What Otis & Bank of America Did Differently on Mental Health

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THE MENTAL HEALTH WAKE-UP CALL THAT HR CAN'T KEEP SNOOZING

Employee well-being is deteriorating.

And the trend transcends borders.

An Ipsos survey found that mental health is the top concern for adults across 31 countries. 

• 4 in 10 workers are at risk of mental health issues.

• More than 65% are already suffering from burnout. 

Organizations with low well-being scores are 53% more likely to lose their top performers in the coming months.

Mental well-being is a performance signal.

And it's now one HR can’t afford to ignore.

Inside this edition

• Why most well-being strategies miss the mark—and how to fix that

• The 5-part ACCT HR™ framework to build a culture of mental health

• How Otis and Bank of America moved from reaction to results

• Free tools: dashboards, survey templates, MHFA launch checklists, and more

🌟 Save your seat for our May event: The Workplace Well-Being & Mental Health Summit!

🗞️ In case you missed it: From wage hikes and workplace benefits to high-stakes battles over unions and academic freedom, read the stories reshaping the future of work in the U.S.

Mental health support efforts often focus on surface-level fixes. Continue reading to learn why the real problem is deeper and is costing trust, talent, and time.

SPREAD FOR YOU
📢 DISCONNECTED, DISTRACTED, AND DONE

Gallup found that half of the US workforce is job hunting.

And if you think it is all about pay, you are wrong. Pay and benefits come second.

The top reasons (65% for Millennials and 59% for Gen Z) are work-life balance and better well-being. Gen Z and millennial workers feel stressed most of the time and say their jobs contribute a lot to their stress levels.

• 81% of HR leaders are deeply concerned about the rising rates of serious mental health conditions across all employee age groups

• Substance use disorders, in particular, are a top-reported concern for HR and benefits leaders

• 74% report that employees struggle to find specialists through health plans or employee assistance programs (EAPs).

• Stigma is still prevalent: According to a recent Deloitte survey, only 36% of Gen Z and Millennial employees have ever talked to a manager about their mental health.

• The fear of being discriminated against and the fact that senior leaders do not share their own mental health experiences is making younger employees cope silently.

When stress becomes normalized, people don't raise a hand—they raise a resignation.

MAKING THE CASE: HOW LEADERS CAN TALK ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH

HR Leaders don’t need more evidence that mental health is a problem. 

However, it is crucial to use business language to influence the C-suite, protect investments, and scale what works.

Business leaders care about ROI. When discussing mental health, HR leaders can approach the conversation using four angles.

1. Reframe Turnover as Preventable Loss

Employee exits don’t always stem from poor performance. More often, the real driver is a workplace that overloads, fragments focus, and offers little time for recovery or poor psychological safety, especially in the employee–manager relationship.

• Instead of: “People are burning out”, say, “We’re losing high performers due to unmanaged stress. Prioritizing mental health reduces churn and protects our leadership pipeline.”

• Pair internal attrition data with manager check-in frequency or EAP usage to show correlation.

2.  Position Mental Health as a Productivity Driver

Mental health affects how people show up, think, solve, and deliver. Creativity, accountability, and execution all depend on mental energy, and energy drains fast in high-stress environments.

• Instead of: “Our teams are overwhelmed,” say, “Mental health impacts output. The more cognitive load, the more rework and delay. Focus improves when support systems are in place.”

• Track project timelines, absenteeism, or team quality metrics before and after program rollouts.

3. Connect Costs to Inaction

The biggest health care expenses often come from what organizations failed to address early. Serious mental health conditions, including Substance Use Disorders (SUDs), suicidality, and chronic anxiety, are rising, and they carry high financial and human consequences.

• Instead of: “We’re seeing more complex cases”, say: “Unmanaged conditions drive most of our healthcare spend. Early intervention is more cost-effective than crisis response.”

• Use internal claims data or vendor analytics to link mental health support to savings.

4.  Link Family Health to Workforce Stability

People come to work as whole persons. When their loved ones—a child, partner, or parent—are in crisis, they struggle to stay focused, engaged, or even present.

Supporting employees and their families through mental health stress shows that an employer genuinely cares about creating a more humane workplace. It also protects performance, strengthens loyalty, and keeps people connected to their teams during the moments that matter most.

• Instead of: “Our caregivers need help”, say: “When children or partners struggle, our people disengage or exit. Supporting families helps us retain working parents and reduce absenteeism.”

