Mental Health in Facilities- Who Takes Care of the Caretakers?

From our August 12, 2026 webinar, Mental Health in Facilities- Who Takes Care of the Caretakers?, CAFAE brought together industry professionals to discuss the mental health pressures facing facility professionals and how individuals, teams and organizations can better recognize and respond to them.

Facility professionals are often the people others turn to when something goes wrong. Emergencies arise, priorities shift, resources are stretched and expectations remain high, all while buildings need to remain safe, functional and operational. The discussion asked participants to turn some of that attention toward the people behind the operations: who is taking care of the caretakers?

During the discussion, moderator Marcia O'Connor was joined by Ben Givlin and Babita Singh, with participants contributing their own experiences and perspectives throughout the session. Together, the group explored the pressures contributing to stress and burnout, the signs we may be overlooking, practical ways to protect our own well-being and the role organizations can play in creating healthier workplaces.

Key Themes from the Discussion

The Pressure to Keep Everything Moving Adds Up

In facilities, plans can change quickly. A seemingly small request can become a much larger operational issue, an emergency can immediately shift priorities, and staffing or budget constraints do not necessarily reduce expectations.

Ben described a familiar challenge for facility professionals: wanting to be responsive and help, only to discover that the situation is much bigger than initially presented.

“We want to be those guys who say absolutely, and make that client happy... [but] you walk in and you go, this is a lot bigger of a job than you were expecting.”

Babita similarly highlighted the need to plan for emergencies while juggling multiple priorities, including building flexibility into the schedule so there is room to pivot when the unexpected happens.

Participants added examples from their own workplaces, including staffing shortages during healthcare outbreaks and the pressure to drop existing priorities when an emergency arises.

The discussion reinforced that these pressures are not necessarily isolated events. When responding, adapting and “doing more with less” become part of everyday operations, the cumulative impact on people needs to be recognized.

Burnout Has Signs- We Need to Recognize and Respond to Them

Burnout does not always look the same from one person to another. It may show up as increased absences, frustration, withdrawal, reduced engagement or simply a noticeable change in someone's behaviour.

Ben encouraged managers to pay attention to these changes rather than immediately treating them as performance problems:

“Having that lens of compassion and asking; 'is everything okay?'”

He gave the example of sharing positive customer feedback with an employee who might normally be pleased or engaged, only to receive a flat response. For a manager who knows their team, that change can be an indication that something else is going on.

Recognizing the signs does not mean having all the answers. It means knowing your people well enough to notice when something has changed, creating an opportunity for support and letting them know help is available without pushing them to share more than they are comfortable with.

As Marcia emphasized during the discussion, not every behavioural change means burnout, but it can be an indicator that something is wrong and deserves attention.

Protecting Your Mental Health Requires Boundaries

For professionals accustomed to being the person everyone turns to, setting limits can be difficult.

Ben reflected on how his own health challenges changed his perspective on work and time:

“You have to be able to establish those healthy boundaries.”

That means remembering there is a life outside of work, trusting capable team members and becoming comfortable recognizing when, as one participant put it, “I’m at capacity.” Another participant reflected on reaching a point where work had consumed nearly everything outside of it:

“I was living to work, not working to live.”

Babita shared several practical approaches for creating healthier boundaries during the workday: take breaks, eat lunch away from the computer, build flexibility into the schedule for interruptions and create dedicated time for focused or “deep thinking” work.

The strategies may be simple, but the larger message was important: being dependable does not mean being endlessly available.

Mental Health Should Be Planned For, Not Just Responded To

Toward the end of the session, participants were asked to consider how their organizations approach physical safety through planning, policies and training, followed by a bigger question:

If we treated mental health with the same seriousness as physical safety, what would we do differently?

The conversation shifted from individual strategies to organizational responsibility. Ideas included training managers to recognize signs of distress and respond appropriately, establishing clearer procedures, creating safe and genuinely anonymous ways for employees to share concerns, and providing access to supports such as coaching and therapy.

The group also discussed workplace practices that can help reduce pressure before it reaches a breaking point, from creating more flexibility and protected time to taking a closer look at workloads and expectations. The familiar expectation to “do more with less” was challenged, particularly when reduced budgets or resources are not accompanied by realistic changes in service expectations.

Treating mental health seriously means looking beyond whether resources are available when someone is already struggling. It means considering how workloads, expectations, leadership practices and workplace culture can either contribute to the problem or become part of the support.

What This Means for Professionals

In our industry, professionals spend their careers thinking about safety, risk, resilience and the continued performance of the environments they manage. The discussion reinforced that the same attention needs to extend to the people behind those operations.

Burnout has signs. Recognizing and responding to them can help create an opportunity for support before someone reaches a breaking point.

Mental health also does not need to sit entirely with the individual. Leaders, teams and organizations can create environments where boundaries are respected, workloads are discussed openly and people are supported rather than judged when they are struggling.

Ultimately, the message from the discussion was clear: healthy buildings require healthy people.

Continuing the Conversation

At CAFAE, these conversations are designed to bring forward real-world perspectives, encourage knowledge sharing and create space for meaningful industry dialogue.

Mental health in facilities is not a conversation that ends with one webinar. As workplace pressures and expectations continue to evolve, there is an opportunity for professionals, leaders and organizations to think more intentionally about how we support the people responsible for keeping our environments running.

Join us for our next webinar, Speaking with Confidence to Leadership, on September 9, 2026. This session will explore how professionals can communicate operational challenges, present ideas with confidence and position conversations in ways that support leadership decision-making and organizational priorities.