A New Approach For Validating Employee Mental Health Programs

Value on investment, not ROI, can transform how you measure the impact of employee wellbeing

Here’s the deal. Even before the pandemic, you had probably heard of the potential for positive outcomes from an employee mental health solution that could address the “whole employee” — the whole employee experience, in fact — and would be proactive rather than treatment-focused. After all, depression and anxiety are costing businesses $1 trillion a year in lost productivity, according to The World Health Organization. And that was the cost before productivity took a hit from Covid-19 and all of the political, cultural, and economic turmoil of 2020. 
 

So now, voluntary benefits and initiatives such as employee mental health have the attention of the C-suite. This means HR and benefits leaders need to come to the table armed with numbers that will validate the purchase or renewal of vendor solutions aimed at improving employee mental wellbeing. Know this: What got you here won’t get you there. You won’t get to prove the merit of an optimal employee mental platform if you try to prove its worth using traditional ROI methods.

It’s time to change gears and think instead of VOI — the value on investment of your employee mental health program — rather than trying to nail down its ROI! 

Employee Mental Health Seen Through the Lens of VOI  

Compared with traditional ROI, the VOI approach for championing the cost of an employee mental health solution takes a different view of what to measure. From a VOI perspective, a proactive, whole-person approach to employee mental health is grounded in its ability to move the needle on seven specific areas of daily life that in turn affect the three spheres of the human condition: our psychological, emotional, and physical wellness.

Those seven aspects of daily life that nourish and support our mind, soul, and body are:
 

• Sleep
• Fulfillment
• Health
• Ability to cope
• Connection
• Calmness
• Happiness

A proactive, educational, and prevention-based employee mental health solution will support people with self-assessment and guided tools and programs in all seven of those aspects of daily life. The right mental health solution will also educate employees to recognize — and learn how to talk about — symptoms of mental health in themselves and others. It guides them to seek appropriate help through EAPs or other underutilized programs and core benefits you’re already spending money on. This, in fact, is the true north star of an employee mental health platform that is grounded in a clinically proven approach and a mission to engage and support every employee. 

This model offers preventative care and a guided path to care for 5 in 5 employees — not only the 1 in 5 people in the U.S. who have said they have mental health concerns. This is why the right mental health platform will deliver clear value on your investment in four areas that are critical to business success today:
 

• Company brand or image
• Organizational culture
• Existing spend on well-being programs
• Employee performance

Take, for example, an employee who suffers from insomnia due to the recent pressures of forced homeschooling while working from home in the midst of a pandemic. Sleep and connection would most definitely be affected. Their symptoms will trickle down and pick up power if they’re not discussed or mitigated. Ultimately an employee’s lack of sleep will affect the bigger picture. It could cause a lack of engagement, a negative employee experience, a sense of not feeling supported by the organization, burnout, and, at worse, an employee leaving on bad terms and letting the world know about it through social media like Glassdoor.

Sure, companies have found all kinds of ad hoc ways to ease employee stress in today’s world. The Principal Foundation Group reports that 40% of employers were willing in the last year to let their employees take PTO, sick pay, or both to manage their child care needs. Some employers offered new, more flexible working hours to accommodate virtual schooling without affecting an employee’s pay. What these ideas fail to do is get ahead of the game. They’re treating symptoms of burnout and stress.

It’s cheaper and more effective to be proactive and address all your employees. How many others in your workforce are suffering in silence? It comes down to a whole-person, whole-organization approach, and one that’s clinically based and addresses mental health before it even becomes an issue. 

Where to Start

There is no quick fix for employee mental health, but it’s always best to look at what you have first and identify what you can do to make it better. Know your priorities, survey your people, look past the EAP. See what else exists out there in the world of work tech that can work for you. Aim for scientifically backed tools, data-driven results, and guidance from the experts. 

Follow the Footsteps of Those Who Are Successful

John Lewis Partnership, named the U.K.’s most attractive employer and awarded by Indeed as the 8th-best private-sector employer, decided to tackle employee mental health head-on by embracing a scientifically backed, whole-person, whole-organization platform. Their expectations were high, considering that they’ve focused on employee mental health since 1929, and the new program would be offered to all of John Lewis’ 80,000 employees.

The results were impressive. After the initial launch, supported by a Google+ community group and a robust internal rollout campaign, over 1,000 employees signed up. A year later, 8,000 employees had accessed the platform’s resources. One tool in particular — it offers on-the-go wellbeing tips and programs — was used over 52,000 times for a total of more than 270,000 minutes. 
One employee noted: “I’m calmer, less anxious, and maybe even a better parent.”

It’s from attitudes like that, that an optimal employee mental health solution will help:
 

• Burnish the company brand and image, ensuring you stay attractive to job prospects and your current employees. This will soon be more critical than ever, as the demand for labor is about to pick up again as people start looking to change employers.
• Create a culture of caring — in an age where an increasing number of employees say they’d be more inclined to work for a company that shows it cares for its employees and the community.
• Enhance your existing wellbeing spend through education and routing employees to programs and benefits that are currently underutilized.
• Improve employee performance by creating a safe workspace and reducing stress, presenteeism, and burnout.

So, yes, it’s time to rethink your approach to measuring the worth of employee mental health programs. And it’s certainly time to give your people the employee experience they need and deserve.

Resources

Nick Taylor is CEO and Co-Founder of Unmind. Throughout his career, Taylor has always worked in mental health. During his time as a lead clinical psychologist in Britain’s National Health Service, he realized the true importance of giving people the right care at the right time and why the focus on mental health needs to be preventative.  Connect Dr. Nick Taylor Follow @unmindhq