A peek under the hood: How a mental health company cared for its own during COVID-19
Here are some of the key takeaways from one company's experience that can inform other employers’ approaches.
Facing the unique challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s not a surprise that employees across the country have experienced heightened anxiety and stress, not only related to fear and uncertainty around the risk of infection, but also the significant changes that have arisen at work and home. As a provider of virtual behavioral health, we, at AbleTo, knew early on that our employees would need increased support. We recognized that the challenges our employees might face were myriad and that they called for both broad-based and targeted efforts to address them on a human level.
Related: Mental health benefits: Understanding where to start
As the world faces a second wave of infections and lockdowns, we wanted to share some of the key takeaways from our own experience that can inform other employers’ approaches.
Identify employee needs: Listen first
Listening carefully to employee concerns sounds like an obvious first step to providing them with the right resources. But identifying the full breadth of issues posed by this pandemic on employees’ lives requires thoughtful, strategic planning. At AbleTo, we listened first. We began by conducting a two-part survey to gauge how our people were being impacted by the pandemic. Responses were kept anonymous and confidential to ensure employees could be open and honest so that solutions truly addressed employee needs.
What the surveys found was not surprising, but nonetheless was difficult to hear. Our surveys revealed that half of respondents rated their mental health “worse” or “much worse” by May than at the start of the pandemic in March. At the same time, 35% reported uncertainty around how to even access their mental health benefits.
The survey also uncovered the primary issues driving anxieties, many of which will likely resonate with other employers. Our employees’ concerns stemmed from a variety of areas such as the stresses of working from home, work-life balance, family finances, finding credible sources of information on COVID-19, and general uncertainty about the future. It’s worth noting that AbleTo’s survey findings were reflected at all levels of the organization, including the executive team which served as a reminder that the current challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic touch everyone.
We also unearthed some stressors that were specific to having offices in major cities with employees expressing concerns about the risks posed by using public transportation if and when the office reopened. Further anxieties arose from this ambiguity about when the offices would reopen, as some employees living in major cities affected by the pandemic, such as New York, had made temporary living arrangements elsewhere.
Together these findings reminded us that collecting anonymous, honest feedback is a necessary first step to developing concrete solutions and that any response needed to support the varying needs of individuals across the organization.
Create a response plan
Putting resources into place to address employee concerns called for an “all hands on deck” approach from every level of the company. Working remotely and being socially isolated from one another required us to think outside the box about the actions we wanted to take to support our employees.
Here are some examples of the approach we took at AbleTo:
1. Addressing employees’ mental health needs: We reminded employees that they have free 1. access to AbleTo’s own clinical programs even if they were not participating in our health plan benefits, and we ensured they knew how to access our Employee Assistance Program and any additional health plan benefits.
2. Establishing a Work From Home Committee: We knew we needed a dedicated team to really think differently about what working from home meant during the COVID pandemic. Some of our employees living alone felt extremely isolated. Others living with families had different needs and were trying to balance work from home with parenting and sometimes even managing remote learning with their children. An employee-led group implemented solutions to help employees with varying needs.
3. Clearly communicating employee benefits: The People and Culture team communicated benefits information, offered advice on 401k contribution decisions given concerns about volatility in the stock market, and clarified health plan offerings.
4. Taking a “people first” approach to return to work: Our Pandemic Response Team met regularly from the onset of the pandemic to lead decisions and communications around transition to remote work, site-specific logistics, and on timing of reopening offices. The team was empowered to communicate regularly and directly to employees and made sure that employee health and well-being was the primary driver of decision-making.
5. Being a credible source of information on COVID-19: As a health care provider organization, it was important to us that our employees had accurate and reliable information about COVID-19. We held monthly virtual sessions where employees submitted health questions about the pandemic to our own medical expert and Chief Medical Officer. Getting employees the information they needed in a clear and engaging way was paramount to alleviating stress.
6. Engaging employees in new ways: Employee engagement takes on new meaning in a fully remote workforce. We shifted our monthly town halls to virtual, held new “zoom networking” sessions, held virtual Q+A sessions with each member of our senior leadership team, sent care packages to our employees, and much more.
The example starts at the top
As a provider of behavioral health care, the most impactful thing we could do to address the pressures of the pandemic was offer our own clinical programs to anyone in need of mental health support. Members of our executive team set the tone early by even making it publicly known that some of us were using those same mental health resources. By destigmatizing mental health in this way, we hoped to continue to create a culture of transparency and an understanding that all of us share the same needs and challenges. Our leaders tried to role model other positive behaviors as well, trying to create separation between work hours and the rest of life, encouraging physical activity by participating actively in AbleTo’s company-wide step challenge, and owning it when our children showed up on the video screen now and then!
Culture plays a crucial role
The task of meeting employees’ needs during a crisis such as the pandemic becomes considerably easier when a company’s culture is positive, inviting, and encourages honest dialogue. Every conversation along the way contributes to feelings of support—training sessions, Q&As, open-ended dialogues with the People and Culture team or with members of our dedicated Pandemic Response Team. When employees feel genuinely heard, they feel empowered to offer their perspectives. Their own personal mental health improves when they know they can speak openly about workplace stress. And when employees feel better, productivity and work satisfaction improve as well, which collectively boosts the whole organization.
It might seem like a privilege for a company like ours to have high-quality clinical programs readily available to offer employees, or a Clinical Research team to step in to lead development of new employee surveys during the pandemic. It’s true that we had the luxury of tapping into these resources during COVID-19. But because of the growing adoption of virtual care, any employer can offer access to many of the very same care options, like online therapy or coaching, to ensure their employees’ mental health is being treated and supported. And surveying the needs of your employees can be simple. Listening is the first step.
The real challenge comes in creating an environment where people at all levels support each other and embrace the daily issues they face. Taking the top-down approach we’ve outlined, with management setting the tone, demonstrates that a company’s leaders recognize the anxieties their people are facing and are willing to put in the hard work to make sure employees stay healthy and safe. In the end, company culture combined with a multi-pronged approach to addressing employee needs will provide the fullest, highest-quality employee experience.
Stephanie Carroll is senior vice president of People and Culture and Reena Pande is chief medical officer at AbleTo, a leading provider of technology-enabled behavioral health care.
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