen to grab a drink, or walking a little further if you have the time and space for it. 
  • Connect: this one is big for the remote workers out there (shout-out to my WFH crew!) Check in with yourself – when was the last time you had a casual chat with a colleague? Called your favorite person? Try working five minutes into your day to have a little dialogue or express some feelings to someone you trust can offer a good listening ear. 
  • Give: this can tie in with that last point above. No, you don’t need to go get a special gift (but if that’s your thing – sure!) Think more along the lines of giving for the sake of giving. Buy your colleague or partner some coffee or lunch just because. Giving can also completely exclude money – give someone a genuine compliment or send a text of encouragement to someone you know needs it. 
  • Take Notice: AKA participate in mindfulness; be present; check in with yourself and acknowledge your current state. Being mindful simply means purposefully taking notice of what you are presently sensing, feeling, or thinking and removing any judgment from it (3). Mindfulness is slightly different to meditation, although the two do compliment each other. 
  • Keep Learning: continue to grow your skills or learn a new skill. Seek out new experiences whether it involves your professional life or finding a new hobby to try, a new recipe to whip up, or a new book to read.

Take 5 is a great starting point for addressing and managing your own wellbeing, but what about bringing it into conversation with someone else? This might come up in a convo as manager to employee or colleague to colleague. Talking about health can be tricky to navigate and there are definitely right and wrong ways to go about it. As a general rule of thumb, do not try to be a doctor or a therapist if you are not a doctor or a therapist! There are some very helpful methods out there that we can use to address wellbeing topics gracefully. A great one to keep in your back pocket is the OARS method (4).

  • O: Open-ended questions give the other person space to find the words themselves. Try starting with “how are you doing?” or “what has been going on in your life lately?” instead of “are you okay?” 
  • A: Affirmations – they go a long way! Responding with support and empathy can make a world of a difference to someone who is opening up to you. You do not have to have all the answers and sometimes all a person needs is a listener. You should, however, chime in with some reassurances or kudos for them speaking up or starting to take action in the first place.
  • R: Reflect that you heard them – briefly rephrase an important piece of the conversation. For example, “I completely understand your frustration in not being able to focus lately and feeling overwhelmed…”
  • S: Summarize (or share) – This ties in closely with reflective listening but also brings back affirmations and any needed open ended questions. Essentially, the goal here is to communicate that you understand what the other person is saying, you support them, and if they are looking for solutions, you can help them work their way toward that by sharing any information that may have been helpful to you in the past (recommending a counselor you know, inviting them to an exercise class, or helping them access an employee assistance program if there is one).

Regardless of seniority in an organization, everyone can benefit from having a solid understanding of wellbeing principles and having the ability and confidence to communicate them. Leadership that addresses employee wellbeing as something just as important as performance will result in better culture, productivity, and overall success across the organization. On an individual level, it is important to remember that one’s health is not separated by personal and professional life, so taking accountability for your own wellbeing is one the most important things we can do for ourselves on a regular basis.

More blogs from Camille Knapik Balch and Kelly Dennis

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Emerging AI Roles in 2026: What Companies Are Actually Hiring For

By Matt Massucci | March 11, 2026 | Blog, Talent Insights Blog

Over the last year, hiring teams have started seeing a wave of new job titles pop up across tech, sales, and operations.

Some are legitimate new roles.
Others are existing jobs with a slightly different name.

And many of them have one thing in common: AI is suddenly part of the job description.

From Go-to-Market Engineers to AI Specialists, companies are experimenting with new roles as they figure out how automation and AI fit into their teams.

But most of these positions aren’t entirely new. They’re evolutions of existing roles.

The Rise of Go-to-Market Engineers

One role that is gaining traction is the Go-to-Market Engineer.

Depending on who you ask, it is either:

  • A new role focused on automation and AI-driven growth
  • A modern version of Revenue Operations (RevOps)

In practice, it is a bit of both.

As Matt Tokarz recently pointed out after closing a search for an Outbound & Go-to-Market Specialist, the role looked very different from traditional RevOps. The focus was not reporting or CRM hygiene. It was building prompts, leveraging tools like Clay and Smartlead, and enabling SDRs and AEs with backend insights to accelerate pipeline growth.

Instead of traditional RevOps work like reporting and CRM management, the focus was on:

  • Building AI prompts
  • Creating campaign messaging
  • Automating outreach workflows
  • Using tools like Clay, Smartlead, and Trigify

The goal was not simply managing sales data. It was accelerating pipeline generation through automation.

AI Isn’t Creating New Functions. It’s Changing Existing Ones

One trend is becoming clear. Companies are not replacing entire departments with AI.

Instead, they are changing how existing roles operate.

Sales teams still need pipeline.
Marketing teams still need content.
Engineering teams still need to build software.

The difference is that employers now expect candidates to use AI tools as part of their workflow.

As Zac Colip noted during the discussion, we are currently in a transitional phase where companies are labeling roles with “AI” as they experiment with how the technology fits into teams.

But that may not last forever.

Why Many “AI Job Titles” May Disappear

Right now, AI still feels new enough that companies highlight it in job titles.

But eventually, AI will likely become a baseline expectation, not a specialty.

Think about it like cloud technology or data analytics.

At first, companies hired “cloud specialists.” Now most engineers are expected to understand cloud infrastructure.

