Throughout the year, Milliman conducts regular Pulse Surveys focused on benefits topics that employers find meaningful and strategically informative. Mental health benefits are consistently one of the most popular topics for our survey series. The results continue to evolve as we compare year-over-year results from past surveys.
- What does the data reveal in terms of how employees are using their benefits?
- Does your organization have sufficient data to make assessments?
- Do mental health benefits remain a priority for employers’ benefit offerings?
- What changes do employers plan to make surrounding mental health benefits for 2025 and beyond?
Our mental health benefit survey remains a very engaging topic with this survey yielding the second highest number of respondents to date in our “What’s Trending in Benefits?” series. Survey respondents represented a broad range of industries and roughly 700,000 lives. Overall, the results of the survey yielded positive news that more full-time employees (+10%), part-time employees (+16%), and dependents (+2%) are being offered mental health resources compared to last year’s survey. Respondents also indicated that their organizations have increasingly sufficient access to meaningful data on utilization and engagement. Survey results also suggest a shift in how these resources are being promoted within organizations, with the results indicating less active engagement from leadership and management, and an increased role for third-party vendors.
Year-over-year, the reasons why employers offer mental health resources remain consistent. According to our survey results, employee well-being continues to top the list of importance for organizations (95%). Additionally, survey respondents clearly indicated that mental health resources are important across a broader range of subjects, with eight out of nine categories yielding a higher number of “most important” responses overall. Echoing these findings, 10% fewer respondents indicated that mental health benefits were either important or somewhat important to recruiting or employee retention efforts.
What is being offered?
What mental health resources do you currently offer to your participants?
(check all that apply)
| 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | Planning for 2025 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | N/A | 1% | 0% | 0% |
| EAP | 93% | 94% | 95% | 85% |
| Medical carrier’s embedded behavioral health program |
78% | 84% | 74% | 69% |
| Third party— stress management |
36% | 35% | 34% | 32% |
| Third party— counseling and therapy |
41% | 49% | 47% | |
| Onsite or near site clinics | 12% | 11% | 16% | 17% |
| Other | 25% | 14% | 11% | 13% |
| Not sure | N/A | N/A | N/A | 22% |
Results on what is being offered remain consistent, with 10% fewer respondents indicating that they offer embedded behavioral health programs through their medical carrier. EAPs continue to be the most popular resource offered with 95% of respondents currently offering them.
In comparing the current offerings with the projections for 2025, there is an observed 10% decrease in the provision of EAPs for the year 2025. Nonetheless, it appears that employers have not yet taken significant steps to offer resources beyond just EAPs.
Categories that we identify as alternatives to EAPs saw modest increases in what is being offered over last year. Third-party solutions continue to grow in popularity, with an overall growth of 8% from last year’s survey. Onsite or near site clinics also saw a 5% growth from last year’s survey.
Better data. Better decisions.
Fortunately, respondents seem increasingly satisfied with the data they have available to them regarding the utilization and employee engagement of their mental health benefits. 4% fewer respondents indicated that they were unsure when asked about whether they had experienced an increase in mental health-related expenses. Nearly 20% more respondents identified that they are receiving useful data and reporting through their mental health providers.
Driving engagement
Overall, survey results showed that company leadership has an opportunity to visibly support the importance of mental health benefits, with third-party vendors having an increased role in driving engagement.
Compared to last year’s survey results, leadership and management who were very engaged with this support went down 16%. Additionally, results showed an increase in leadership not being engaged (up 9%). When asked how visibly engaged leadership and management is, the number of respondents decreased 16%, with an increase of 15% in leadership is not visibly engaged.
Further, 20% fewer respondents indicated that leadership messaging was a method to drive engagement with mental health resources being offered. Survey respondents also indicated that mental health benefits may play less of a role than last year’s survey when it comes to recruiting and retaining employees. Overall, 10% fewer respondents indicated that mental health offerings were either very important or somewhat important when it came to recruiting and retention. The percentage of respondents who were ambivalent as to whether these benefits were important or unimportant regarding recruiting and retention also increased by 6%.
Download the full results
For full details of this entire survey, including comprehensive results for each response, visit our library of past Pulse Surveys on What’s Trending in Benefits? at https://www.milliman.com/pulse-survey.
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Have a future What’s Trending in Benefits? survey topic that would be of value to your organization? Our database of employers and plan sponsors used in this research includes more than 5,000 organizations, ranging from 500 to 300,000 employees, across a broad spectrum of industries. Milliman surveys are an objective, unbiased, effective, and highly affordable approach to better understanding how your organization is strategically positioned in areas of importance to you within the market.
Caveats
This survey summary has been prepared for information only. Milliman does not intend to benefit or create a legal duty to any recipient of this summary.