• Highlight gaps in your current benefits for dependents, and show usage rates if you’ve already expanded access.

We’ve examined why mental health matters and how to frame it strategically. But what actually moves the needle?

HR FRAMEWORKS

THE ACCT HR™ FRAMEWORK: 6 WAYS HR CAN TURN INTENTION TO ACTION

Mental health support works when it's consistent, visible, and grounded in leadership. It needs structure, follow-through, and a culture that makes care part of how work happens.

The ACCT HR™ framework gives HR leaders six practical moves to make it real.

🧭 1. Align Culture With Mental Health

People take cues from what leaders prioritize. When mental health becomes part of how success is defined, it stops being an afterthought.

• Add psychological safety and burnout risk to team performance reviews

• Include mental health in onboarding, check-ins, and leadership expectations

• Create accountability for manager behaviors, not just business results

🧩2. Create Everyday Connection

One in four U.S. adults reports having no close friends. And inside organizations, disconnection is one of the most overlooked risks to mental health. Belonging protects mental health, but it has to be built on purpose.

• Build weekly rituals that promote real conversation and trust

• Track belonging as part of your people metrics

• Reinforce peer support in onboarding, buddy programs, and mentoring

🧑‍🏫 3. Coach Managers to Notice and Act

Managers are often the first to see someone struggling, but many don’t feel confident enough to help. Coaching gives them tools.

• Run short, practical training on identifying stress and burnout.

• Use a check-in guide to help managers open up 1:1 conversations

• Track coaching behaviors as part of manager development

🩺 4. Train for Access and Response

Mental Health First Aid works when people trust it and when it connects to a system that supports them after that first conversation.

• Start with a map: who needs support, and where are the gaps?

• Train MHFA officers who reflect the organization, not just the org chart.

• Connect MHFA to safety, HR, and care referrals with clear pathways.

🎤 5. Humanize Leadership Through Storytelling

People don’t open up because you offer support. They open up when they feel safe. That starts at the top, with leaders willing to speak openly.

• Invite senior leaders to share mental health stories in all-hands or fireside chats

• Encourage ERGs to lead storytelling initiatives

• Make emotional intelligence and vulnerability part of leadership training

📊 6. Report What Changes

Impact comes from what shifts over time. Measuring mental health means tracking trust, behavior, and outcomes.

• Build a scorecard with key indicators: help-seeking, risk, recovery

• Share program follow-up data, not just attendance

• Go beyond Mental Health Awareness Month and share quarterly reports on mental health progress across the business.

You don’t need a new strategy. You need tools that make the strategy real.

YOUR DOWNLOADABLE RESOURCE
THE ACCT HR™ WORKPLACE MENTAL HEALTH TOOLKIT

This mini e-book gathers practical tools for HR and managers to make mental health part of daily work.

What’s Inside:

• ✅ Pulse Survey Template

• ✅ 1:1 Mental Health Check-In Guide

• ✅ Meeting Icebreaker Questions

• ✅ MHFA Launch Planning Checklist

• ✅ Printable DARE Model for Mental Health Conversations and more!

Take the poll—and keep reading to see what this work looks like in action.

UPCOMING EVENTS
WORKPLACE WELL-BEING AND MENTAL HEALTH SUMMIT

Join the Workplace Well-being and Mental Health Summit, a three-day virtual event designed to help HR leaders, executives, and wellness champions create healthy workplaces that drive sustainable performance.

The summit moves beyond perks and checklists to address the real challenges facing today’s workforce: burnout, disengagement, stress, and mental health stigma.

Attendees will gain evidence-based strategies for integrating mental health into leadership, culture, and operations. With deep conversations, expert-led workshops, and insights from leading voices in workplace wellness, this is your go-to platform to build a resilient, people-first organization.

📅 When: May 6–8, 2025 (7 am–11 am Pacific Time)
💻 Event Type: Online | Free
📢 Content Format: Panel | Workshop

These tools help build safer conversations and stronger support. But what happens when organizations go beyond tools and truly commit?

SUCCESS STORIES
HOW OTIS, BANK OF AMERICA, AND A PUBLIC INSTITUTION PRIORITIZE MENTAL HEALTH

By 2026, corporate spending on wellness programs will top $94 billion, but mental health outcomes aren’t improving. Burnout, stigma, and stress-related absences continue to rise.

