# City of Boston Employee Mental Health Strategy

Graduate fellow · 2022 · Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics

## A question from an employee

My 2022 fellowship with the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics started with a question a City worker asked Mayor Wu on the Orange Line: what was Boston doing to support employee mental health?

My assignment was to map the support already available to the City’s workforce and recommend what could improve it. I treated it as an organizational question as well as a benefits question. Access to counseling mattered, and so did what it was like to work on a team every day.

## Look at resources and working conditions together

![2022 mind map of City of Boston employee mental-health stakeholders and resources, including Human Resources, schools, public health, and public-safety peer-support teams](https://gideon-emmanuel.com/assets/cases/employee-wellbeing-map.webp)

Employee mental health stakeholders and resources, 2022.

I mapped employee benefits and support programs, talked with City staff and leaders, and compared approaches across 14 cities, including conversations with wellbeing leaders in Portland and San José.

Resident-facing teams raised questions a benefits inventory couldn’t answer. How did coworkers support each other? How did managers respond after a difficult interaction? What could a team change about its own ways of working?

I shared the public side of the argument in [Exploring wellbeing in the public sector workforce](https://newurbanmechanics.medium.com/exploring-wellbeing-in-the-public-sector-workforce-e92342627a4b), published by New Urban Mechanics in August 2022.

## Give the recommendations a starting point

My final report laid out three opportunities: a strategic approach to individual wellbeing support, backing for employee-led initiatives, and culture and peer-support work with frontline teams. I turned those into proposed responsibilities, first-year priorities, and a process for bringing the right people together.

## What I delivered

The fellowship produced a map of the City’s existing supports, comparative research, and recommendations for leadership. The line at the top of my research notes still sums it up: “We cannot manufacture care, it has to be about building true human connection.”

## Explore the work

[Read the public New Urban Mechanics article](https://newurbanmechanics.medium.com/exploring-wellbeing-in-the-public-sector-workforce-e92342627a4b)

## Scope of my work

A 2022 graduate fellowship with New Urban Mechanics: a map of existing supports, comparative research, and recommendations for leadership.

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[Gideon Emmanuel](https://gideon-emmanuel.com/about/) · [Let’s talk](mailto:gideon.m.emmanuel@gmail.com)

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