The well-documented mental health crisis continues to weigh down workplaces, with many employees experiencing symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress and burnout. Many organizations have discovered that providing mental health resources (which may include onsite counseling benefits, mental health days, mental health apps and peer-to-peer support programs) is not enough: Only 19% of employees use their employer-sponsored mental health benefits, according to a recent report from One Medical and Workplace Intelligence.
Those findings are somewhat at odds with data from employers and employees about the importance of these benefits.
According to the American Psychological Association’s 2023 Work in America Survey, 92% of employees say it is very or somewhat important to them to work for an organization that provides support for employee mental health. At the same time, a poll commissioned by the National Alliance on Mental Illness and conducted by Ipsos earlier this year found that the same number of respondents (92%) say employer-sponsored mental health coverage is, or would be, important for creating a positive workplace culture.
On the organizational side, 7 in 10 employers say providing workers with access to mental health resources is a top priority for 2024, according to a Business Group on Health report.
According to one report, only 19% of employees use their employer-sponsored mental health benefits.
This shared understanding of the importance of mental health support raises a key question: What can employers do to encourage more effective use of this needed benefit?
To find out, one company dug into the problem and shared its findings.
Novartis, the Swiss multinational pharmaceutical corporation, found itself in this very situation. It had rolled out a peer-to-peer support program but found that employee usage was low. So, a team of behavioral scientists and organizational behavior scholars conducted an experiment to find out why.
“Is something fundamentally wrong with these initiatives,” the researchers wondered, “or do employees not see their value?” They shared their results in the Harvard Business Review.
As part of its commitment to mental health, over the past few years Novartis trained more than 1,000 employees to serve as Mental Health First Aiders who can provide mental health support to colleagues through a peer-to-peer program.
Mental Health First Aid courses are designed to teach participants how to recognize and respond to signs and symptoms of mental health and substance use challenges, as well as how to provide someone with initial support until they are connected with appropriate professional help. Participants learn a five-step action plan that can be applied in helping someone through a panic attack, engaging with someone who may be suicidal and assisting an individual who has overdosed.
“Having the confidence to talk openly about mental health, recognizing the signs that we or someone we know may need support, knowing where to find that support and igniting the discussion to de-stigmatize mental health are all key drivers of our growth and development as people,” the company notes on its website.
While employee interest in receiving the training was high, few colleagues were signing up to receive this help, according to the HBR report.
To find out why, the researchers randomly sent one of six different descriptions of the peer-to-peer program to 2,400 Novartis employees in the U.K., Ireland, India and Malaysia. The descriptions were designed to address privacy concerns and usage concerns, two key barriers that typically prevent employees from engaging in similar programs.
Some of the descriptions emphasized the anonymity of the program, while others did not. In addition, some of the descriptions included either a “mild story” or a “severe story” about a colleague’s use of the program. The mild story focused on daily stresses and anxiety at work, such as a difficult meeting with a client, and the more severe story centered around the emotional and psychological effects of an abusive relationship.
After reading the description sent to them, recipients were asked to click on a link if they wanted to sign up to learn more about the peer-to-peer program.
The takeaway? Creating a culture where employees share their mental health challenges — no matter how small or large — can be powerful in persuading people to seek support, the researchers found.
“We found that employees who read a story about their colleague making use of the services (irrespective of the severity of the colleagues’ challenges) were more interested to learn about the mental health program compared to employees who did not read a story,” they wrote in HBR. This held true regardless of the employee’s gender and whether they were a manager or an individual contributor.
Creating a work culture where employees can share mental health challenges — no matter how small or large — can be powerful in persuading people to seek support.
When employees read the story about a colleague using the services to cope with an abusive relationship, it increased the odds that they would click on the sign-up link by 6.6%, the study showed. That number rose to 8% for employees who read the story about a colleague using the services for reasons related to anxiety and stress.
Interestingly, emphasizing the anonymity of the peer-to-peer support program did not seem to drive an increase in the number of sign-ups.
“Our findings illustrate the power of storytelling in encouraging seeking mental health support,” the researchers concluded. “They also align with prior research on stigma showing that employees might not access mental health resources because they (wrongly) assume that anxiety and worry are ‘normal’ and do not warrant professional help. The different stories shared by other colleagues seemed to have helped expand the definition of mental health to include daily challenges such as anxiety and stress.”
If targeted storytelling were rolled out to all 78,000 of Novartis’ employees, the researchers noted, it could encourage almost 2,000 workers to participate in the company’s peer-to-peer support program.
“This was a super simple, quick and neat experiment, finding an answer to a question that should be a priority for any organization,” noted Zsófia Belovai, a study author and behavioral science lead at organizational performance research practice MoreThanNow. “Caring about employee welfare is not just a prosocial obligation; it has a beneficial impact on so many other outcomes — performance, retention, minimized sick days, and so on.”