How Large Employers Are Addressing Productivity Blockers In Real-Time
Employers have long approached workforce productivity with direct resources, including digital tools and training courses. However, growing evidence suggests that a more foundational productivity blocker has been overlooked: employees’ emotions.
Human emotions are a key factor in employees’ output. Stress, sadness, loneliness, and more can interfere with any workflow, often even to a greater degree than outdated software or an imperfect team dynamic.
Large employers are at the forefront of acknowledging and acting on this reality. One way a number of the country’s largest employers are addressing emotional roadblocks to productivity in a highly cost-effective way is through anonymous peer-to-peer support. This tactic is the subject of promising research. JMIR has recently published on how 24/7 real-time, live-moderated digital peer support has measurably improved emotional states such as helplessness, anxiety, and depression, while bolstering the optimism that underlies motivation and belonging, specifically for employees of five large US employers.
Results seen for these large employers’ users (across about 25k sessions) include:
- Optimism increased by 77% on average during a single session.
- Loneliness reduced by 46%.
- Stress reduced by 46%.
- Sadness reduced by 45%.
- Depression reduced by 40%.
- Anxiety reduced by 39%.
- Despair reduced by 40%.
- Helplessness reduced by 38%.
- The addition of real-time resource sharing through Supportiv’s patented technology compounded positive emotional outcomes by an additional 8.8% on average.
Another takeaway from this research is that the timing of when employees can utilize emotional wellbeing benefits really does matter. 68% of the digital peer support conversations in this research study occurred nights and weekends, outside of traditional business hours, when more traditional supports are not available, and when employees can address their emotions without cutting into the workday.
A proactive, low-friction approach to workforce productivity
Providing mental and emotional health support has typically meant benefits like Employee Assistance Programs and therapy coverage, which tend to be reactive pathways to care, and which can involve wait times and inconvenient scheduling during business hours. The model studied in this paper is available on-demand, in under one minute wait time, always on, at the exact moment employees begin to feel stuck, without an appointment. Using this model, wherein employees have instant access to genuine human care, in a safe, professionally moderated space, they engage longer with these services, progressing further toward resolution before spiraling into productivity loss.
Employee engagement friction is further reduced by the studied model’s complete anonymity. No personal information is required to begin a peer support chat, and users are matched into small peer groups across a large, third-party global user base, minimizing the chances of interacting with a real-life coworker. This trusted anonymity may help drive the high rates (46%+) of BIPOC engagement, as marginalized workforce members may understandably require stronger assurances of safety in order to seek support for vulnerable emotional struggles.
Because emotions like those studied (loneliness, stress, sadness, depression, anxiety, despair, helplessness, and optimism) connect to myriad workplace behaviors, large employers providing round the clock digital peer support services proactively cushion workforce productivity. Additionally, these types of tools provide aggregated topic-based insights into what employees struggle with most, allowing organizations to make data-driven decisions about workplace wellbeing initiatives, benefits, and more.
While most employers recognize that emotional health is a direct driver of productivity, not so many have acted on that truth beyond traditional measures like EAPs. For those that have, including five of America’s largest employers examined in this study, their vision is delivering measurable outcomes that can be shared with other organizations. Positive outcomes compound when access is available in the exact moments it’s needed, which occur overwhelmingly outside of regular business hours.
The future of work will be shaped by how effectively organizations help regulate the emotional states that make high performance possible. Employers that recognize and act on this, by offering benefits that allow real-time impact on emotional workforce productivity blockers, are already gaining an edge.
Post Views: 218
