86% of employees had experienced a mental health issue over the past year, according to a recent survey.
Employees are bearing the brunt of burnout, stress, and other mental health issues, forcing employers to rethink how they support their team. One way is to introduce mental health benefits to support employees’ work-life balance.
In this article, we’ll cover effective mental health benefits you should offer your employees, including some practical tips to keep in mind, and challenges to expect when implementing and maintaining the initiatives.
Let's begin.
TL;DR - 6 Best Employee Mental Health Benefits to Offer
Here's a quick overview of the best mental health benefits to offer your team:
- Recognition and reward programs
- Comprehensive mental health insurance coverage
- Flexible work arrangements
- Mental health days
- Stress management training
- Peer support programs
Continue reading to understand how these benefits boost your employees' mental health, including reducing burnout and stress.
What Are Mental Health Employee Benefits?
Mental health employee benefits are programs, resources, and policies employers provide to support employees’ psychological, emotional, and social well-being. The primary goal of mental health benefits is to help members manage stress, prevent burnout, and improve their work-life balance.
Mental health benefits take several forms, including preventive benefits such as wellness activities and reactive benefits, such as counselling and paid therapy sessions. Additionally, most mental health benefits require supportive policies and organizational cultures, especially regarding the stigma around employees seeking mental health services.
Ultimately, behind every effective mental health benefits package are proactive, accessible, and stigma-free programs that encourage your employees to seek help.
The Importance of Mental Health Benefits in the Workplace
Mental health issues can significantly impact your team’s productivity, commitment to the job, and, most importantly, their overall well-being.
B.J. Wiley Williams, our founder and CEO, shared this about mental health struggles in a recent webinar:
“We realize the need for mental health. I mean, mental health has become a buzzword. Right? We are challenged. We're dealing with burnout. We're dealing with being overwhelmed with all the different things that are happening on a macro global perspective, and being able to have tools and resources to be able to navigate that effectively is critical.”
As an employer, it’s in your best interest to offer mental health benefits that help members deal with stress, anxiety, and burnout.
Other key advantages of mental health benefits include:
- Improved Employee Engagement: Mental health benefits are a strong driver of employee engagement. This is because when members feel supported, it boosts their morale and job satisfaction, making them more committed to their work.
- Boosted Productivity: Improved mental health helps your employees focus at work, thereby positively impacting their decision-making. It also reduces mistakes that often lead to workplace accidents.
- Reduced Stigma Around Mental Health: Having mental health issues has long been viewed as a negative trait in the workplace. However, openly supporting mental health programs signals to your employees that their psychological welfare matters, hence encouraging them to seek help.
- Lower Operating Costs: Mental health challenges in the workplace contribute to cases of absenteeism, quiet quitting, and turnover, which in turn contribute to lower productivity. Mental health benefits help members deal with stress, anxiety, and burnout, ensuring employees are present most of the days and productive when at work. This lowers the cost of hiring temporary or permanent replacements.
- Improved Brand Perception: Caring about your employees' well-being helps build up your reputation within the job market. This enables you to attract and retain top talent, giving your company an edge over your competitors.
- Work-Life Balance: Paid time off and experiential mental health benefits like paid spa days help employees relax after hectic shifts or long work weeks, so that they return to work reenergized.
6 Mental Health Benefits for Employees
Mental health has become a core component of any meaningful employee benefits package. This is because, unlike physical sickness that often impacts only individual well-being, mental health issues affect team dynamics in ways that are usually invisible until the damage is done.
Let’s discuss six of the most effective mental health benefits you should offer your team:
1. Recognition and Reward Programs
Over time, employers have realized the need to meet their employees’ human need for acknowledgment, purpose, and belonging.
As such, implement employee wellness incentive programs to celebrate members who reach personal and professional milestones, such as birthdays, five years at the company, or completing a professional course.
At SoHookd, we help companies deliver experiential mental health benefits to help employees feel valued and appreciated. We have the only wellness-focused marketplace where you can create bundles that align with your organizational culture and support your goals. Our pre-built programs are easy to customize, so that you can launch them within 2 weeks. Alternatively, we can help you build your own wellness incentives program that is personalized to each member’s mental health needs.
Download our free ebook to learn how psychology-backed incentives can boost your team’s mental health and employee engagement.
2. Comprehensive Mental Health Insurance Coverage
Your employees should have access to robust insurance plans for mental health services such as therapy, psychiatric care, and medication. The cover should offer affordable co-pays and a broad selection of in-network and out-of-network professionals, just like in physical health coverage plans.
Access to affordable mental healthcare helps prevent employees from foregoing professional help because they don’t want to incur the high out-of-pocket costs.
3. Flexible Work Arrangements
Offering your employees autonomy over when and where they can work can help them reduce stress and burnout associated with long commutes. Employees also get time to spend with friends and family or pursue personal projects, improving their work-life balance.
Additionally, flexible schedules are an indicator that you trust your employees, which can boost their morale, improving their productivity and performance.
4. Mental Health Days
Often, when employees request paid time off or sick days, they have to justify such requests by providing ample notice or a doctor's note. However, offering your employees access to mental health days for psychological recovery is just as important as physical health days.