The same shift will likely happen with AI.

Instead of hiring “AI-enabled marketers” or “AI engineers,” companies will simply expect employees to know how to work with AI tools.

The Talent Pool Is Still Small

One challenge with these emerging roles is simple: there aren’t many candidates with real experience yet.

Many of these positions didn’t exist two years ago.

In one recent search, we started looking for a candidate locally in Chicago. Eventually we expanded nationwide because the pool of people with relevant experience was extremely limited.

This is a common issue with emerging roles:

  • Companies want experienced candidates
  • But the roles themselves are still new

That gap will likely persist for the next few years.

Hybrid Roles Are Becoming More Common

Another noticeable shift is that roles are becoming more hybrid.

Instead of hiring for narrow responsibilities, companies are combining multiple functions into one position.

As Matt Mulcahy highlighted, one example is the rise of Forward Deployed Engineers, a model popularized by Palantir.

These engineers:

  • Work directly with clients
  • Gather product requirements
  • Write user stories
  • Build the software themselves

What used to involve several roles, including product managers, engineers, and solution architects, can now sometimes be handled by one person. AI development tools are part of what makes this possible.

AI Adoption Is Happening at Different Speeds

Not every industry is moving at the same pace.

As Ashley DuBois pointed out, some sectors, such as transportation, are applying AI to specific workflows like load booking and operational automation.

At the same time, some companies are adding “AI” to job titles even when the core responsibilities remain largely traditional.

In many cases, it is still essentially an IT manager role with AI familiarity layered in.

This reflects a broader transition period where companies want to signal modernization and candidates want to signal relevance.

Automation Is Changing Operations Roles

In logistics, AI is increasingly handling scheduling, tracking, and coordination tasks.

According to Brittany Lasky, operational roles such as logistics coordinators may experience the greatest impact from automation.

However, freight brokers who manage negotiation and strategic RFPs remain in demand.

AI can optimize processes. It does not replace relationship management or strategic negotiation.

Across industries, a pattern is emerging.

Execution becomes automated. Strategy becomes more valuable.

Finance Roles Are Becoming More Analytical

Automation is also reshaping finance and accounting roles.

As Adam Slater noted, accounts receivable jobs that once focused on high-volume manual processing are evolving into more analytical positions centered on reporting and insights.

The work is not disappearing. The expectations are increasing.

Organizations are now hiring for:

  • stronger technical skills
  • analytical thinking
  • systems understanding

Even roles traditionally considered administrative now require deeper technical capability.

Analyst Roles Are Expanding

AI is not eliminating analyst roles. It is expanding them.

Michelle Mehlis pointed out that many data analyst roles now include responsibilities previously handled by data engineers or architects.

Financial analysts are also expected to understand tooling, sourcing, and data transformation.

In many cases, two or three roles are being combined into one.

This raises a long-term question.

If entry-level roles become more complex or disappear entirely, how will organizations develop senior talent in the future?

Sales Development Is Becoming More Human

The traditional model of high-volume cold calling is changing.

According to Jack Smith and Emily Canna, teams are shifting toward:

  • personalized LinkedIn videos
  • voice memos
  • highly tailored messaging

At the same time, companies are moving away from activity-based KPIs and focusing more on outcomes such as demos set and SQLs generated.

In a market saturated with automated outreach, authentic communication has become a competitive advantage.

Several clients have said it directly. They want a human in the seat.

Go-to-Market Teams Are Rebuilding the Fundamentals

Every six to twelve months, hiring trends in go-to-market teams shift.

As Jennifer Salerno noted, companies move through cycles.

One quarter it is BDRs.
Then RevOps.
Now it is go-to-market engineers.

Many companies experimented heavily with AI to accelerate pipeline generation.

What those experiments exposed were structural gaps, particularly in outbound strategy.

AI can support execution. It does not replace a well-built top-of-funnel engine.

Inbound momentum can hide weaknesses. Outbound forces clarity.

The companies gaining traction right now are not chasing trends. They are rebuilding the fundamentals of their go-to-market strategy.

What This Means for Hiring

For employers, the takeaway is straightforward. Job descriptions and expectations need to evolve alongside technology.

Across functions, we are seeing the same shift play out. AI is not eliminating entire roles. It is changing how those roles operate and increasing the baseline skill set required to perform them well.

Hiring managers should start thinking less about traditional titles and more about capabilities. That often means prioritizing candidates who can:

  • Learn and adapt to new tools quickly
  • Think in terms of systems, automation, and workflows
  • Combine technical and business skills within a single role

In many cases, the perfect candidate with the exact title simply does not exist yet. The strongest hires are often people who have developed adjacent skills and shown the ability to adapt as the tools evolve.

The Bigger Trend

The broader trend is that AI is accelerating a shift that was already underway.

Roles are becoming more hybrid. Expectations are increasing across nearly every function. And repetitive tasks are being automated, leaving more strategic work behind.

Sales teams still need pipeline.
Operations teams still need coordination.
Finance teams still need reporting and analysis.
Engineering teams still need to build software.

What is changing is how the work gets done and what skills are required to do it well.

Right now we are in a transitional phase where companies are still labeling roles with “AI” as they experiment with new workflows and technologies.

Over time, that label may disappear.

AI will simply become part of how work gets done.

And the roles themselves, while evolving, will look more familiar than the titles might suggest.

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