When we talk about mental health at work, our attention is usually drawn to the individual. We ask whether people are stressed, exhausted or burnt out. We think about anxiety, sleep difficulties, musculoskeletal pain or emotional fatigue. The solutions that follow naturally focus on the person: learning to manage stress, building resilience, setting boundaries, exercising more, practising mindfulness or improving work-life balance. These approaches can be valuable. They may help people cope with difficult situations. But they also raise an important question.
What if understanding mental health at work also requires us to understand work itself?
Mental health at work does not develop in isolation. It emerges through the continuous interaction between a person and the work situation in which they are engaged. Yet this interaction often remains invisible.
When someone is suffering at work, we tend to ask: How is this person coping? More rarely do we ask: What is happening in the work itself?
This distinction matters. Work has its own organisation, rhythms, constraints, expectations and social dynamics. Ignoring these characteristics means overlooking part of the situation itself. Understanding this interaction does not mean moving our attention away from people but recognizing that people and work cannot be fully understood separately.
How we understand a work situation shapes the possibilities we have to act within it
Most people already know something about what they are experiencing at work that could be difficult and challenging for their mental health.
They may say: “I have too much work“, “I no longer feel motivated”, “There is no recognition”, “My work no longer makes sense“, “The atmosphere has become difficult”, “There are constant tensions with colleagues or with my manager”, “No matter how hard I work, I never seem to achieve what is expected of me.”
These experiences are real and people are not unaware of them but a broader framework that helps make sense of them is often missing. Very quickly, these experiences become interpreted through an individual lens.
“If I have lost my motivation, perhaps I need to motivate myself.”
“If I feel exhausted, perhaps I need to become more resilient.”
“If I struggle to achieve the expected results, perhaps I am simply not competent enough.”
Gradually, questions about work become questions about ourselves and this shift has important consequences. Because difficulties that originate, at least partly, in the organisation of work may slowly become experienced as personal shortcomings.
What began as a difficulty in the relationship with work gradually becomes a judgement about oneself. When this happens, our possibilities for action become narrower. Not because the situation has necessarily changed, but because the way we understand it has changed. And the solutions we begin to imagine often follow the same direction. We try to become stronger, more resilient, more efficient or better organised.
Perhaps the question is not only how to strengthen the individual, but also how to better understand the work situation in which that individual is trying to do a good job. Because before we can change the way we act, we often need to change the way we understand what is happening.
This changes the questions we ask. Instead of saying only: “I’m overwhelmed” we may also say: “I’m responding to a work situation that places multiple demands on me.” Instead of asking: “Why am I losing motivation?” we may begin to ask: “What is happening in my work situation that makes motivation increasingly difficult?” “I’m no longer good enough” may gradually begin to think, “I’ve been constantly adapting to organizational constraints that no one ever sees.”
What previously appeared to be a personal failure may now be understood as part of a much more complex work situation. The work has not changed but the relationship to it has changed. And it is often from this new relationship that different possibilities for action and protection of mental health begin to emerge.
One of the most important steps in protecting mental health is making the work situation visible. When we begin to distinguish between what belongs to us and what belongs to the organisation of work, something changes. This shift does not eliminate the challenges. But it restores perspective. And perspective creates room for action.
The way we understand a work situation shapes the possibilities we have to protect mental health.
Learning to Observe Work
Understanding work is not something that happens all at once. It begins with experience.
We first sense that something is happening: tension, frustration, loss of meaning, fatigue, or simply the feeling that something is not quite right.
Imagine arriving at work in the morning. Before you have finished your first coffee, several emails demand your attention. A colleague interrupts you with an urgent question. Your phone rings. A meeting is about to begin. Someone asks for immediate feedback on a document. Conversations take place around you while new priorities continue to emerge.
This is not simply a list of tasks. It is a particular way of organising attention, time and action. The body often reacts before we even become aware of it. Muscles tense. Breathing changes. Attention fragments. We accelerate. These reactions are not only personal characteristics. They are also responses to the conditions in which work is organised.
The next step is observation. Yet this is often where the difficulty begins. Observing work requires us to pause, even briefly, and adopt a different attitude. Instead of responding immediately, we begin to pay attention to what is actually happening while we are working.
In many contemporary organisations, this is becoming increasingly difficult. Work values responsiveness, speed and continuous action. Moments of observation and reflection are rarely encouraged, even though they are essential for understanding the work situation itself.
Yet the moment we begin to observe our work, we are already changing the way we relate to it. Observation is therefore not simply a way of gathering information. It is already part of the process of change.
Understanding begins with learning to see what usually remains unnoticed
Observing work is more difficult than it may seem.
Not because work is hidden, but because we have learned to look at it in ways that leave much of it unseen. When we think about work, we usually think about tasks, objectives, procedures or job descriptions. Much less attention is given to everything people actually do to make their work possible. Yet it is precisely within this largely invisible activity that people adapt, make judgements, solve problems, cooperate with others and constantly adjust to the reality of their work.
For several decades, researchers in the Work Clinic, particularly Christophe Dejours and Yves Clot, have shown that an essential part of work remains largely unseen. One of their major contributions is the distinction between prescribed work—what is expected—and real work—what people actually do to achieve it.
Every day, people improvise, adjust, negotiate priorities, compensate for organisational shortcomings and make countless decisions that never appear in job descriptions. Far from being marginal, these adjustments are at the very heart of human work. They reflect judgement, practical intelligence, experience, cooperation, ethical decision-making and a constant concern for doing good work. Yet most of this work is rarely described, discussed, and often left unrecognised. Paradoxically, it is precisely this invisible work that allows organisations to function every day.
Because this work is rarely made visible, we rarely learn to see it. Learning to observe work therefore also means learning to notice this invisible activity that is present every day, yet so rarely recognized.
This invisible part of work matters because it is also where many of the processes that shape mental health take place. It is through this everyday activity that people build competence, exercise judgement, develop their professional identity and find meaning in what they do. It is also where work can become a source of tension, frustration, ethical conflict or psychological suffering.
When this essential part of work remains invisible, both the resources that support mental health and the constraints that undermine it tend to remain invisible as well.
Learning to recognise this invisible work is therefore already a way of protecting mental health, because it allows us to understand more clearly what is really happening within the work situation. Seeing differently already changes our relationship to the situation.
A Different Place to Begin
Seeing work differently does not immediately change work itself. What it changes is the way we understand the situation we are living in. And the way we understand a situation shapes the possibilities we have to act within it. Understanding work is therefore not simply about acquiring new knowledge. It is about learning to notice what has always been there, but has too often remained unseen.
Perhaps this is where protecting mental health at work begins. Not with finding better ways to adapt to every difficulty. But by learning to see more clearly the work situation to which we are constantly adapting.
Tomorrow morning, before answering your first email or joining your first meeting, pause for a moment. Notice what immediately asks for your attention. Notice what happens in your body. Notice the adjustments you are already making before your day has really started.
You may discover that changing the way you look at work is already the first step towards changing the way you live it.
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