Transcription:
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.
Alyssa Place (00:09):
Welcome to Leaders. I'm Alyssa Place, editor in chief of Employee Benefit News. Joining me today is Joe Grasso, vice President of Workforce Transformation and customer marketing at Lyra Health. Hi Joe.
Joe Grasso (00:21):
Hi, Alyssa. Great to talk with you.
Alyssa Place (00:23):
So great to chat with you. Today we're going to be talking about mental health benefits and the role of technology in support for employees today. This is something you and I have spoken on many times in the past. I'm very excited to get to speak to you a little more about it in person before we get to the technology piece and really digging into some of the things that are really moving the needle today, I think it's important to level set a little bit with where employees are at with their mental health. A few years ago, obviously mental health was the talk every single day. Everyone was checking in around anxiety, depression, isolation, all of those things. And despite the fact that the pandemic is over and there's a sense that things are back to normal, it still seems that people are struggling a bit. So what are you hearing from clients and employees and what can you share with us about the general state of mental health today?
Joe Grasso (01:15):
Yeah, I don't think this will come as a surprise to a lot of people. We are in a period of compounding and prolonged stress. Employees are navigating political polarization, war, global conflict, economic instability, and also a wave of organizational disruption. So we're seeing greater frequency of reorgs and layoffs and now AI driven role shifts. We actually conducted a state of workforce mental health study and in the report from that study, 41% of employees cited stress as their top mental health challenge. And when we looked at all of the different ways that stress materializes, emotional exhaustion, difficulty concentrating, diminished morale, a lack of clarity about priorities, it became clear that you had a laundry list of stressors that were causing a long list of negative effects that don't just affect the individual but also affect the business. And the underlying theme to a lot of those stressors and a lot of the challenges that they cause is this element of uncertainty.
(02:33):
So employees don't know what's coming next. They don't know whether their job is secure, they don't know what's happening in the world at large and what they can count on. And so that means it's harder for them to stay agile, it's harder for them to sustain focus. And again, that affects not just the individual that affects the business because if you have someone who's having a hard time staying focused and a hard time adapting to this constant onslaught of change and feeling of uncertainty, it's going to affect their performance and how they show up at work too.
Alyssa Place (03:07):
And as we were starting the conversation of this sort of broad awareness during COVID and during the years after that, this was a real impact, do you think business leaders are as aware of the struggles that employees are going through today?
Joe Grasso (03:24):
I think there's a high level awareness where we see some of the disconnect is on the responsibility of leaders to addressing some of what they see. Leadership behaviors and the systems that leaders influence are really big difference makers. Employees need leaders who can communicate frequently and transparently. They need leaders who role model vulnerability and who can just acknowledge what's hard. When leaders are seeing these stressors, simply acknowledging and validating that they're there, that it makes sense that people are affected by what's happening at the world at large, what's happening in the organization, that there is very real uncertainty. That's kind of a baseline requirement. Before employees can engage in any kind of initiative to help them be agile or adaptive, they need to feel seen, heard, and understood first. And we need organizational systems that then support employees in being adaptive. And again, this is where leadership priorities matter.
(04:31):
What systems are in place to help reinforce what is a priority today? How can I get clear on what I should be focused on? How can I feel like I'm working in an environment that prioritizes raising a flag on things that aren't working well in terms of ways of working, allows me to speak up if I have a problem, I need to ask for support or help, and also helps me adapt by giving me clear feedback loops and clear expectations that flex with these shifting realities. And so that's where leaders hold a lot more of the cards than they might realize or at least acknowledge.
Alyssa Place (05:17):
And I do want to acknowledge that it's also challenging for business leaders and benefit leaders too. I mean, they are struggling with budget challenges and some of the things that we talked about earlier. So can you speak to that a little bit? The challenges that benefit leaders in particular are facing? Yes, they want to help employees, but they have limitations too.
Joe Grasso (05:38):
Yes, we are certainly seeing that there is more pressure on decisions about benefits because of budget constraints. We're seeing that there's greater scrutiny, which I don't think is a bad thing of the ROI of benefits the extent to which people are using them, the extent to which people are getting better as a result of engaging with benefits. And then we're also seeing that there's a new kind of recalibrating of expectation among employees that kind of drives pressure from below. So you have bottoms up pressure from employees that are saying some of these mental health benefits that we now come to expect are table stakes to us. And so that does put benefits leaders in a tight position where you've got budget constraints from below, you've got reset expectations from the workforce from below, and you kind of have pressure on both sides that's putting benefit leaders in a tight position.
