Survey: More employers enhancing mental health support in multiple ways 

In Mercer’s Inside Employees’ Minds® study, employees have ranked mental and emotional health among their top 5 concerns for the past several years. Not surprisingly, this is also a concern for their employers. Employee mental health has an impact on business health – impacting employee productivity, retention, and healthcare costs. Supporting the mental health and well-being of employees requires not only providing effective resources and programs to promote well-being and address mental health and substance abuse conditions, but also creating a workplace culture that positively impacts mental health. Mercer’s Survey on Health and Benefit Strategies for 2025 suggests that employers are making progress on all these areas.

Support for the full continuum of behavioral health needs

As the saying goes, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” For mental health, digital self-guided tools to manage stress and build coping skills and apps based in the concepts of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (digital CBT) are becoming increasingly common benefit offerings, either as standalone subscription offerings or add-on services to an existing Employee Assistance Program. The survey found that more than half of large employers (500 or more employees) provide digital or in-person resources to help manage stress and build resiliency or will add them in 2025.

To provide more robust mental health support to employees, many employers have started with enhancing services through their EAP. Employers have worked with their EAPs to elevate services in multiple ways:

• Almost half of employers are offering care options beyond telephonic or video sessions for care to "meet employees where they are". This can include adding coaching for more mild, subclinical issues and offering text therapy for those who may prefer to engage in support via asynchronous messaging versus traditional live therapy sessions.
• With the return to office, 29% of large employers have in place or are evaluating adding onsite EAP counseling services. These dedicated onsite counseling programs improve access to care – and combat long wait times for appointments – by reserving counselors' time, decrease the stigma around mental health concerns, and increase the visibility of resources.
• Over one-fourth (28%) of large employers have increased or will increase their EAP session models from the traditional 3 or 5 session model to higher, more robust session models. Offering more therapy visits for free under the EAP decreases financial barriers to care and supports employees in resolving more issues within the EAP framework without the need to transition to longer term care through the health plan.

As the need for mental health services has grown in recent years, many employers have become concerned about a supply and demand imbalance and the problem of longer wait times for care in traditional EAP and insurance networks. Some have chosen to augment their health plan’s behavioral health networks with point solution vendors that can provide virtual access to therapists and psychiatrists and more specialized support, such as for alcohol and substance use disorders, neurodiversity, and pediatric mental health care. In 2025, 31% of large employers will provide a supplemental network of virtual or in-person behavioral health care providers. That’s up from 23% in our Survey on Health and Benefit Strategies for 2023, a notable increase over just two years.

Addressing workplace culture

While providing a range of support services is essential, it’s also important to consider how the workplace impacts employees’ mental health. Employees’ mental health cannot thrive without psychological safety. Creating psychological safety in the workplace means creating an environment where employees feel safe speaking up, raising concerns, admitting to mistakes, and asking for help.

Normalizing mental health concerns is another strategy for improving the workplace culture and decreasing the stigma around mental health concerns in the workplace. Anti-stigma campaigns – which sometimes include leaders’ sharing personal stories about seeking help for a mental health concern – have shown to be effective strategies in increasing awareness and utilization of resources. Just under half of large employers have implemented or will implement this strategy in 2025 – 46%, up from just 25% in 2023.

More employers are providing managers with training in how to recognize employees struggling with a mental health concern, provide support, and steer them to resources – 45% of large employers do so or will in 2025, up from 35% in 2023. It’s important to keep in mind that the number one referral source for EAP support for employees is through their direct manager.

Supporting mental health of employees improves their overall health and drives stronger engagement work, resulting in positive business outcomes. Employers should take a comprehensive approach to their mental health strategy – addressing both workplace factors that impact mental health and ensuring employees have access to comprehensive resources for prevention and treatment.