Beyond the Balance Sheet: Putting Mental Health at the Heart of Sustainable Performance
How many employees continue to say yes when they are overwhelmed, work beyond their limits because they fear losing their jobs, or remain silent because they worry that speaking up will make them appear difficult? These questions took centre stage at the Sustainable Wellbeing Masterclass: What the Balance Sheet Doesn’t Capture, convened by Soul City Institute for Social Justice CEO Phinah Kodisang and our Chief Financial Officer , Dumisani Dlamini at the Finance Indaba 2026.
The masterclass explored the relationship between mental health, workplace culture, financial sustainability and organisational performance. It reinforced an important message: mental health is not separate from the way we work.
As we commemorate Mental Health Awareness Month, this conversation reminds us that creating healthier workplaces requires more than encouraging individuals to practise self-care. It requires organisations to examine the environments, expectations and systems that shape people's well-being every day.
The hidden cost of always saying yes
The pressure to perform can make it difficult for employees to recognise and communicate their limits.
Fear of job insecurity, the desire for career advancement and concerns about being perceived as uncooperative can lead people to accept more work than they can reasonably manage. Over time, working through exhaustion becomes normalised, while taking a break or asking for help can feel like a professional risk.
During the masterclass, our CEO Phinah Kodisang challenged participants to consider why people push themselves to work at the expense of their well-being.
The question invited us to look beyond individual behaviour and examine organisational culture. When employees feel they cannot say no, speak honestly about their workload or acknowledge that they are struggling, the problem extends beyond personal resilience.
It becomes a question of how work is organised, how leaders respond to vulnerability and what behaviours organisations reward. A workplace should not require people to sacrifice their mental health to prove their value.
Five key takeaways from the Sustainable Wellbeing Masterclass
The masterclass challenged leaders to rethink how organisations understand performance and the role employee well-being plays in achieving sustainable results.
1. Well-being is not a perk; it is strategic infrastructure.
SCI CEO Phinah Kodisang emphasised that well-being is part of the capacity that allows organisational strategy to become performance. Mental health must be integrated into how organisations operate, make decisions and support their employees, rather than treated as an optional benefit.
2. Short-term output can conceal long-term depletion.
Employees may continue meeting deadlines and targets while experiencing emotional exhaustion. Strong performance figures do not always reflect the well-being of the people producing them. Organisations must look beyond immediate results to understand whether performance can be sustained over time.
3. Organisations must stop confusing endurance with resilience.
Constantly pushing through exhaustion is not necessarily resilience. Leaders must recognise the difference between employees navigating challenges with appropriate support and employees being expected to absorb unsustainable pressure.
4. Workplace culture influences mental well-being.
Fear of losing a job, missing out on a promotion or being labelled difficult can prevent employees from setting boundaries and asking for help. Leaders must examine the workplace conditions that make it difficult for people to cope, speak up or protect their well-being.
5. Human signals must inform organisational decisions.
Finance and management leaders do not need to diagnose mental health conditions, but they do need to recognise workplace conditions that increase risk. Employee depletion can affect organisational expenses, productivity and value creation. Well-being must therefore feature in management discussions, risk assessments and long-term planning.
Together, these takeaways challenge organisations to move beyond measuring what employees produce and consider the conditions that enable them to perform sustainably.
The financial implications of mental health
Mental health is a human concern, but it also has organisational and financial implications. During the masterclass, CFO, Dumisani Dlamini highlighted the importance of recognising the costs associated with employee depletion and how these can affect organisational expenses and value creation.
Prolonged workplace stress can contribute to absenteeism, reduced effectiveness, staff turnover and increased pressure on colleagues. These consequences may not appear immediately as a single, clearly identifiable line item in a financial report, yet they can affect organisational sustainability.
As the discussion emphasised, depletion affects both expense and value creation. Finance leaders do not need to diagnose mental health conditions, but they can help identify workplace risks, ask critical questions and ensure that the human consequences of organisational decisions are considered alongside financial indicators.
Mental well-being should therefore form part of conversations about risk management, resource allocation, productivity and long-term planning.
Building workplaces where people feel safe to speak
Trust is essential to mental well-being.
Employees should be able to communicate when their workload becomes unmanageable, ask for support and raise concerns without fearing that doing so will damage their professional reputation.
Counselling services and employee assistance programmes can provide important support, but organisations must also examine the conditions contributing to distress. Supporting an employee while leaving harmful workplace practices unchanged risks addressing the symptoms without confronting the causes.
Leaders must ask themselves: What is it about the way we work that makes it difficult for people to cope?
That question can open the door to meaningful organisational change, including more realistic workloads, better communication, supportive management and a culture that respects reasonable boundaries. Creating healthier workplaces is not solely the responsibility of human resources or wellness practitioners. It is a shared responsibility across leadership, finance, management and every part of the organisation.
Commemorating Mental Health Awareness Month through action
Mental Health Awareness Month provides an opportunity to challenge stigma, encourage help-seeking and recognise that mental health is an essential part of overall well-being. But awareness must translate into action. For organisations, this means creating environments where mental health is taken seriously throughout the year, not only when awareness campaigns take place.
It means ensuring employees know where to access support, managers understand the importance of trust and respectful communication, and organisational policies are reflected in everyday practice. It also means acknowledging that mental health challenges are not always visible. Someone may appear productive, attend every meeting and meet every deadline while privately struggling to cope. A more compassionate workplace does not assume that performance tells the whole story. Instead, it creates space for honest conversations, early intervention and support without judgement.
Doing more with less but at what cost?
For organisations working with limited resources, the pressure to deliver more with less is real. Efficiency and accountability matter, but they should not come at the expense of the people responsible for achieving organisational goals.
Sustainable performance requires us to reconsider what success looks like. It is not enough to ask how much an organisation has achieved. We must also ask whether the people behind those achievements have the resources, support and capacity to continue.
The Sustainable Wellbeing Masterclass at the Finance Indaba challenged leaders to look beyond the numbers and recognise that mental well-being is part of the foundation on which sustainable performance depends. This Mental Health Awareness Month, let us move beyond treating well-being as an individual responsibility and begin building workplaces that make it possible for people to thrive. Behind every financial report, strategy and performance target are human beings. Their well-being matters. Their mental health matters. And sustainable performance must never come at the cost of either.
A question for leaders: What is one change your organisation can make to protect employee mental health while creating the conditions for sustainable performance? Soul City Institute for Social Justice advancing social justice by putting people, dignity and well-being at the centre of the conversation.
