SHRM, May 2025
After prioritizing employee mental health during the pandemic and moving rapidly to increase mental health support for their workers, employers are facing an even greater and more complex mental health challenge: climate anxiety. Climate anxiety is more than vague worries about the future. It’s a level of apprehension and fear about threats to life on planet Earth that interferes with functioning in day-to-day life, including in the workplace.
Climate anxiety is highest among younger workers, meaning that each wave of young people landing their first jobs will increase the level of climate anxiety roiling every employer’s workforce. Unlike the pandemic, climate anxiety not only won’t subside but is destined to become worse for the foreseeable future, warned Susan Clayton, a conservation psychologist and professor of psychology and environmental studies at the College of Wooster in Ohio.