(06:44):
I think the good news is that there's a lot that employers can do to help support mental health that doesn't require hefty budget. And this is where I think there's been the most lag in terms of effort on things like looking at management practices and company policies and internal programs, whether that's peer support programs or ERGs or l and d to train people about mental health and promote mental health literacy. These are the kinds of things that scale. They're not always very expensive, but they require time. And I think where we see the most friction is they require cross-functional effort. A benefits leader can't unilaterally do a lot of these things even though they tend to own a lot of the mental health strategy. So what we've been working with employers on a lot more recently is how do you create these cross-functional relationships with your colleagues who have responsibility to workforce mental health, whether or not they realize it. So that's occupational health, l and d, employee relations, the broader HR function, the more that those functions can come together and create a more cohesive and coordinated mental health strategy, the less that it has to fully rest on the benefits leader shoulders and the less that it's as vulnerable to the changing budget constraints year to year that benefits leaders have to deal with.
Alyssa Place (08:24):
And you mentioned that employees have basically accepted that mental health support is a table stakes benefit, and you also mentioned all of these other elements too. So in an ideal mental health benefit platform or in a program, what are the elements that employees are looking for and what would you recommend? You mentioned a lot of things before, but what are the things that employees are saying, this is what I need today and here's how I want to receive it?
Joe Grasso (08:52):
Yep, a great question. I think there is definitely an expectation that care, especially for younger generations, we see this with Gen Z and soon Gen Alpha entering the workforce. There's a new savviness about mental health. Mental health conversations are part of everyday language, so that means there's a demand for care that's more hyper-personalized. So it's not just care in a one size fits all approach. It's knowing that there's going to be providers that are tailored to my needs, that the care is going to be culturally responsive, that it's going to address a full spectrum of conditions, everything from the milder issues like subclinical relationship problems or communication difficulties all the way through to the really severe issues like substance use disorder or even things like suicidality or eating disorders and everything in between. There's also this need to present the care options in a way that makes people feel like the care reflects their identities and their lifestyles.
(10:06):
So there's also this need to segment how you talk about your benefits and care approaches in a way that speaks to different audiences and what they care about and the different levels of stigma that are out there. Then there's this other piece around going beyond just the care itself. It's how you educate around mental health, and that's something that it goes alongside the mental health benefit. Oftentimes, employers have had different point solutions for different pieces of this. Maybe you have a different training provider than your EAP. Maybe you have a different digital app for mindfulness meditation or stress coping or resilience than you have from these other vendors. So there's an interesting dynamic where employees are wanting a more varied solution set. They want the educational content, they want the digital app, they want the on-demand resources, and of course they want the care. And then employers on their end are wanting to consolidate their point solutions. They don't want to manage six to eight vendors. And so I think there's this demand from both sides to have a solution that's really comprehensive, but also all through the same vendor. So it's holistic for the employee and it's easier to manage and centralized for the employer and the benefits leader.
Alyssa Place (11:47):
Yeah, it sounds like that's a lot of asks out of one platform or one thing. And we're also talking about, we're still talking about some of the challenges just in the care space in terms of accessibility, challenges, wait times, things like that. So one of the things that obviously comes up so many times in these conversations is the role of technology and easing so many of those pain points. So I want to get into that and talk about the ways that technology is really changing the game in terms of all the things that you're talking about and making it so that this is not just like a pie in the sky thing. This is a real solution that exists. So can you talk about the ways that technology is being utilized in the mental health space to do all the things that you're saying employees want today?
Joe Grasso (12:34):
Yeah, absolutely. So when we think about solving for all these challenges, we are thinking always about solving for the full spectrum of need, but in a way that simplifies and expedites access to the care for the right need. And technology is what makes that possible. It allows us to scale care without sacrificing personalization or quality. One of the ways that we do that at Lyra is through using guided care pathways. So essentially the front door to using lyra is a quick triage process that allows us to understand what is an individual's clinical need. So is it coaching, is it therapy, is it medication? And then how do we tailor further to make sure that no matter what their service need is, they're getting a provider who's then matched to their specific issue. They specialize in that issue. We're showing a list of providers that allow the user to select based on preferences like location or modality. Do I want to see this provider in person? Do I want to see them virtually? And then also based on other preferences like gender as an example, and making it feel hyper-personalized through technology with profiles that allow an employee or a user to see a video description of the provider, the provider describing their style, their interpersonal approach, their therapeutic approach. And so really that need for hyper-personalization can be met through use of scale technology and making sure people are getting the right level support at the right time.
