The Iceberg Beneath Mental Health and Safety
A construction company recently shared their story about mental wellness and what they have been doing to address their unique challenges. Every shift, before work begins, each employee identifies how they're feeling using three simple colors.
Green: I'm good.
Yellow: I'm dealing with something.
Red: Today isn't my best day.
That's it. The exercise takes less than a minute, and no employee is asked to explain why. It is just a baseline for the day. It's a simple check-in before the workday begins.
The Infrastructure Beneath the Iceberg
Like an iceberg, the activity is the smallest part of the story...just the tip. What has unfolded from this exercise is social connection and smart decisions.
Construction has long been an industry where workers are expected to keep their personal struggles to themselves. It's an environment built on toughness, independence, and getting the job done. At the same time, it's also one of the industries facing some of the highest rates of suicide, substance misuse, and mental health challenges. Add heavy equipment, elevated work, and dangerous job sites, and distraction becomes more than a personal issue; it becomes a huge safety issue.
Changing that culture doesn't happen because someone introduces colored cards during a morning meeting. It happens because leadership decides vulnerability saves lives, managers learn to respond without judgment but with assistance, supervisors learn how to handle difficult conversations, and policies allow employees to receive needed support. Once these key influencers become consistent, a culture of trust will grow and prosper.
Breaking the Cultural Ice
Eventually, after months or even years of intentional programming around mental wellbeing, a crew member feels comfortable saying: "Today I'm yellow. My toddler kept me up half the night with an ear infection.” That's when the simple exercise not only informs supervisors of someone’s mental presence, but social connection forms when a colleague says: “Oh, I remember those days.” This helps build the path for employees to know it’s normal to not always be green. It’s OK to be yellow or red. The colors aren't the innovation; it’s the culture change.
We see this pattern over and over again in successful wellness programs. Employees see a wellness challenge, an onsite screening, a walking competition, a Wellness Week, or a supervisor toolkit and think that is their wellness program.
What they don't see is the infrastructure underneath. All the planning, decisions, and organizational adjustments that need to be made so wellness becomes the tool that helps employees thrive both at work and home. The countless small decisions that transform isolated activities into lasting cultural change.
It's tempting to look at another company's wellness initiative and think: "We should do that." And, sometimes you should. However, copying the visible activity without building the support beneath it is like building the tip of an iceberg and expecting it to float. The hard work is almost always below the surface.
Keeping Wellness Afloat
At HealthSource Solutions, this is where we focus our efforts: helping leaders build accountability, creating communication strategies that reach even hard-to-reach employees, supporting managers, and developing programs that adapt as organizations evolve. We design systems that make healthy choices part of everyday decisions — whether that means making a simple food choice or adjusting a staff assignment when an employee indicates they are “red” and should not perform high-risk work.
The activities people notice are rarely the reason a wellness program succeeds; they're simply the visible evidence that the foundation beneath is working.
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