Employers lack measurements for success as they focus more heavily on mental health issues
Companies are implementing mental health programs, but they don’t know which ones are working.
The pandemic has shined a much-needed spotlight on the mental health needs of employees. Behavioral health ranked first out of 11 possible priorities for employee wellbeing, according to a Mercer survey, with 75% of large employers calling it a priority. With discussions around mental health skyrocketing in corporate America, the highest level of company leadership is taking note. In fact, supporting employee mental health is a board-level goal for 57% of large companies. To meet employee needs, HR teams have swiftly rolled out essential mental health support.
In doing so, however, significant gaps in how employee mental health initiatives are discussed, implemented and measured were uncovered. Although businesses embrace mental health support for their workers, they often lack meaningful measures of success.
Related: Employee mental health: Reaching out is just the start
The Employer Health Innovation Roundtable and Big Health, a digital therapeutics company focused on mental health, recently compiled a Mental Health Maturity Index that looked at the strategies of 35 large employers. The data revealed three key findings:
Companies are implementing mental health programs, but they don’t know which ones are working. HIPAA can make it can challenging for companies to confidentially collect health information from employees, which is why the survey sponsors recommend leaning on mental health partners to do so. Once appropriately equipped with that information, partners should provide data on mental health outcomes, such as remission, in addition to engagement.
Within the mental health field, therapists use clinically validated measures to understand the severity of mental health symptoms and conditions. These same measures can be used in various formats to understand changes in symptoms. By relying only on usage data, companies cannot assess which programs actually are improving employee mental health. Given that only a little more than half of companies measure employee stress and mental health, it is not surprising that only 14% assess the ROI of mental health services, making it nearly impossible for HR teams to advocate for additional funding.
Senior leaders are advocates for employee mental health% but initiatives to bridge the gap between saying and doing lag. More than four in five companies said senior leadership visibly advocates for the importance of mental health to the business. Additionally, for 57% of companies, employee mental health is a board-level goal. Despite resounding leadership support, however, many companies are not doing enough to back up their statements with action Lee than half of companies ran an anti-stigma campaign in the last year, and most companies communicate about mental health benefits to their employees only every six to 12 months.
Current mental health care is not reaching all employees in need. Even before the pandemic, traditional face-to-face mental health care was unable to provide support to everyone in need. In fact, half of the counties in the United States don’t have a licensed mental health professional. This shortage of providers, coupled with an array of other barriers, means 60% of people who meet diagnostic criteria for a mental health condition don’t receive care.
Only 26 of companies said they have a mental health solution focused on reaching these silent sufferers.
“This survey sheds a bright light on the different dimensions in the large disconnect that exists between senior management and workers within organizations when it comes to employee mental health,” said Arielle Trzinski, a Forrester principal analyst who wrote the report.
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