- Prioritising mental health in the workplace can help workers flourish and reach their full potential.
- The Dublin-based company, which is setting up an office in Dubai soon to cater to the Middle East and North region, is expected to offer its services this year.
- Need for an established workplace wellness programme is essential for retaining top talent, ensuring KPIs are being met and guaranteeing a high return on investment.
Technology has brought various benefits to the world and at the same time, the same technology is impacting users’ mental health.
There are reports that mental health issues have impacted workplace behaviour and employers are not doing enough for their staff.
Mental health touches every aspect of our lives, especially workplace performance. Key performance indicators such as productivity, creativity, and social engagement can all take a hit if an employee’s mental health is suffering.
Prioritising mental health in the workplace can help workers flourish and reach their full potential, which is what businesses need to thrive and grow.
According to the Business Group on Health survey, over seven out of ten employers (77 per cent) noted an increase in mental health issues in their workforce in 2023, a big leap from 44 per cent of employers in 2022. Another 16 per cent of respondents expected to see more increases this year.
“Looking to the future, increasing access to mental healthcare services was the most common initiative that employers expected to implement in 2024. Around 53 per cent of respondents expected to adopt mental healthcare centres of excellence (COEs) in 2025 and 2026 as well as 52 per cent who anticipated adopting substance use disorder COEs.”
One company which is making a change since 2018 is the Dublin-headquartered digital mental health and wellbeing company – Spectrum.Life.
People need to get “timely support”
“What we are seeing is a much higher and increasing demand for mental health services as the traditional mental health services are not able or keep up. There is a growing demand and supply gap and the consistent problem we are hearing from insurers, GPs and health systems,” Stuart McGoldrick, founder of Spectrum.Life, said in an exclusive interview with TechChannel News.
Moreover, he said that people need to get “timely support” to solve mental health issues and they are not getting it due to long waiting lists and growing demand.
“We originally worked with multinational clients that have their European headquarters in Ireland. We worked with them to provide digital offerings for their employees. Our first clients were Microsoft, Meta, Intel, Dell, Bank of America, CitiBank and other big US corporations. Even now, none of the big clients have left us because they trust us and they know what we are doing,” McGoldrick said.
Moreover, he said the company aims to offer a holistic end-to-end approach to support people in advance of, through and beyond crisis” to change the current “cookie-cutter” approach to mental health.
One app and many benefits
The company provides mental health and wellbeing services for insurers, employers, employees and students in the UK, Ireland and across the EU countries.
“Our USP for a corporation is that we integrate all that they do from the health and wellbeing perspectives. We do the booking journeys for onsite gym classes and PTs to digital healthcare services, connected to their healthcare insurance policies,” McGoldrick said.
A corporate employee has to open only one app and one portal to engage in everything that the corporation is delivering to you in terms of health and wellbeing, he said and added that there is “no one in the market doing that like the way we do.”
Normally, digital health providers provide their technology and their healthcare services in separate apps, he said but “we developed the technology to ensure to connect all of their insurance claim journeys and healthcare journeys to provide a multi-provider model to provide the best psycho-provider and best GP provider from a single app.”
Spectrum.Life has more than 6.3 million insurance members on its app and across different pillars.
Preventing mental health escalations
“We have digital tools to prevent mental health escalations and to improve the positive emotional well-being of our users. We have 3,000 corporate clients and 600,000 third-level university students who use our mental health services,” McGoldrick said.
“We have a technology to connect a user to a coach or a clinic if they need and the technology connects the user to the right clinic based on their presenting issue, demographic and the severity of their mental health need. Moreover, we have a 24/7 team to support members whenever they need other specialised services. That is why; we are cut above the rest and growing 60 per cent year on year.”
Sometimes, he said that they have their members in the corporate HR teams to assist in the workplace and a large amount of multinationals have the Chief Medical Officer or Chief Mental Health Officer in their team or they outsource it to us and “we both of those for them. Smaller companies do not have this privilege and they rely very heavily on us.”
McGoldrick said that their studies have shown that productivity can go up by 43 per cent by using their app and 70 per cent of employees that engage with wellness services report higher job satisfaction.
APAC on radar
“We do about 250,000 mental health consultations a year and did 1.5 million consultations this year on our digital health services through our technology and have over 750,000 people who engage in health and wellbeing on our platform this year,” he said.
The company has recently entered Dubai, UAE, to cater to the Middle East and North region, and hiring clinicians (front end) and management staff to support the clients in that region.
“We will be launching our services this year. We are moving to the MENA region, due to the growing demand and supply gap, so that we can cover five times the population per clinician than the traditional providers can,” he said.
He said his goal is to enter two new markets this year and has already signed one client each from each country and APAC is also on our radar.
However, he said that the need for an established workplace wellness programme is essential for retaining top talent, ensuring KPIs are being met and guaranteeing a high return on investment.
“We are committed to creating a culture of innovation to encourage and empower your staff to take control of their health and wellbeing. We know from experience that delivering modern, safe and clinically validated healthcare service can transform lives,” he added.