It’s Not Personal, it’s Business: Workplace Mental Health Support

The Revolution on Stigma is Here. 

Stigma has met its match with Gen Z. The generation that was born with a platform knows how to use its voice and knows when to lean in. 

To be clear - stigma has never added value, but for generations, it was just an accepted part of life. Gen Z isn’t afraid to call out that which has always been accepted may actually be unacceptable. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than Gen Z’s impact on destigmatizing and prioritizing mental health and wellness in the workplace. They are fundamentally changing the way we work and in a way that will benefit us all.

USE YOUR WORDS: Has not talking about something significantly impacting you ever made a situation better?

We all know the answer to this and yet, how interesting is it that so many of us have been taught not to talk about things? That asking for help is somehow a bad thing, a weak thing, a shameful thing?

As it relates to work, if something is significantly impacting you - do you feel like you’re in the most creative, innovative, motivated place to solve a business problem, hit a key milestone, or engage with your teammates?

We all know the answer to this one too. Which means that mental health isn’t just a personal issue - it’s a business issue too.

STRESS ISN’T A GENERATIONAL PROBLEM: it is impacting us all.

While it’s true, Gen Z is documented as having the poorest mental health of any generation, it’s also true they are the most open about it. However, stress-related mental health concerns are not unique to Gen Z:

They are about parents: Parental stress is so debilitating, the surgeon general has declared it a public health issue.

They are about your employees’ kids: In North Carolina, new data shows the most frequent users of the 988 Suicide and Crisis lifeline number are 13-17 year olds.

They are about 40-50 somethings: 49% of Gen Xers in a 2023 Natixis survey said they worry that retirement may not be an option — up significantly from 42% in 2021.

There is a statistic for all of us. We are all simply more stressed than ever before. And that means we need to do something about it.

SO WHAT’S AN EMPLOYER TO DO? Listen and then act.

While Gen Z is on the front lines of the war on stigma, it’s up to businesses to create and normalize a culture around wellness. 

The first step is asking your employees - your stakeholders - what types of benefits they want (spoiler: according to this study, 63% said mental health care is the number-one workplace benefit they want after 401(k)).

The second step is talking about it and equipping people managers with the information and the tools they need to support their teams. No, no, no – this isn’t about making people managers into therapists. This is about empowering people managers to know how to provide and be voices for the support resources your company is offering.  

Last year, missing work due to poor mental health cost the US economy $47B in lost workplace productivity. Mental health is impacting businesses’ bottom line. Full stop.

So while it’s often easier to make a cheeky comment about Gen Z “demanding” these benefits, the reality is that we all need them. Gen Z is just the one unafraid to vocalize it.  As businesses, let’s tackle the mental health crisis the way Gen Z has attacked stigma. Your recruiting efforts and your bottom line will thank you for it.

Does “B2B2C” marketing sound like “adlja;woejfa” to you?

B2B2C: Better, Together.

A different language? Gobbledygook? Wingdings (I see/am you 40+ crowd!)? 

While growing in popularity, “B2B2C” is not a term that’s entered the mainstream business world’s vernacular…yet. Just type in “what is B2B2C marketing?” into ChatGPT - the response is a doozy (and I have the subscription version)! But it’s actually not complicated. And, done right, it creates a massive opportunity for businesses and consumers.

ALLOW ME TO REINTRODUCE MYSELF: business-to-business-to-consumer - partnerships.

That’s it! Spelling it out helps. Two companies partner together (hello, B2B) and then collectively work together to drive awareness and engagement of a product to their consumers and/or employees (hey, B2C!).

Let’s use the enormously popular mental health and wellness startup Headspace as an example. Headspace partners with Fortune 500 companies to provide employees at these companies with mental health support through its app. 

It’s a win-win-win. Companies reduce the stress levels of their employees by offering Headspace to them (often increasing their employees’ productivity), employees get the support they need without paying for it (often improving employee satisfaction and retention rates), and Headspace increases its reach (and revenue).

Both companies are stronger by partnering together, and the consumer wins too.

WHAT B2B2C MEANS FOR SAAS MARKETING & SALES TEAMS: you have 2 customers. 

• Your Buyers – the companies you partner with.

• Your End Users - the consumers or employees at the companies you partner with.

In this world, your buyers are usually a company’s c-suite team - their wants and needs are to offer products or benefits to employees that also positively impact their bottom line. Your end users, however, can have wildly different wants and needs. In other words, the value proposition that sells in a business is not what’s going to win over an end-user. 

How do you combat this? Customer journey mapping - highlighting each of your customers needs, paint points, levers, and identifying the key moments that matter - must be a critical component of your marketing and sales strategy in B2B2C models.

When done right, when sales and marketing are aligned as a team, B2B2C marketing is the truest form of full funnel marketing for SaaS businesses. 

HEADS-UP: Partnerships are relationships and relationships can be complicated.

The benefits of B2B2C marketing for SaaS companies are massive - including expanded consumer reach, faster revenue growth, increased brand recognition, awareness, and credibility, reduced customer acquisition costs (CAC), and a wealth of data-driven insights that allow marketers and product teams to continuously adjust to meet end users’ needs.

