Stephen Sokoler, founder & CEO of Journey.
Companies often identify mental health risk too late.
By the time an employee seeks care, the human and business costs might have been building for months, through lower productivity, absenteeism, manager strain and team disruption.
For decades, employers have relied on Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) to support mental health in the workplace. These programs can give employees valuable access to counseling and step in when someone needs help. But if support begins only after someone raises a hand, I believe that’s too late.
I see the consequences of delayed support every day in my work with employers. Too often, companies sincerely want to support their people, but the systems they rely on are built to respond only after someone is already struggling enough to ask for help.
In conversations with benefits leaders, HR teams and executives, I consistently hear the same concern: They know stress, burnout and mental health challenges are affecting their workforce, but they often do not have a way to see risk early enough or intervene before it escalates. I feel strongly that the next chapter of workplace mental health has to focus on both access and timing.
The Illusion Of Access
In my role, I’ve spoken to many benefits leaders about how they evaluate their mental health offerings, and I find their answers are often consistent: network size, time to first appointment, number of sessions and cost per employee.
These are useful measures. But they are still access measures.
A fast appointment is helpful—but only after a problem has been identified. A large network is valuable—but only if employees use it. A system that activates only after someone asks for help risks missing a meaningful share of the workforce, especially those who are struggling quietly, functioning outwardly or unsure whether what they are experiencing is serious enough to warrant care.
Mental health challenges rarely appear overnight. They build gradually—through stress, uncertainty, burnout and personal or professional strain. By the time an employee seeks care, the cost has often already compounded.
Historically, mental health has been treated as a benefit—something offered alongside other programs and evaluated primarily on cost and access.
But as the connection between mental health and business performance becomes clearer, that framing is starting to break down.
Just as companies invest in systems to manage financial risk or operational performance, they will increasingly need systems to manage human risk, such as identifying issues early and preventing downstream impact before visible breakdown occurs.
This is why low utilization should be treated primarily as a design problem.
A Growing Timing Problem
Organizations are entering a period of unprecedented change. Advances in AI and automation are reshaping roles, increasing expectations and introducing new uncertainty across the workforce.
Meanwhile, mental health risk is becoming harder to detect through traditional channels. As hybrid and remote work became standard, managers lost the informal visibility they once had, like the hallway read and being able to see when colleagues seemed off.
Traditional EAPs were built for a workforce that was visible, co-located and likely to self-identify.
In this environment, a system that waits for employees to ask for help is increasingly misaligned with reality. What companies need is earlier awareness of risk.
Preventive Mental Health Infrastructure
To better navigate these shifts, companies can update their approach and focus more on prevention.
Instead of waiting for employees to raise their hand, organizations can engage in preventative mental health infrastructure to identify and support individuals earlier, before issues escalate into clinical or organizational problems.
At a high level, here are four things organizations can do differently to be more proactive about employee mental health:
1. Identify risks early.
Analyze patterns in engagement, behavior, sentiment and context. This can help leaders develop a clearer view of where risk is building before it becomes visible through traditional channels.
2. Intervene before escalation.
Rather than waiting for a crisis, begin intervening proactively through timely outreach, personalized resources and relevant guidance.
3. Embed support into daily work.
Instead of relying on employees to seek out a separate system, integrate support into the tools and moments where work actually happens.
4. Measure what actually matters.
Shift the focus from utilization and access. Instead, ask questions such as: What percentage of employees are at risk? What percentage are identified early? What percentage are supported before escalation? What cost is avoided by intervening sooner?
What This Means For Employers
For business leaders, the first step is to ask whether their current mental health strategy is truly preventive or simply faster at reacting.
Useful questions include: Are we identifying risk before employees reach a point of crisis? Do employees know where to go before they need clinical care? Are managers equipped to recognize early signs of strain without being expected to act like clinicians? Are we measuring outcomes and early intervention, or are we mostly tracking utilization and access? Are our programs embedded into the flow of work, or do they require employees to find support on their own?
The goal for employers is to build systems that make support easier to find, trust and use earlier. A more preventive approach should combine education, manager enablement, proactive outreach, clear pathways to care, strong privacy protections and measurement that looks beyond how many people used a benefit to whether the organization is actually reducing risk before it grows.
Companies that take a more proactive approach to mental health will likely be better positioned to support managers, reduce hidden costs and build more resilient workforces during periods of change.
The conversation around workplace mental health is evolving. The question is now: How effectively can organizations start early enough to make a difference?
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