Why don't employees use their mental health benefits?

However, in the recent past mental health has shifted from being an invisible agenda to mainstream in the workplace. Managers and workers accept it as a measure affecting work efficiency, staff attrition, and organizational climate. Nevertheless, employees are not availing themselves of mental health options provided by their workplace, even as the same groups insist that mental health benefits are very necessary, according to our results from the 2024 State of Workplace Empathy Study.

The need to close this gap is clearly a question not only of improving the quality of life for the employees but also of the practical business necessity of creating a healthy and stable workforce. However, results obtained from more than 3,100 human resource practitioners, employees, and CEOs show that the following challenges exist. Notably, mental illness prejudice, destructive organizational environments, and knowledge of incentives.

Workers and Managers Too, are Experiencing Mental Health Issues

This year’s study shone a spotlight on one clear takeaway: there is empirical evidence that both employees and the executives are having compromised mental health. Unauthorized and ridden with misgiving, new research released today reveals that 55% of CEOs (+24 from 2023), and 50%, of employees stated they suffered from a mental health issue in the last 12 months. It helps people understand that everybody is vulnerable in front of the problem of stress and burnout.

Read the article-  Five Best Employee Wellness Platforms Of 2024

Is toxic workplaces to be blamed? Other findings also characterize negative relationships of workplace incivility toward mental health problems. Incredibly, 35% of employees and 52% of CEOs said that their organizations have a toxic culture. All in all, there is a 47% higher chance of respondents to identify mental health issues when they also identify toxic workplaces. Interestingly, 64% of CEOs report this association of mental health problems with workplace toxicity.

One realisation is that perhaps the workplace could be contributing to the development or worsening of these mental health conditions for employees at various tenures of their working careers going through growing stress, anxiety, burnout etc. However, it is by no means the only one. Whether the source is internal or external to the workplace, organizations need to be aware of the fact that many employees today are distressed—and that is one of the reasons why it is striking that so few of these organizations are availing of mental health benefit options.

Mental benefits are more appreciated than realized: 

A review of the perceived importance and utilization of mental health benefits by employees.

To be more precise, nine in every 10 employees, human resource professionals, and chief executives believe that mental health is as vital to human health as physical health. self-care funds The good news is that, in response to this increased need for mental health support, many organizations have increased or developed benefits since the pandemic. However, our results indicate that employees are not taking advantage of the mental health benefits perceived as highly valuable. Indeed, there is 70 points deviation of the managerial perception of the benefits compared to actual engagement of the employees.

When assessing the antecedents in employing the optimal ways of enhancing the mental health of the workforce, it emerges that such benefit and resource preferences are more encompassing in orientation among the workers. Traditional mental health benefits including at enrollment, Employee Assistance Program (EAPs), and available online mental health resources or clinics as important benefits; however, peer support and autonomy are equally valuable: open doors, flexible working hours, and being allowed to walk away from work. Surprisingly, regarding mental health, the employees reported that flexibility in working hours coupled with work from home were valued benefits. One gets the message loud and clear that employees have tremendously high desires for comprehensive mental health benefits, but the wide disparities in the usage rates indicate that something is amiss here.

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