While many companies have offered some kind of mental health coverage for decades, the pandemic has boosted the need. In an attempt to tap into that growing need, Headspace, a digital meditation and self-care platform, and Ginger, an on-demand psychiatry services company, closed a $3 billion dollar merger late last year, creating Santa Monica-based Headspace Health.
The company has unified Headspace’s mindfulness offerings with Ginger’s therapy services to create a single destination for mental health and well-being support for employees, as well as an underlying platform that reduces complexity and administrative burden for employers.
A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly half of adults in the United States have reported symptoms of depression or anxiety during the Covid pandemic. In the workplace, both employees and their employers pay the price: Research from the American Psychiatric Association shows that employees with unresolved depression experience a 35% reduction in productivity, resulting in a $210 billion annual economic loss because of absenteeism, reduced productivity, and medical costs. A separate study conducted by Headspace Health earlier this year showed that 80% of employees believe it is the employer’s responsibility to help tackle these issues.
“The Headspace Health unified experience is all about making it easier to engage with mental health and wellness services and to be kind to your mind, regardless of where you are on your mental health journey,” Russell Glass, chief executive of Headspace Health, said in a statement. “Companies trust that Headspace Health can address employees’ mental health needs across the spectrum, but importantly, will lead with prevention to address challenges before they become acute and costly.”
Costs and returns
Miriam Lacey, a professor of applied sciences at Pepperdine University who is not directly associated with Headspace, said the success of programs such as Headspace’s depends on whether or not employers see the worth in them.
“Companies are not going to be anxious to provide additional things for additional costs, so they’re going to be looking for the most cost-effective ways of providing this service,” Lacey said. “If it turns out to be something like Headspace, then yes, we’ll see more. If that turns out to be an additional burden to what they’re already paying, I don’t think we’re going to see much of it.”
According to Lacey, what has changed in the business world is that mental health issues have been destigmatized. As a result, companies are having discussions about mental health and how it affects their staffs.
“In the 1960s and 1970s, people were very ashamed to have any mental health issues, so they were reluctant – even though their health care plans often provided for mental health sessions – the executives were worried about using them. Fear would create the stigma and they would be marginalized from the workplace,” Lacey explained. “We’ve moved beyond that now and employee assistance programs have become very prevalent. Part of that is because it’s now all shrouded in confidentiality, and people are confident of that confidentiality; making employee assistance programs confidential helped a great deal, (along with) widespread funding.”
Lacey said she has seen companies, executives and human relations professionals become more proactive about mental health in the workplace as a result of the pandemic.
“It all corresponds nicely with (diversity, equity and inclusion),” Lacey said. “How are we doing with mental health? How do we feel [being] remote? How do we make remote employees feel included and as if they belong to the organization? That has been a very common conversation in professional communities since the pandemic started.”
There is a generational difference in terms of who sees mental health as need-based coverage, not want-based, and according to Lacey, not all companies will speedily adopt such coverage.
“Young people will care, the older ones … they’re not used to it,” Lacey said. “(Large) corporations are going to supply something like that. It’s smaller companies with less than 1,000 employees, probably less than 300 employees, which are going to be the last ones to provide anything. So, if mental health is important and access to services is important, then that could influence employees’ choices of where to work.”
Moving forward
Leslie Witt, chief product and design officer of Headspace Health, said the company’s unified experience uses Headspace as the front door to a suite of other mental health services, from self-care tools to coaching to psychiatric care. This approach, she said, gives companies the tools to support employees and their families to address mental health needs.
On the one hand, employees can create a personal care plan, which may include meditation content from Headspace and psychiatry support from Ginger. Employers are provided with an end-to-end view of both engagement and outcome metrics, helping them to better understand the mental health needs of their employees.
According to analyst company Business of Apps, approximately 2,100 businesses have partnered with Headspace to offer the app for free to employees. Witt explained that when Headspace is rolled out in a company or enterprise, it had a 3% adoption by employees. Ginger had a 10% to 15% usage with employees. Witt said there are significant barriers to adoption because there’s fear of being found out within the workplace and being seen as somebody who needs mental health services.
Headspace for individuals costs $12.99 a month or $69.99 a year, while the enterprise cost varies on company size and needs.
“We’re on our path towards profitability,” Witt said. “And as a company, the way that Headspace works is by delivering value that people see (and) repeat. That’s true within the enterprise channel as well as within our consumer channel.”