(14:26):
Another way that technology helps solve for this is through providing the right content at the right time. So bite-sized actionable content for people who might not need provider-led care or might not be ready to get that provider led care. So technology provides us with a way to serve up content that is going to maybe help build some mental health literacy, some skills, some confidence that care is right for them to help either create that scaffolding that makes them want to get care or provides them with enough support through some teaching of skills that they don't necessarily need Provider-led care. The last thing I'll just mention about technology, because I think this gets overlooked, it's not very sexy, is technology facilitates better care through tracking of outcomes and through adapting care based on that kind of real time data. So we are constantly collecting data from our clients to tell us is care working and is it working efficiently? Are people getting better in a timeline that is aligned with their goals? People don't want to stay in care forever. And so based on data we collect, our therapists and providers are tweaking the treatment plan and also tweaking the content that we deploy in between sessions to make sure that a member is progressing through their care journey at the rate and to the degree that we would expect.
Alyssa Place (16:09):
And seeking any sort of care is such a vulnerable process for many people. And there's been so much conversation too around the role of artificial intelligence and ai, and I think there is some fear that, oh, I'm not going to share my deepest, deepest, darkest secrets with a robot or something. So can you talk a little bit about the role of AI in some of the things you're talking about here that in between time maybe you're meeting with a therapist and they give you homework. How is AI sort of the partner to the therapeutic relationship that you may have established?
Joe Grasso (16:41):
Yeah, and I love how you frame that as a partner. So ultimately this is something like therapy is always going to be a human led process from our perspective, but AI has a critical role to play in making care more efficient and personalized and scalable. So some of the ways that we want to make sure that it's used responsibly is in the triage process and care matching. So making sure that employees get connected to the right level of care and the right type of support based on their care need and lived experience. Things like machine learning can help ensure that high quality match. That's something that we invested in very early on, pretty much the beginning of Lira's founding. It can also personalize things like digital content delivery, making sure that we're serving up the right in between session content to help bolster what you learned in your live session or help bolster your engagement in care through nudges that feel timely and relevant.
(17:46):
Also, AI enhances care quality for providers. So at Lyra we've been using AI to lighten the administrative load for clinicians. So for example, we use AI to help them generate their session notes. Those notes are always reviewed and approved by the clinician, but it's a great example of how humans are always in the loop, but AI is this tool to help make this piece of care that needs to be more efficient, more efficient for employers. I think AI enables better visibility into population level mental health needs. So we're also using AI to help give HR leaders more actionable insight based on your data and what we see as the factors driving care utilization for your population. Here's what we think that you could do within the workplace. Here's where we think you could be targeting your comms better to get more engagement for a certain population. Here's where we think you might invest in some mental health literacy programming or some educational programming in the workplace. So we're trying to think about AI as a feature that's built in partnership with clinical experts. It's always rigorously tested and it's always subject to human oversight and escalation protocols. So we make sure safety, quality and clinical integrity are at the heart of it. So the ways in which it's going to help us scale and ensure effectiveness, but with human connection always prioritized is what we're most excited about.
Alyssa Place (19:33):
And it seems like employers really need to be taking a very active role in whatever mental health platform that they choose. You mentioned the importance of data and looking at ROI and all of those other things. Let's just talk a little bit about why employers really need to be in the weeds with how employees are engaging with these platforms, the results that they're seeing. Why is that so important when we're talking about things like budget constraints and increased instances of anxiety and depression in the workplace, how can employers get more control? They have it at their fingertips.
Joe Grasso (20:12):
Yeah, exactly. And I think this is where employers are catching up and becoming more savvy themselves around trying to quantify the impact of mental health on things like job performance, workplace engagement, mental health, disability leaves, which have been skyrocketing for the past five years. I think the real need is to look at all of the different forms of data available to help tell a holistic story. Because we've been knowing for years that mental health affects all of these business drivers like engagement and productivity. We know that it affects healthcare claims, we know that it affects mental health disability claims, but the problem is employers have often lacked good data from their mental health provider to understand what kind of ROI are they getting from solutions that are supposed to treat these problems. And they've also been lacking guidance on how do I connect that data to these other pieces of data that I have to understand what's driving what and how are the solutions that we're standing up actually moving the needle.
(21:28):
So at Lyra, we're trying to combine both pieces. So we give them data that tells them, here's what engagement looks like in your population, who's using care? What are they coming to care for? The degree to which they're getting better and staying better. And then we're also collecting data on things like productivity. To what degree does that affect their ability to show up and do their job well? And also things like the degree to which these outcomes are lasting over time, so they're not just one and done, they're durable outcomes. And the degree to which that's driving ROI, looking at things like an employer's healthcare claims costs and how is Lyra helping to offset that? Because when people engage with Lyra, they're less likely to need outpatient mental health support or inpatient mental health support through the health plan. Now we're wanting to take that one step further and help employers better understand how use of mental health services and engagement with mental health care affects things like engagement.