The hard part? Well, all of it. 

Anything that’s contingent on a partnership - a relationship - is usually complex in nature, especially when millions of dollars are on the line. Adding to the complexity is that you have three stakeholders (the two businesses and the consumer), all with different goals and expectations. Branding at scale can be challenging for SaaS businesses as their partners often want custom experiences. Then there’s the question of which B2B player owns the consumer – in the Headspace example, is it Headspace (the employee signed up for their benefit?) or is it the company the employee works for (the company is paying for their employee to have that benefit?). 

There’s another blog for another day to highlight how to address the challenges (spoiler alert: collaboration and integration are key). 

But the bottom line is this: for SaaS-based companies value creation for all stakeholders is possible with the B2B2C model and leveraging it can reap far bigger rewards than just going the direct-to-consumer route. 

However, like any relationship, B2B2C partnerships require trust, collaboration, and open communication between partners to work as powerfully as possible together.

The $60B industry you’ve never heard of: corporate wellness.

“Employee perks” grow up.

Yes, you’ve heard the term “corporate wellness” but did you know it’s an industry? A $60B industry projected to double in growth in the next 10 years?

Well, hello, corporate wellness. 

What once used to be a term associated with “employee perks” like your discounted gym membership to Crunch Fitness or a free flu shot clinic at your workplace is now a massively growing industry that encapsulates so much more. 

Yes, health, medical, and dental insurance are still wildly important to employees. Wildly. But so are flexible, democratized, and specialized healthcare services. So is financial wellness. So is mental health support. So are education and upskilling opportunities. So are nutrition and fitness programs. And so are work-life balance and caregiving solutions.

GOOGLE IT: Gen Z & Millennial workers expect their employer to care about their well-being.+

While today’s workforce is the most generationally diverse in history, with five generations in the workplace, Gen Z and Millennials now make up more than 55% of it. That percentage will grow significantly over the next 15 years. It’s important to step back and recognize that these are not more “needy” generations. For Gen Z in particular, this is a generation that were kids when the Great Recession hit and their grandparents 401Ks were wiped out. This is a generation that might not have had an in-person college graduation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, might have had their job offer rescinded, or might have started their first job out of college from their childhood bedroom. They’ve experienced different things than other generations at a very pivotal and formative time in their lives, and therefore, they expect different things too. 

Employers are listening (hence the CAGR associated with this industry). 

GOOD NEWS FOR EMPLOYERS: There’s a really positive ROI with corporate wellness.

“Employee health and productivity are inextricably linked.”

It’s not rocket science, if your employees are overly stressed - even if it’s about items outside of work - it’s going to impact their productivity. It’s going to impact their ability to land the next deal or hit that big hairy, audacious goal of yours. It’s therefore going to impact your team culture. It’s going to impact engagement. Stress (in all of its varieties) is a wrecking ball that only compounds and grows if it is not addressed. 

When employers offer their employees strong corporate wellness offerings - they improve the well-being of the employee. The magic in doing that is they also positively impact their bottom line. 

Smart investments in well-being platforms increase productivity and satisfaction and have significant implications to team culture. They can generate huge healthcare cost-savings and decrease sick days. They help attract the best talent to work at your organization and they help retain the best talent to continue to develop there. 

That is an ROI.

BAD NEWS FOR EMPLOYERS: Awareness, understanding, & utilization of these benefits can be low.

According to Gartner’s 2021 Employee Value Proposition Benchmarketing Survey, 87% of employees have access to mental and emotional well-being offerings but only 23% of employees use them.

Just because you offer something doesn’t mean people really understand what it is, why they should care, what it means for them, and when they should use it. Go onto your work intranet; I bet your company offers some benefits you didn’t know about. Additionally, some of the best well-being initiatives offered today address issues that can have stigmas associated with them. Do I want to raise my hand that I am struggling with mental or financial health? Will this hurt my chances for promotion? Will I be seen as weak, as if I make bad choices?

That’s where leadership support and advocacy and, of course, good marketing comes in. 

A leader’s voice matters. Full stop. It’s what makes them a leader. Advocating, normalizing, just talking about benefits being offered that improve employee well-being can drive incredible awareness and engagement and destigmatize someone from exploring more. In fact, you have your leader’s permission and encouragement to find out more. 

For marketing, it’s all about meeting employees where they are - identifying the moments that matter most - and using simple, easy-to-understand messaging. These are the drivers that turn awareness into actual utilization, retention, and advocacy of these benefits. 

Lumping all benefits all together and only highlighting during annual benefit enrollment season will never move the needle. While it might keep budgets down (due to low utilization of the benefits), that important productivity metric will also stay grounded until real organized support goes toward it.

The net net? 

The corporate wellness industry is 1) a thing! 2) exploding with growth and 3) what the workforce is demanding. If increasing productivity is your company’s goal, then offering strong wellness benefits focused on employee well-being and driving utilization of these benefits are what’s needed to get you there.

If you’re interested in growing and scaling your marketing efforts for your benefit, Curated Growth Partners has the toolkits and playbooks to get you there. Let’s connect.

+https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/issues/work/content/genz-millennialsurvey.html