Mental Health Benefits for Your Employees: All You Need to Know

What do mental health benefits really achieve? What should you pay attention to when implementing a new solution, and how can your new mental health benefit become a success? You’ll find answers to these questions and more in this article.

It’s now widely recognized that workplace mental health support offers many advantages for both companies and employees.

In addition, more and more employees – especially younger ones – are demanding that their employers actively support mental well-being at work. Mental health benefits have therefore become an important factor in attracting talent and boosting employee retention.

Why should you introduce mental health support as an employee benefit?

Employees’ mental well-being has a significant impact on their satisfaction and loyalty. But what does that mean in practice? Why should companies support the mental health of their workforce through dedicated benefits?

1. Improve employee satisfaction and engagement: When employees feel mentally well, it positively affects their overall satisfaction and motivation.
2. Boost productivity and resilience: Numerous studies show that poor mental health leads to productivity losses.
3. Reduce absenteeism: Mental health issues are now the second most common reason for sick leave. On top of that, mental health-related absences typically last much longer than those caused by physical illness. This results in high costs for companies.
4. Strengthen employee retention: Over 60% of users already report that nilo, as their chosen mental health benefit, has had a positive impact on employee loyalty.
5. Increase employer attractiveness: More and more employees consider it important that companies take a holistic approach to employee care and include attractive benefits, such as mental health support, in their packages.

Studies like the Randstad Workmonitor 2024 also show that 85% of employees want their employer to support their mental health.

How can mental health benefits improve employees’ mental well-being?

Our work and personal lives are deeply connected. So when we take care of our mental health, it inevitably has a positive effect on our overall life satisfaction.

A benefit like a mental health platform can help us cope with crises, prevent mental illness, and support personal and professional growth by helping us reach our full potential.

Here are some specific topics and examples where nilo, as a workplace mental health partner, offers targeted support:

• Mental health challenges: Easy access to coaches, psychologists, and therapists can help employees overcome crises and improve their mental well-being over time. This applies to both professional and personal challenges.
• Stress management: Excessive stress can lead to both mental and physical issues. It’s important to monitor your stress levels and have effective tools and exercises to manage it. These can be developed together with psychologists in individual or group sessions, or integrated into daily routines through curated exercises.
• Resilience: Resilience helps us deal with challenges and crises. The key factors that determine resilience – such as optimism, solution focus, or acceptance – can be learned with practice.
• Setting boundaries: A lack of ability to set boundaries between work and personal life and to prioritize effectively often leads to poor work-life balance and dissatisfaction. These skills can be developed in one-on-one coaching sessions, group discussions, workshops, or through self-guided exercises.
• Opportunities for growth: Individual coaching can support employees’ personal development, especially for top talents and emerging leaders.
• Culture monitoring and development: Courses and workshops on psychological safety and positive company culture can help drive lasting cultural change within an organization. nilo’s reports and analytics also serve as an early warning system for cultural challenges within teams or across the organization.

Introducing mental health benefits doesn’t just benefit employees – HR professionals and managers also stand to gain.

Solutions like nilo can help ease the pressure on managers by providing employees with an additional point of contact for their challenges. In many cases, certain issues don’t even arise because employees are equipped with the right resources and support from mental health professionals, allowing them to handle personal and professional challenges more effectively.

What HR should keep in mind when introducing mental health benefits

Based on dozens of successful mental health benefit implementations, the following factors have proven to be key drivers of success:

1. Define requirements and goals in advance

Your mental health solution should align with both your employees’ needs and the goals you want to achieve – for example, improving employee satisfaction. That means the first step is gathering input and clearly defining your objectives.

In addition, you should have a clear idea of what your budget will be. Based on your requirements, goals, and budget, you can then select a suitable partner to provide the solution.

2. Benefits should reflect your workforce

When selecting partners for mental health support, make sure their solutions are a good fit for your employees. Do your employees have access to support in the languages they speak? Do the provider’s offerings reflect the diversity of your workforce in terms of identity and cultural background?

3. Raise awareness

Many companies already have a mental health solution in place. At the same time, many employees are unaware that such support is available to them. This means that valuable opportunities to promote employee well-being are likely being missed.

Make sure your employees have multiple ways to learn about the offering. Using a variety of channels and communicating at different touchpoints increases the chances of successfully raising awareness about your initiative. Possible channels include company-wide meetings, all-hands sessions, the intranet, internal newsletters, or lunch & learn events.

Let’s find the right mental health benefit for your team.

Let’s talk

Mental health benefits are a powerful catalyst, success factor, and support tool for building a healthy organization. However, they are not a substitute for companies, leaders, and HR to engage deeply and responsibly with the topic of mental well-being.

How do I implement a mental health benefit?

The rollout of a new mental health benefit should follow a time-bound onboarding plan. Make sure you clearly communicate why it was introduced, what it offers, and how employees can benefit from it.

Engage your employees through various channels and initiatives – for example, by hosting a “Lunch & Learn,” a company-wide webinar on mental health, or an internal knowledge-sharing session on the topic.

The 5 onboarding steps with nilo

1. Onboarding: You’ll receive a structured onboarding process led by our Customer Success Team. This includes an introductory meeting, registration tests, and onboarding specifically designed for managers.
2. Rollout: During the rollout phase, nilo supports you in organizing a kick-off event. This also includes communication support with key templates and best practices from other nilo clients.
3. Activation: To successfully inform your employees about the new benefit, nilo provides a variety of ready-made activation initiatives that you can implement within your organization.
4. Reporting: Regular reports and analytics give you real-time insights into your employees’ well-being, productivity, and motivation. nilo also provides tailored recommendations for action.
5. Individual support: Based on your goals and the topics most relevant to your employees, nilo offers additional services, such as development support for leaders or HR.

For some, this might initially sound more complex than it actually is. With experienced partners like nilo, the implementation process is designed to be resource-efficient and smooth – for HR, leadership, and the entire team.

This means that from day one, nilo provides you with a clear overview of the upcoming steps, guides you through the process, and communicates what’s needed from your side to ensure a seamless integration of the benefit. nilo also takes into account any specific characteristics of your organization and works with you to find tailored solutions.

Best practices for offering mental health benfits

The following best practices have helped HR leaders among our clients successfully implement nilo. For many employees, nilo has since become their favorite benefit.

• Destigmatization: Make sure mental health is not a taboo topic in your organization. Let your employees know they can always turn to their manager or a trusted HR contact if they’re facing challenges. A key step is for leaders and HR professionals to model this openness themselves.
• Reminders: Create regular touchpoints around mental health to raise awareness and increase the likelihood that employees will seek support when they need it. One effective option is organizing a company-wide Health Day.
• Trained managers: When your managers are trained on mental health topics, they’re better equipped to care for their own well-being and foster a healthier team environment. nilo offers dedicated training sessions to support leaders in this role.
• Feedback loops: Check in with your employees regularly to find out if anything is missing. This feedback can help you continuously improve your mental health benefits and identify additional measures that contribute to long-term success.