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Mental health in today’s workplace is no longer a matter of personal resilience, but more of a reflection of corporate culture. Recent data from Great Place To Work Türkiye reveals that trust-based work environments not only enhance performance but also have a profound impact on employees’ psychological well-being.
The research shows a significant gap between Türkiye’s Best Employers and other companies in measures of psychological health—a gap largely driven by perceptions of trust and being valued as a person. As World Mental Health Day underscores, building cultures of trust has become essential for maintaining psychological resilience in the workplace.
According to Great Place To Work Türkiye’s Trust Index, companies ranked among Türkiye’s Best Employers reported an average 80% positive score on questions related to mental health and psychological safety.
In contrast, other companies scored around 55%. That 25-point gap, the CEO of the company that made the research notes, is not about perks or pay. It’s about trust. Where employees feel seen, heard, and respected as people, stress and burnout fall dramatically. Where they don’t, resilience becomes just another word for survival.
When asked if their workplace is emotionally healthy, nearly three-quarters of workers in top-ranked firms agreed—compared to less than half in others.
Psychological safety, the data suggests, is not a luxury or a niche HR initiative but a fundamental axis of corporate culture.
According to the OECD, Türkiye has the longest working hours among OECD countries, following Colombia. In previous years, Turkish workers ranked first on this list, ahead of Colombians.
When asked whether they are encouraged to balance work and life, employees at the best companies were almost twice as likely to say yes. In others, fewer than half felt supported.
That near 30-point gap is not just about flexible hours, it’s about trust. Workers who feel believed in manage their time responsibly. Those who feel monitored lose balance entirely. The result? Productivity drops, and exhaustion spreads.
In Türkiye’s high-pressure corporate world, balance has become the new luxury—and one that only some employers can afford to offer.
The Trust Index findings suggest that direct managers play a critical role in shaping psychological well-being. Employees who feel their managers “value them as human beings, not just as labor” report markedly higher morale.
In top-ranked companies, nearly nine out of 10 respondents said their managers act ethically and honestly, compared with roughly six in ten in other workplaces. That 30-point difference underscores something that HR policies can’t fix: people’s experience of fairness and integrity at the managerial level.
The message is simple but often overlooked—mental health starts with management, not with wellness programs.
That means people usually don’t quit jobs, they quit managers.
Mental health at work, the findings make clear, cannot be solved by yoga breaks or mindfulness apps alone. Employees crave visibility—to be listened to, understood, and appreciated.
Being “seen” by one’s manager may sound abstract, but it’s a measurable driver of psychological safety. Recognition and empathy create an environment where employees don’t fear mistakes or hide their stress. Real leadership, it turns out, is less about driving performance and more about creating space for people to stay human.
It’s about the basic tone of interaction—whether employees are invited to speak, whether feedback is taken seriously, and whether their work is visible. Those small signals of value often determine whether people stay engaged or quietly withdraw.
The Meditopia 2025 Wellbeing report, based on responses from more than 150,000 employees across 100 companies, paints a wider picture of the country’s workforce under stress.
Stress and anxiety remain high, while happiness and sleep quality hover around moderate levels. Physical activity is low. Overall well-being scores sit near the midpoint of the scale—a sign of fatigue rather than crisis, but with clear warning signs.
For most employees, the emotional volatility of work is constant. Nearly all respondents said their moods are shaped by their job, studies, or close relationships, with about three-quarters naming work as the main factor. Performance pressure, financial stress, and poor management emerge as the biggest triggers for burnout.
One in 10 employees said they rarely—or never—feel happy at work.
Another pattern stands out: optimism about workplace health drops as you move down the hierarchy. Senior executives tend to see their organizations as supportive and mentally healthy. Frontline workers, meanwhile, describe something different.
This mismatch signals a cultural gap between the boardroom and the day-to-day experience of staff. While senior leaders focus on strategy and values, employees live those values in real time—through conversations, workloads, and management styles. When communication breaks down, trust erodes.
It’s a form of distance that can’t be bridged by internal campaigns or slogans; it requires managers who are visible, accessible, and willing to listen.
The data also reveal a gendered pattern: women working in low-trust companies report significantly lower emotional well-being than men. The imbalance points to a broader challenge in Türkiye’s corporate life, inclusion that often exists in principle but not in practice.
Trust, the data suggests, is not a soft virtue but a form of infrastructure—the foundation that allows organizations to function under pressure. It starts with leadership but can only survive when it’s shared across teams.
Workplaces that encourage open dialogue, accept mistakes as part of learning, and maintain transparency tend to show stronger performance and lower burnout. In contrast, environments ruled by control and silence drain morale.
Trust doesn’t need to be declared; it has to be demonstrated—in how feedback is handled, how conflicts are resolved, and how leaders respond when things go wrong.
Finally, sustainable culture depends not just on listening but on visibility. Appreciation—the simple act of acknowledging effortfeeds psychological safety and belonging.
In workplaces where contributions are noticed and celebrated, stress levels drop and engagement rises. Where effort goes unseen, exhaustion takes root.
Healthy minds, the data suggests, do not grow in isolation. They thrive in cultures where trust, fairness, and recognition reinforce one another, quietly, consistently, and every day.
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