The Use and Efficacy of Employer-Sponsored Mental Wellbeing Programs

The purpose of this special issue is to catalyze research on workplace MH resources and offerings ¹ . The special issue sprung from discussions with business leaders and workers who voiced confusion about how to approach, use, and evaluate the MH resources increasingly offered by employers. People across the globe are encountering escalated levels of mental health (MH) concerns, in both clinical, diagnosed conditions and daily experiences and sentiments (Insel, 2023). Working adults and their dependents confront these challenges: estimates indicate half of the global population will develop one mental illness in their life (McGrath et al., 2023). Demographics also point to an increase in MH concerns in the workforce. Rates of mental illness among youth have increased by 35%–61% in recent years (Sappenfield et al., 2023), while older employees, who are comprising an increasing share of the workforce, face elevated risks of MH challenges (McCarthy et al., 2017). Additionally, most adults report that their mental distress affects their daily life (Ipsos, 2024). The need for MH support, then, has perhaps never been greater or more evident.

Very often, people who need MH support must access relevant resources—a MH provider, psychopharmaceuticals—through an employee benefits offering (e.g., employer-grouped health insurance; Baumgartner et al., 2020). Businesses may invest in these resources to comply with legal requirements, to mitigate losses and health claims, to benefit the capacity of their existing workforce, to allow for greater flexibility in staffing, or to maintain competitive appeal in the labor market. Regardless the reason(s), businesses are increasingly prioritizing their employees’ MH, at least in their intentions and spending (Koa Health, 2024). Employers face a robust marketplace of available resources and plans, with annual costs-per-employee ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars (BLS, 2022; KFF, 2021). ¹ This upswell of commercial options, however, has not been matched by available objective research to guide the choice, implementation, and evaluation of these offerings. Seventy-five percent of employers report confusion about choosing and evaluating offerings for supporting employees’ MH (SHRM, 2022), which is further complicated by the topic’s sensitive nature. Given the justifiable criticisms our discipline faces on the gaps between researchers’ focus areas and business stakeholders needs, especially in the realm of employee rewards and benefits (Dulebohn et al., 2009), we hope this issue can kickstart conversations and work on the area of workplace MH support (cf. employee MH, broadly) in the fields of I/O psychology, human resources management, and organizational sciences Many of the component pieces—living/working with MH challenges, evaluations of the impacts of MH support options, reasons to (not) use MH available support—are already supported by a rich literature stream. Our discipline is uniquely positioned to study these resources through the lens of a century of theories and models of workplace behavior and social circumstances to help inform specific stakeholders—business’s decision-makers and employees. Optimistically, we believe research that builds from existing work and emphasizes practical usage can dramatically improve the lives of millions of people who need more MH support. For example, most employees do not use all the offerings provided by their company to support MH (Bhatt et al., 2023), do not know about them (Alight, 2022), or do not trust them (Agovino, 2019). If our research can advance existing models, theories, and evidence to address these barriers for workers, we can maximize the benefit of businesses’ investment and workers’ wellbeing.

The special issue, comprised of a conceptual paper, two empirical papers, and a collection of insightful commentaries, provides excellent examples of the conversation we aimed to spark. We appreciated the healthy collection of submissions in response to the posted call for papers, demonstrating the opportunity and appetite for research in this area. The diversity of perspectives, theories, and focal contributions represented here exhibits how generative this area can be for advancing research and informing our stakeholders.

A First Taxonomy & Insightful Commentaries

The special issue begins with our proposed taxonomy to help users—employees, HR professionals, business leaders—make better sense of the commonly available workplace offerings to support MH. This paper (Thomas et al., 2024) provides a brief look into the broad marketplace for these offerings, giving a clearer picture on how subtle and murky this space can appear to leaders, HR professionals, and employees. Drawing from social exchange theories and interpersonal trust models, it proposes a very simple 3-dimensional taxonomy for categorizing any workplace MH offering. It concludes with two clear charges for future research to advance fundamental understanding of these types of offerings at work. Together, this article provides a helpful initiation for the reader to understand the broader framework, and potential next steps, in this area.

Group and Organization Management also solicited commentaries on this paper, the accepted versions of which are included here. In our paper (Thomas et al., 2024), we acknowledge our taxonomy is a first step, knowing revising and honing an imperfect product can lead to a more elegant solution. We offered a theory- and user-based product to revise and improve, and we happily report that the commentaries have already begun progress on that front. Huffman and Howes (2025) propose major revisions to the taxonomy, keeping two of three dimensions, and adding six more, with a net effect of offering a more comprehensive set of benefits in understanding and usage for the three stakeholder groups (employees, HR professionals, business leaders) we originally discussed. They also provided a commentary that Zooms Out and In (Howes & Huffman, 2024) to demonstrate the value of a broader perspective of these offerings’ place in a greater domain (i.e., health) and in focusing on a specific offering and need (e.g., flexible sick/wellness: grief). Serendipitously, this offering and need are the focus of an empirical piece later in the issue (Bergeron, 2025). Beekman and Adiasto (2025)’s commentary provides a critical complement to the Thomas et al. (2024) piece: workplace mental health offerings cannot use a one-size-fits-all approach. Employees’ individual needs, the causes of their MH concerns, and the context in which offerings are provided and used, all merit serious consideration. Finally, Fezzey and coauthors (2025) expand on a human attribute—high achievement-focus—and a social force—high-competition culture—that may operate in a cycle (high-achievers foster high-competition culture which promotes high-achievement focus) to form a barrier to utilizing workplace MH offerings, which is something that Thomas and coauthors (2024) call for. They continue by describing the types of offerings best-suited to meet these factors, based on the taxonomy offered by Thomas et al. (2024).

