Employees increasingly see mental health benefits as essential, but their bosses lag behind

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In the throes of a global pandemic and the wake of a year of social unrest, employees, especially younger employees, are increasingly seeing their mental health support as their employers' responsibility – and some are willing to walk away if they feel it's being inadequately provided for.

That's the major takeaway from a new survey of 702 U.S. employees, 513 managers, 250 C-suite executives and 250 HR leaders conducted by Forrester Research and commissioned by behavioral health support company Modern Health.

Seventy-nine percent of non-managers and 81% of managers said they "would be more likely to stay at a company that provides high-quality resources for me to care for my mental health." For employees aged 18 to 29, that portion increased to 86%. And 19% of non-managers and 36% of managers said that poor mental health support from employers during the pandemic is currently prompting them to consider leaving.

But awareness of the situation seems to deteriorate the higher up one goes. Just 58% of all leaders (managers and executives) are concerned about employees leaving as a result of insufficient mental health support during the pandemic. Some 85% of executives and HR leaders say they offer sufficient mental health support, with 87% of them saying they offer the best possible mental health support.

Even more worryingly, 67% of C-Suite executives and 54% of HR leaders say they plan to return their mental health to what it was pre-pandemic, citing concerns about shorter work hours and a desire to prioritize other benefits.

"I think what the report is showing is philosophically leaders are there," Steve Cadigan, author of Workquake: Embracing the Aftershocks of COVID-19 to Create a Better Model of Working, said at a press event about the research. "Yes, we know we need to do something, and it's no surprise to hear they think they're doing better than they are. 

"That's sort of been the case forever, with leaders think they're doing better than they are. But I wonder if some of that is driven by the shortfall of delivery of expectations of employees around 'What does that look like if we're delivering that effectively at scale?' and 'Where are the models that we can draw from to show us how we can do this effectively?'"

Cadigan also speculated that continued stigma around mental health could contribute to the disconnect.

"What happens to workers when they never worked at home before is, the first question is, 'How does my boss know I'm delivering? I better work more and better show more,'" he said. "And now you create a potential death spiral. And so there's discomfort with raising that … There [are] feelings of guilt, feelings of inadequacy. It's a very, very complex web that I think may contribute to not actively voicing this above and beyond maybe some other requirements that people want from their employer."

In terms of concrete offerings, 45 percent of employees say they have mental health benefits in their medical plan, 32% say they have access to one-on-one counseling outside their medical plan, 28% have access to text or chat counseling outside their medical plan and 16% have access to a wellbeing or meditation app through their employer.

Effects of insufficient mental health support

While they didn't align on the sufficiency of current offerings, employers and employees did agree on the benefits of mental health support, with 62 percent of employees (including managers) and 65 percent of C-suite execs and HR leaders saying that employee mental health support improves productivity.

Additionally, 72% of managers say that a lack of mental health support for direct reports makes their job harder, and 49 percent feel a lack of clarity about their role in providing mental health support.

"What we see time and again is managers are like, 'I'm expected to do this. I'm not a therapist. Am I supposed to be a therapist?'" said Myra Altman, Modern Health's vice president of clinical care. "And what we usually say – we do a lot of manager trainings – is please don't be a therapist. That's not your role.

"But what we would like you to do is be able to see when someone is struggling, be able to set a tone of psychological safety, model taking care of yourself and know where to refer people. And know how to escalate things up. If you're seeing a trend that everyone on your team is really struggling, how do you share that up? And how do you escalate that up so that that can be taken into broader strategic decision-making?"

Younger employees skew more optimistic

Employees were also asked about three optimistic predictions for the future: company leaders being more open about their own mental health to dispel stigma, virtual mental health becoming more common than in-person, or mental health benefits becoming a legal requirement.

For each of these predictions, less than half of employees agreed with them, but the virtual care prediction fared better than the other two, and employees aged 18 to 29 were a few points more optimistic than their older peers across the board.

"Overall, the numbers are slightly higher in the youngest age group, so they are perhaps either feeling the most optimistic or maybe they have the most clarity on what they want the future of work to look like and what kinds of things they think should be a part of the future of work," said Cynthia Castro Sweet, Modern Health's senior director of clinical research.

Employees in that youngest age cohort were also the most bullish on integrating mental health offerings with technology, with 54% wanting to see employer-provided meditation apps, 50% wanting to see mental health integrations with workplace chat/collaboration tools, and 40% interested in employer-provided time management and productivity tools.