Your employees should be able to take mental health breaks without needing to justify themselves to prevent issues such as absenteeism. You should also have clear policies in place that ensure your employees feel comfortable using this benefit.
5. Stress Management Training
Programs such as workshops, wellness webinars, and stress management courses can help your employees learn practical coping mechanisms. Such skills are often invaluable to your employees during periods of uncertainty, change, or high workloads.
Ensure the training materials are available on demand, and employees can access them on multiple devices, especially their mobile phones.
6. Peer Support Programs
Peer support groups, employee resource groups, and mentorship programs encourage employees to interact and connect with their colleagues, which reduces feelings of isolation.
In addition, sharing experiences in a safe and supportive environment normalizes mental health conversations and strengthens workplace relationships. It also creates a culture that respects the boundaries between personal and professional time.
Best Practices for Supporting Employees’ Mental Health
A mental health benefits program is not only about implementing packages you think will benefit your employees. It is also about creating an environment where your employees feel comfortable enough to seek the help they need without fear of repercussions or stigma.
Below are some measures you could implement to support your employees' mental health:
- Normalize Communication about Mental Health: Encourage your team to speak freely and openly about mental health and its challenges. This includes holding mental-health-focused events at departmental levels.
- Ensure Confidentiality: Utilize systems that guarantee data privacy for all mental health services. Additionally, ensure all mental health programs comply with relevant HIPAA privacy policies, especially on how you handle members’ personal data.
- Lead by Example: Encourage top-level managers to participate in the company’s mental health initiatives, such as taking time off, attending yoga classes, and meditation sessions. This provides role models for other members, increasing enrollment and participation rates.
- Regularly Evaluate Benefits: The mental health landscape is constantly evolving. Therefore, it is essential to consistently reevaluate your offerings to ensure they are still relevant to your team’s needs and preferences.
Challenges in Providing Mental Health Benefits
Even the most well-intentioned mental health benefits can fail to impact your employees’ well-being.
Some of the obstacles you might encounter when delivering mental health benefits include:
- Budgetary Constraints: Just like healthcare benefits, providing mental health benefits is becoming expensive year-over-year as insurance providers either hike costs or reduce coverage. To navigate this, reevaluate your employee benefits strategy and prioritize low-cost, high-impact initiatives.
- Low Utilization: Employees often fail to enroll in mental health programs because of the stigma associated with mental health issues. You can counter this by introducing public awareness campaigns to reduce stigma and by incorporating incentives to encourage employees to enroll and participate in the initiatives.
- Inconsistent Managerial Support: Some employers are struggling to secure support from their managerial-level staff when implementing mental health benefit programs. This can significantly hamper an organization's ability to support its employees' mental health needs. To secure buy-in from managers, train them on the impact mental health programs have on employee well-being and their productivity. You should also encourage them to participate in the initiatives.
- Difficulty Measuring Impact: Unlike other employee benefits, it is considerably more challenging to measure the impact of mental health initiatives, due to factors such as data privacy concerns and the subjective nature of mental health. To overcome this challenge, consider introducing anonymized self-reporting tools to help you track your team’s mental health status and participation in the wellness programs.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Below are some answers to questions we receive regularly from our clients:
What is the Difference Between Mental Health and Wellness Benefits?
Mental health benefits focus on the diagnosis and treatment of your employees' psychological and emotional conditions through therapy or counselling.
On the other hand, wellness benefits take a holistic self-care approach that also promotes physical fitness, financial well-being, nutrition, and healthy lifestyles.
What is the ROI of Mental Health Benefits?
The ROI of mental health benefits primarily centers around higher employee productivity and lower operational costs. For example, such benefits contribute to reduced absenteeism, higher employee retention, and lower healthcare costs, all of which lower your operational costs.
In addition, employees who care for their mental health are more focused and productive, which directly impacts a company's bottom line.
How Do Remote Work Policies Impact Mental Health?
Remote work policies are a double-edged sword. They can improve your employees' flexibility and autonomy, hence reducing stress associated with the daily commute.
However, the policies often blur the work-life boundary, exposing employees to social isolation and depression. Therefore, it is essential to pair remote work policies with virtual wellness programs that encourage employees to check in and interact with colleagues.
What Tools Help Track Workplace Mental Wellness?
Use pulse surveys and standardized scales to measure subjective well-being and identify high-risk employees.
Additionally, you could analyze your internal data on absenteeism, productivity, and turnover rates to identify trends in your team’s overall mental well-being.
Conclusion
Offering comprehensive, affordable, and inclusive mental health support signals to your employees that you value them and care about their well-being. It also helps you build a resilient, engaged, and high-performing workforce.
An essential aspect of mental health that many companies miss is recognition and rewards. Employees crave recognition for their efforts or for reaching milestones.
However, employees don’t just want gifts; they want incentives that matter to them.
Our SoHookd marketplace helps you reward your employees with meaningful wellness rewards that cater to their holistic well-being, including fitness, nutrition, and self-care. Our wellness incentives programs are procurement-friendly, as we will not tie you down with contracts or PEPM fees. Additionally, the programs are customizable for desk-based and mobile workers, making them suitable for both remote and hybrid teams.
Schedule a one-on-one call to discover how our mental health wellness programs can improve your team’s holistic well-being.
