Employers are recognizing a need to offer comprehensive mental health support for their employees, but engaging them in digital solutions is often a challenge.
That’s why, during a panel discussion at the Behavioral Health Tech conference in San Diego, BenefitsPro Editor in Chief Paul Wilson posed this question: What are the biggest mistakes employers are making when they’re introducing digital mental health solutions? And how can they avoid these mistakes?
One of the panelists — Erin Young, mental health leader of health, equity & wellbeing at WTW — argued that some employers are being too reactive. This was especially true during the Covid-19 pandemic, and this led to many employers putting in solutions without fully understanding if it was the best solution for their population.
She added that some employers adopt the same solutions their competitors use, assuming they should do the same, but those approaches don’t always resonate with their own employees.
“You need to look internally to see what data points you have and information that tells you that a solution like that is going to be well adopted or well used,” Young said. “That is the first step to understanding: is this the right thing to do and cutting across the right parts of the population that we need? Any solution that you put in is not going to hit 100% of your population, but you have to determine based on the investment and what you’re looking to do, what’s good enough?”
In addition, there is a lack of communication and awareness of digital mental health tools in the workplace, Young stated.
“If you put something in, people don’t just know that,” she said. “They don’t have a crystal ball, they can’t read minds. So if they don’t have access to that, either in physical locations, on a website, easiness of consumability and use, they’re just not going to find it, and that’s going to prevent any of that use and adoption.”
Another panelist argued that the idea of a “digital front door” in healthcare — in which a patient can be directed to multiple digital health solutions from the same access point — may need to be reevaluated.
He asked the audience to imagine their house and think about the last door they went in, their kids went in and their neighbor went in.
“I’m guessing it might be [that] your kids went in the door off the garage, you drove in the garage, the salesperson showed up at the front door, and your neighbors came in the side door,” said Chris Carey, senior vice president and general manager of Calm Health. “I think for a long time in healthcare, especially digital healthcare, we have tried to build front doors and assumed everybody’s gonna walk in that front door.
“I think the biggest thing that has failed is people are gonna go in the door that they need at that moment,” he continued. “We need to make sure we build a well-constructed house, and if somebody comes into Calm for mental health, but then we find out that they have back pain, and that employer has access to Sword or Hinge, I need to figure out how I get them there. Because I think we’ve seen that front doors just don’t work.”
Photo credit: Olga Strelnikova, Getty Images