Juggling on a tightrope: Experiences of small and micro business managers responding to employees with mental health difficulties
基于对21位英国小微企业管理者45个员工案例的深度访谈，揭示管理者在支持与绩效间应对员工心理健康问题的三种核心张力：个体与集体、自信与谨慎、非正式与正式。
This article presents findings from an in-depth qualitative study focused exclusively on the first-hand experiences of small and micro businesses managers who have responded to employees with mental health difficulties. Despite growing policy focus on workplace mental health, empirical research evidence on management experiences of responding to mental health issues in a small or micro business context is rare. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 21 UK-based small and micro business managers who described 45 individual employee cases, we examine how managers traverse a support-performance continuum, and use a tension-based lens to analyse the tensions that managers experienced. We examine three key tensions for small and micro business managers that surfaced when responding to employees with mental health problems: (1) Individual vs Collective; (2) Confidence vs Caution; (3) Informal vs Formal. Our analysis exposes how managers handle tensions when managing at the nexus of support and performance and contributes a deeper understanding of the dynamics and challenges of managing mental health problems in small and micro businesses.