(22:39):
So we'll consult with employers on how to look at changes in engagement scores based on mental health symptoms or the quality or the degree to which people are engaged in care. We'll also help them look at things like mental health disability leave drivers, and the degree to which they can understand how workplace issues are driving mental health disability leave, because that's another place where Lyra can help. So when you look at all these different factors, it helps the benefits leader to be in a position to tell this story of not just being a cost center for the organization, but really a driver of cost savings for the organization, not just in the form of care costs, but in terms of cost to retention, productivity and disability leave. And that's really where we've seen a shift in interest from employers. It's not just about how do we offset care costs anymore. That's table stakes. Now it's about I need my employees to be productive and engaged. You're telling me poor mental health's an impediment to that. So how are our vendors moving the needle on influencing productivity for the better?
Alyssa Place (24:01):
And this is obviously a very crowded space. I'd love to hear how Lyra is continuing to evolve and innovate. What are you working on now? What's next when you think about some of the ways that you want to help employers and employees with their mental health?
Joe Grasso (24:17):
Yeah. We stay very close to employer needs. We are constantly soliciting feedback from our customers. We're looking to the broader market to tell us where the biggest pain points, where do we expect future pain points and building in advance. So that's showing up for us with expanded access to high need, but often overlooked populations. So caregivers a really big uptick in need from the growing sandwich population. I've got kids, I've got aging parents. I'm feeling caregiving constraints from both sides or caregiving demands. That puts a big strain on me. There are particular types of supports and interventions that we want to prioritize for that group. Also, NEURODIVERGENCE is showing up across industries. We're seeing greater rates of neurodivergence, especially in younger populations that are entering the workforce or newer to the workforce. So we're wanting to provide more wraparound support for those individuals both through clinical care but also workplace supports.
(25:33):
We're growing our global support, especially in critical areas like critical incident response. Unfortunately, we're living in a reality where critical incidents are frequent and we want to make sure that we are deploying trauma-informed clinicians that we're informing real-time supports, tailored content, personalized programming. And then we're also investing in hyper-personalized care models like we were talking about earlier, using AI and machine learning to make sure we're tailoring people to the right care, the right content, the right progression pathway, and making sure our measurement infrastructure allows us not just to track clinical outcomes, but also long-term employer value on things like retention, productivity, culture. And then I think the last thing I would mention here is doing even more to support employers around how work itself is impacting mental health. So we're building tools that help HR and business leaders assess risk to their business and through the ways that mental health is affecting employees at work, and giving them insight into how those mental health impacts might be shaped by the workplace itself and providing them consultative support on things like work design. Because at the end of the day, changing the experience of work is one of the most impactful things that any employer can do to improve population mental health.
Alyssa Place (27:09):
Yeah, I mean, obviously it is very challenging times. It's going to continue to be challenging times. What keeps you hopeful about the way that we've evolved the conversation around mental health and what keeps you motivated to keep working in this space?
Joe Grasso (27:24):
I love that question. I think what keeps me hopeful about how far we've come is just seeing the change in conversation from pre COVID to today. I think that was one of the few silver linings to come out of COVID was diminished stigma, greater prioritization of mental health, normalization of it. I love that younger generations come into the workplace and are very upfront about their mental health needs and are willing to speak up when there's a need for support or they're going out and they're getting care at Lyra. We love the feedback if someone isn't getting what they need, we're seeing more willingness to provide feedback and suggestions that tells us that not only are more people using care than before, and we're seeing higher rates of engagement than we did pre COVID, but also that care is more valued and that people have more savviness around their needs, which means they're more likely to be getting their needs met because they're a better consumer of mental health support.
(28:38):
And what keeps me energized to do this work is seeing employers that are really invested in it. I think we talk a lot about employers need to do this and they need to do that, and they could be better at this. But I think the takeaway from our customer community is that employers on the whole, they get it. They're balancing a lot of different priorities, and it's our job as their partner to help them tell the story of how mental health shapes all of those other workforce priorities and make sure that we are doing our part to help them realize all of the benefits from positive workforce mental health. That really is what energizes me.
Alyssa Place (29:22):
Great. Well, thank you so much, Joe. As always. This is such a good conversation. We could probably keep going, but I will cap it here and I really appreciate your time and as always, so many wonderful insights about what employers and employees are experiencing today. So thank you so much again for joining us today.
Joe Grasso (29:39):
Thanks, Alyssa. This was fun. I appreciate it.
