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There’s a moment many HR managers and business owners will recognise. The renewal meeting comes around, absence figures are up, stress and mental health are cited as the main drivers, and the conversation ends with “let’s make sure we’re reminding people about the Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).” Twelve months later, the same thing happens again.
This World Mental Health Day, we’d like to suggest the problem isn’t a lack of support. It’s that nobody knows it’s there.
Many group insurance policies come with additional services that are included at no extra cost, and employees don’t have to make a claim to access them. They’re designed to help people before things reach crisis point. Exactly what’s included varies by insurer, but the most common services include:
The need is real. Mind reports that 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem each year, and our own research found that 90% of employees experience workplace stress in some form, with 80% saying it affects their performance.
Our 2025 Employee Benefits and Workplace Satisfaction Survey found that 67% of UK employees don’t know about, or don’t use, these additional services. Of those who were aware of the benefits but hadn’t used them, 39% said they had forgotten, didn’t realise they had them or didn’t know how to access them. (Read the full findings.)
Part of the reason is communication. Only 11% of employees say they receive regular updates about their benefits, while 25% say they never do and 22% hear about them only when they join. A mention at onboarding and a line in the handbook isn’t enough, and people typically need to hear a message several times before they act on it.
There’s a business cost too. 53% of employees are open to changing jobs in the next 12 months, and 32% say they’d leave for better benefits. Some of them may already have what they’re looking for. They just haven’t been told.
We recently spoke to Debbie Kleiner, Director of Wellbeing in Work and a Mental Health First Aid England instructor. She spent years advising employers on health and protection benefits before moving into wellbeing, and she emphasises that benefits only work when managers are equipped and aware of what is available.
Her point is that managers are the front door to every benefit. If they haven’t been trained to ask how people are really feeling, or to point them towards support, even the best service will sit unused. As she puts it:
We need to train managers to understand it’s their job to ask how people are feeling.
Debbie Kleiner
Director, Wellbeing in Work
She also raises something many employers don’t realise: they have a legal duty of care around workplace stress. Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, employers must assess and control risks to health at work, including stress, and the Health and Safety Executive offers free online learning to help them do it. When Debbie posted about this on LinkedIn, the reaction was almost universally “we don’t do that either.”
Good mental health support isn’t always about buying something new. Sometimes it’s about making sure people know what they already have.
If you’d like help finding out what’s included in your current benefits, or building a plan to get them used, our specialists are happy to talk it through. Call us on 0208 432 7333 or email help@drewberry.co.uk.