Why? Most programs focus on the individual, not the system. They offer apps instead of accountability and self-care prompts instead of structural change.

This disconnect has a name: care washing—when organizations promote wellness but fail to address what’s actually harming people at work, a topic we focused on extensively in a previous edition. As the research shows, surface-level support can backfire. Employees often feel blamed for stress they didn’t create and frustrated when access to real help is delayed, stigmatized, or impossible to navigate.

These stories spotlight organizations that chose a systemic approach, embedding mental health into leadership, training, access, and trust. Their results prove that we build better workplaces when we design for prevention.

🛠 Otis Asia Pacific

Impact:

🏆 Wellbeing Organisation of the Year Award at the WorkWell Leaders Awards 2024
📈 4× increase in Employee Assistance Program (EAP) utilization
🎓 100+ mid-level managers trained in psychological safety and check-in skills
🧠 2× improvement in psychological safety scores among frontline teams
📉 15% reduction in voluntary attrition

The Challenge

Otis faced rising disengagement and attrition, particularly in field operations. Mental health was not openly discussed, and many frontline workers didn’t feel safe speaking up about stress or burnout.​

What They Did

Otis prioritized mental well-being by training over 100 managers in emotional literacy, psychological safety, and employee check-in strategies. They conducted monthly “Meet the People” sessions, providing employees direct access to HR and executive leaders. EAP usage was normalized through peer stories and visible leadership support.

🧭 Bank of America: A Culture Under Pressure, and a Turning Point

Impact:

🌐 Over 34,000 employees & families accessed virtual behavioral health care
🧑‍🏫 Emotional Wellness for Managers program launched globally
📍 EAP specialists deployed across 34 workplace locations
💬 Confidential counseling sessions for staff and household members

The Challenge
In 2024, Bank of America found itself in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. The deaths of two employees—one in New York, one in London—sparked an industry-wide reckoning over excessive working hours and the mental toll of high-pressure cultures in investment banking. Though no direct causal link was established between their deaths and workload, the events triggered public scrutiny, internal reviews, and widespread calls for change from both employees and external advocates​.

What They Did
In the months that followed, Bank of America took several high-visibility and high-impact steps:

• Urged junior bankers to report any pressure from managers to underreport working hours​
  

• Expanded access to virtual behavioral health support via Teladoc Health, reaching tens of thousands of employees and family members
  

• Deployed licensed, confidential EAP counselors at 34 office locations, making real-time, in-person help available at the point of need
  

• Introduced a global Emotional Wellness for Managers module to equip leaders with practical tools to recognize and support struggling employees
  

• Reaffirmed its wellness commitments through broader family services, including dependent care, parenting support, and crisis navigation via Life Event Services​

This wasn’t just about launching a new benefit but rebuilding trust. By investing in proactive support, visibly embedding care into physical office spaces, and addressing the cultural silence around overwork, Bank of America began to reset expectations from the inside out. The story is still evolving, but the shift from damage control to design signals a path other organizations can follow.

🏛 DVLA (UK): Prevention Without Labels

Impact:

📈 Increase in early disclosure and help-seeking behavior
💬 86% of trained staff said they could apply what they learned immediately
🧠 Significant reduction in self-stigma and anticipated stigma
📉 22% reduction in overall sickness absence among participants

The Challenge
Like many government institutions, the DVLA was facing rising absences due to common mental disorders (CMDs) like stress, anxiety, and depression. But stigma—and the belief that only “sick” people need support—kept employees from speaking up or accessing help. Managers lacked confidence and the tools to address mental health in their teams.

What They Did
Partnering with Swansea and Cardiff University, DVLA became the pilot site for Prevail, a workplace-based intervention built around low-intensity psychological tools. Unlike traditional programs that single out individuals in distress, Prevail trains everyone in emotional literacy, self-regulation, and peer support, regardless of diagnosis.

• Delivered one-day training sessions to over 570 staff

• Rolled out manager-specific workshops focused on active problem solving and co-production

• Used DVLA-specific video case studies to normalize help-seeking across job levels

Why It Worked

Prevail treated mental health like a workplace skill, not a private issue. Focusing on shared human experiences (grief, debt, stress, parenting) made employees feel they had permission to speak up and support each other. The results were statistically significant and humanly visible: fewer sick days, fewer silent struggles, and stronger team cohesion.

While some progress is happening, the headlines remind us there's still a long way to go.

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