Employers benefit by supporting employees holistically

It’s important to remember that employees don’t leave their personal lives behind when they go to work. Especially now, as many people are working from their homes, they bring their whole selves, including any concerns or issues related to mental health and substance use. This means employees’ behavioral health conditions can have an impact on their work, and whether those effects show up in productivity, work quality, turnover rates or other negative impacts – it means employers have a stake in their workers’ wellbeing. By prioritizing and supporting employees holistically, employers are also boosting morale, encouraging loyalty and driving retention of their personnel — meaning, employers benefit, too.

A win-win-win scenario

Those who’ve been involved in workplace wellbeing efforts for the last few decades have been advocating for this as a win-win-win scenario, since the individual worker, the company and society all benefit. The positive social outcomes are important, too, as the United States has been grappling with an epidemic of various “diseases of despair” for at least the last 20 years.

Rising rates of depression, suicide, addiction and overdose deaths have a huge negative impact on our country, even to the point that Americans’ average life expectancy at birth has lagged behind that of other developed countries. There’s broad agreement that addressing these important issues will involve all of our institutions, including the American workplace.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the subsequent mitigation efforts, has compounded these problems. Americans have reported significantly increased rates of anxiety, depression and alcohol use since the governmental stay-at-home orders were first issued.

Additionally, rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and domestic violence appear to be spiking while the number of overdose deaths related to opioid misuse, which had finally started to stabilize or even decrease in the last few years, is heading towards record highs.

With approximately 60% of employed Americans working remotely, it is impossible to untangle personal life from work life. Employees’ personal lives – including children, partners, pets and homes – are easily seen by others during virtual meetings. It’s becoming more difficult to conceal issues like poverty, family conflicts, homelessness, addiction and mental illness when everything is visible.

Opportunity to design new benefits

But as employers become more aware of the hidden stresses of their workers’ private lives, they have an opportunity to design new benefits and innovative solutions to help. One such benefit that can help entire organizations is greater flexibility in scheduling than offered in the past, since workers’ personal lives and outside obligations may make it difficult for them to work their usual hours.

This may mean employers change their policies around time off from “sick days” to “personal days,” allowing people to take time to address any needs in their lives, including their mental health or substance use issues.

While an employee who’s feeling too depressed to work might have hidden their true need for time off before — or went into work anyway, contributing to the negative impact of presenteeism — with personal days, employees can take the day off without explanation.

There are also many other options for holistic employee support that can address every aspect of workers’ lives:

• Mental wellbeing benefits. Employers can offer additional mental wellbeing benefits, such as expanded Employee Assistance Program (EAP), lunch & learn sessions on coping with behavioral health issues, resilience training, Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), and new mobile behavioral health benefits (such as text-based services involving behavioral health professionals or app-based artificial intelligence services).
• Tele-mental health services. Employers can also expand their traditional benefits by offering tele-mental health services from EAP sessions, to counseling or therapy, to visits with psychiatric nurses and psychiatrists.
• Additional paid leave. With the passage of the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act (FFCRA) and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, as well as state-specific leave acts and other legislation, employers are able to offer workers directly impacted by the pandemic additional paid leave, and some employers may go beyond that to offer leave for issues like finding childcare or eldercare.
• Stay at Work/Return to Work programs. Companies may collaborate with workers compensation or disability insurance vendors to implement formal Stay at Work and Return to Work programs, which have shown to have a positive return on investment for a variety of conditions, including mental health and substance use conditions.
• Financial wellness services. Financial planning and budgeting services, debt management and debt consolidation assistance, credit counseling, and similar services offered through employer-sponsored EAPs can help workers cope in the face of economic uncertainty.
• Income replacement benefits. Adding benefits around income replacement, such as short- and long-term disability leave, as well as retirement planning, is also beneficial to employees right now.
• Stress management/wellbeing offerings. To cope with stress, employers can add wellbeing services to their wellness offerings, such as virtual yoga, mindfulness, meditation and exercise classes.

Two-way communication is key

It’s also important to remember that with any benefit or effort of support, communication is key. And this communication must be two-way to work. Many employers are using regular pulse surveys to gauge employee wellbeing, morale and engagement, as well as to identify issues employees see as top priorities. Data from those surveys can be analyzed to find opportunities, but employees must be involved in developing action plans to target concerns.

Employees can give invaluable input into not only what solutions may help with a specific issue, but also how solutions can be most effectively structured and communicated. By prioritizing benefits for behavioral health conditions, employers demonstrate their ongoing commitment to their workers’ wellbeing.

The stress caused by the pandemic has changed your workers

It’s commonly noted that the workforce returning to the office after stay-at-home orders are lifted will not be the same workforce that was sent home to work remotely months ago because of the toll on their mental health.

A significant percentage of those workers will return with new behavioral health conditions, particularly anxiety, depression, PTSD, alcohol use and opioid use disorders. Supervisors must be sensitive to any evidence of those conditions. If an employee’s struggles with a behavioral health condition is impairing their work, it’s in the supervisor’s best interest to recognize that and provide assistance or accommodations to help the employee cope — and, of course, in some situations, that’s required by law.

Ultimately, this isn’t a crisis with a one-size-fits all solution. But providing comprehensive support to employees as whole people is certain to pay off when we return to more normal times.

Employees who have felt cared for by their employers are more loyal, more productive and more likely to recommend the company as a good place to work. The opportunity is there to come through this stronger and better than ever.

Daniel N. Jolivet, Ph.D. is the Workplace Possibilities Practice Consultant at The Standard, where he provides leadership, analysis and consultative insights into the Workplace Possibilities service line. He is a designated subject matter expert on Stay at Work and Return to Work services, ADA, and behavioral health. He is a clinical psychologist licensed in Georgia and Oregon, and has worked in behavioral health since 1980. Prior to joining The Standard, Dan worked in managed behavioral health care organizations for 20 years in a variety of management roles, and he was in clinical practice as a child psychologist until 2003.