Is your mental health strategy working?

Employees have access to more mental health support than they did a few years ago. But more support doesn't always mean easier access.

For Benefits and Total Rewards leaders, the challenge is increasingly about how those services work together. Can employees get help early? Do they know where to start? Can they access more specialized care when they need it? And can you tell whether your investment is working?

Those four questions offer a useful way to pressure-test your current mental health strategy.

Mental health support shouldn't begin when someone reaches a crisis.

Many of the challenges employees face start much earlier. Stress builds. Sleep suffers. A difficult situation at home starts affecting work. A new manager feels overwhelmed. Someone knows they aren't feeling like themselves, but isn't sure they need therapy.

These are all moments when support can help.

A proactive mental health strategy gives employees ways to engage with their mental health earlier, before a challenge becomes more serious. It makes mental health support relevant to everyday life, not just moments of acute need.

Take a look at your current offering. How easy is it for someone to get meaningful support when they first notice something isn't right?

If the clearest route to help begins with an EAP or clinical care, there may be an opportunity to reach people sooner.

Benefits and Total Rewards teams know how much sits behind an employee benefits offering. Employees shouldn’t need to. 

Think about someone who decides they need mental health support today. Where do they go?

If your organization offers an EAP, a mental health app, coaching, therapy and crisis support through different providers, the answer may not be obvious.

The employee is left figuring out which service fits their situation.

Is this something I use the EAP for? Do I need therapy? Would coaching be more appropriate? Where was that mental health app again?

Making a service available is only one part of access. The experience of finding and using it matters too.

The easier it is to take that first step, the more useful your mental health offering becomes.

Mental health isn't one-size-fits-all.

One employee might need support managing everyday stress. Another may benefit from coaching. Someone else may need to speak with a therapist or access immediate crisis support.

And those needs can change over time.

A strong mental health strategy accounts for that range without expecting employees to navigate it alone.

Instead of looking at each benefit in isolation, look at the journey between them.

Can someone who starts with proactive mental health support easily access a coach if that's what they need? Is there a clear path to therapy? What happens if someone's needs become more urgent?

The goal isn't to move everyone toward clinical care. It's to make sure people can reach the right support for their needs, at the right time.

That becomes much harder when each part of the journey exists in a different place.

There's another side to the experience that matters for Benefits and Total Rewards leaders.

You need to know whether the investment is delivering value.

When mental health support is spread across several point solutions, that can be difficult to see. Each vendor may have its own platform, utilization data and definition of engagement. Services can overlap. Employees may use one solution heavily and barely touch another.

You can end up with a lot of data without a clear picture of what's actually happening.

So look beyond whether a mental health benefit exists.

Are employees engaging with the support available to them? Are they finding the right type of care? Where are there gaps? Are you paying for overlapping services? And can you understand the impact of your mental health investment as a whole?

For Benefits and Total Rewards leaders, those questions matter when you're deciding what continues to earn a place in your strategy.

It's easy to respond to a new employee need by adding another solution.

Sometimes, that's the right answer. So before you do, look at what employees already have and ask:

Can they access support early?

Do they know where to start?

Can they reach different levels of care as their needs change?

Can we tell whether our investment is working?

If you can't confidently answer yes to all four, adding another point solution may not solve the problem.

The bigger opportunity may be making mental health support easier to access, easier to navigate and better connected.

That's the approach we've taken at Unmind. One mental health platform that brings together proactive support, Nova, our AI coach, access to human care through coaching and therapy, and all the best features of an EAP, including crisis, financial and legal support. 

Employees get one place to start and a clearer path to the support that's right for them. Benefits and Total Rewards teams get a more connected way to support mental health across their workforce.