We spend the vast majority of our waking hours at work – yet it’s not always good for our health. Workplace psychosocial factors carry with them mental health risks. Unmanageable workloads and unrealistic deadlines cause stress and burnout. Shift work and remote locations can lead to social isolation. The pressure to get ahead can add a burden of worry. Time out from the workforce due to sickness and ill health can be difficult to manage, and returning hard. And workplace bullying and exposure to trauma can trigger significantly challenging responses that are hard to overcome.
The failure to recognise, monitor, and address the risk of work-related suicide poses a major and ongoing threat to the health and safety of employees, the quality delivered, and employer reputation – not to mention the bottom line. These risks not only impact the individual employee but also have broader consequences for colleagues and the quality of work produced. Mistakes arising from mental struggles can lead to poor decisions, injuries and accidents, affecting both employees and end-users of the products and services the company provides. This presents a direct cost to employers, not only in terms of human accidents but also in insurance and brand perception.
Every year, unaddressed depression and anxiety costs £467 per employee in absenteeism, lost productivity and turnover. That’s £24 million a year for an employer with 50,000 people. Our largest companies are losing millions of pounds every year by not addressing employee mental health.
The biggest risk with unaddressed mental health is suicide. A mental health crisis or suicide at work has vast repercussions on employee health, brand perception, and insurance claims. But these challenges and risks can be mitigated. Despite growing evidence of the causal connections between work and suicide, employee suicides are still largely treated as an individual mental health problem that has no direct relevance for work or for the workplace. Willingness to take responsibility to acknowledge the problem relies on goodwill of employers.
Fostering a culture of well-being has other benefits to employers; it can enhance overall employee engagement and satisfaction. Employees who feel supported in their mental health are more likely to be motivated, collaborative, and innovative, contributing positively to the overall work environment. Moreover, a workplace that prioritises mental health sends a strong message about its values and commitment to its employees, aiding in talent attraction and retention. In today’s competitive job market, potential hires increasingly consider an employer’s approach to mental health as a crucial factor in their decision-making process.
Companies are, in fact, spending a lot of money on employee wellbeing. Sadly, this is often without meaningful measurement and understanding. Aside from reporting uptake, which is typically in the single percentages, employers have no real insight into whether their investments are having the desired impact on their teams. Deloitte has measured wellbeing on employers behalf and discovered that, on the whole, employee mental health initiatives aren’t working. Without measurement, all these initiatives are done on the whim of the well-meaning, but go unproven, waiting for inevitable budget cuts. Cuts that will impact the wellbeing of employees everywhere.
Managers overseeing teams face a significant challenge: they must identify team members who are struggling and understand how to help them. This places a hugely stressful burden on them – ironically exacerbating any of their own mental health struggles. It also places the issue firmly on one person’s shoulders, when really this is a whole business issue.
Traditional approaches focus more on awareness and stigma busting – crucial for impacting the cultural change that encourages people to reach out if they need to. Yet many employees don’t. Wysa’s report into employee mental health, All Worked Up showed that 1 in 3 employees who need help have not spoken to a healthcare professional, with more than half citing embarrassment as a reason. The existing types of support leave gaps – gaps that pose a huge risk should someone fall through.
Integrating a digital channel offers a stigma-free, anonymous, and always accessible support method for those facing mental health challenges. When surveyed, most employees preferred using a mental health app with personalised, clinically validated resources over consulting workplace personnel or even their general physician. An astonishing 81% said that they would prefer to interact with an AI app rather than approaching HR. Studies indicate that people open up to AI like Wysa three times faster than with human therapists. The AI empathises intelligently and guides users to appropriate resources, ensuring they get the right support.
Digital channels are convenient, always available, and always ready. They are scalable, offering support to all employees, regardless of their working hours and status. Their discrete nature of being on your phone or via Slack (a feature coming to Wysa in 2024), or in different languages, addresses the stigma and judgement barrier in discussing mental health. And, these tools are effective as research shows users of Wysa experienced an average of 31% decrease in depression from AI support alone. This not only benefits employee wellbeing but also leads to substantial cost savings for employers in terms of reduced absenteeism, increased productivity, and lower turnover rates.
Effective AI tools also include crisis escalation features, with SOS features triggered through real time AI conversation analysis, clinical screenings, mood tracking, or an SOS button, removing the need for managerial intervention. This takes away the need for people to understand it is time to get professional help, mitigating the risk of a crisis. When either the AI or user detects a crisis, individuals can be directed to counsellors, crisis helplines, personal safety plans and grounding exercises to de-escalate the situation.
By offering anonymous, aggregated workforce mental health data, employers can understand the impact and effectiveness of interventions, knowing where to direct additional resources and training.
This two-pronged approach acts as a preventative measure, at the same time as being backed up with crisis interventions for those in severe need. Traditional human methods sit alongside this second digital channel to get help. As a result, employees are safer, employers more confident, and risk contained – all with the mission of creating a happier and more productive workforce.
Wysa is a global leader in AI-driven mental health support, available both to individuals, through employer benefits programmes and healthcare services. Wysa’s clinically safe AI encourages users to take additional support, whenever it’s needed, by guiding them towards Wysa’s human coaching, employer benefits programmes (EAP) or national crisis lines. Wysa has helped over 6 million people through 550 million AI conversations across 95 countries.