Employees and MH Offerings: Predictors of Awareness, Usage, & Need

With some exceptions, most employees underutilize their available benefits and offerings. Multiple explanations exist for this underutilization, although individual awareness and familiarity with the offering’s content (sometimes called literacy; Furnham & Swami, 2018) remains an important antecedent. In their empirical work, Mejicano Quintana and Duxbury (2024) examined the factors driving awareness, versus usage, of five common MH offerings among a large sample of employees in a company. Their results tell a fascinating story on how nuanced employees’ awareness and usage of offerings can be. First, an organizational culture that supports employee wellbeing predicts awareness of MH offerings more consistently than individuals’ job/personal demands (e.g., caregiving), resources (e.g., income), or even experienced stress. In contrast, the predictors of usage varied according to the type of offering (e.g., compassionate leave vs. counselling). As more research explores the helpers and hurdles to employees using workplace MH offerings, we emphasize this paper’s approach of studying multiple types of MH offerings simultaneously. Rarely do organizations offer only one type of offering; the suite of offerings merits holistic consideration that demands researchers individually measure each offering to understand them in conjunction. As Mejicano Quintana and Duxbury (2024, p. 32) state “Researchers and practitioners need to take the [MH offering] type into account when implementing and evaluating their [MH offering] strategies.”

On the Nuances of Bereavement Grief & Company Leave Policies

Unfortunately, almost every employee will experience the death of a close relation, and estimates indicate 78% are currently experiencing some level of the grief following such a loss (Wilson et al., 2018). Losing someone important through death is the most impactful, stressful life event someone can encounter, and employees who experience bereavement (i.e., the circumstance of losing someone important through death) must navigate employment along with the affective, cognitive, and physical fallout of their loss. Bergeron’s (2025) research explores bereavement—an understudied, unfortunately inevitable topic—specifically in the context of work and employment. They report fascinating details on the differences in compassionate/bereavement leave in workplaces, with 60%–90% of workplaces (depending on company type and data source) offering paid bereavement leave, and their sample of employees (n = 388) affirms this complexity: 15% of respondents did not know about available leave in their workplace and 28% said no leave was available. They sampled employees who had experienced bereavement to explore the effects of available leave and supplementary offerings (e.g., private space to grieve at work, flexible schedule) businesses may offer their employees to support them during bereavement. Their research adroitly separated awareness and usage of each offering and examined the predictive effects of each on self-rated job performance, work engagement, and perceived organizational support. The results sustain the importance of studying bereavement among employees, such that bereavement produced strong effects on all three outcomes. However, available bereavement leave only predicted perceived organizational support, not performance or work engagement.

Bergeron (2025) raises an important discussion point on this result that standard bereavement leave policies can offer a gesture of the organization’s intended support, but the quality or specific impact of leave or support holds tremendous importance and significant variance. In other words, not everyone grieves the same: A standard, scheduled 3-day absence, especially if coworkers continue to email or call the bereaved, may not provide tremendous comfort. This finding raises a fascinating set of likely oblique mechanisms: businesses offer MH offerings to employees, and the impact may be enacted through: (a). Signals these offerings send about the company’s regard or concern for employees or (b). The actual experienced benefit for employees who use the offering. The gesture of an offering’s availability, however, may produce different effects for the employee (cf. using the offering), and employees may be cynical about such offerings if they perceive them as only a gesture. In cases where workers feel the offering holds no functional value, or that they realistically lack the opportunity to use the offering, a hollow gesture may be more detrimental than no offering at all.

Both Bergeron (2025) and Mejicano Quintana and Duxbury (2024)’s studies examined employees’ awareness and usage of employee assistance programs (EAPs), which are likely the most commonly prescribed and cited option for supporting employee MH (Masi, 2020). In each study, the authors found that employees greatly underutilize EAPs, a trend that has been well-supported in other research (Agovino, 2019). Employees’ significant underutilization of the archetypical workplace MH offering merits specific attention in this special issue because evidence continues to reveal that the status quo for workplaces to support their employees’ MH falls short. EAPs can provide well-targeted support for people in need, but they are severely underutilized. We hope that this special issue’s research and the research it instigates, will provide meaningful insights to advance change in the status quo of workplace MH offerings. Progress continues with encouraging signs as business leaders invest more in employee MH, employees increasingly discuss and desire MH offerings (Greenwood & Anas, 2021), and HR professionals prioritize MH within their human capital strategy. However, this special issue and its research are a single step that shows what can be accomplished, while reminding how far we can still go. Our field stands at the intersection of multiple disciplines who have provided foundational perspectives from which we can build to establish a robust body of research to describe, diagnose, predict, and prescribe the appropriate and effective uses of MH support in workplaces for the coming decades.