Banks are paying more mind to mental health

The Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod in Hyannis, Mass., wasn’t preparing for a pandemic when it decided last year to cover the cost for employees who wanted access to popular meditation apps — it just wanted give them another tool to manage stress, said Lee Ann Hesse, the bank’s chief engagement officer.

The offer proved timely, though, given how the COVID-19 crisis drove up bank employees’ stress levels. They were facing fear and uncertainty about their health and the health of loved ones; financial strain after family members lost jobs; and, for parents, the struggle of balancing child care and online education, Hesse said.

“These are really not easy days for anyone,” she said. “So the apps proved popular.”

In the spring, at least 20 of the bank’s 165 employees — or roughly 12% — requested reimbursement of around $60 to $70 each for annual subscriptions to apps like Calm and Headspace. Others who signed up for subscriptions opted to pay for them out of their own pockets, Hesse said.

While they could not have predicted the myriad challenges posed by COVID-19, human resources executives at banks featured among American Banker’s Best Banks to Work For had been firming their commitment to employee mental health long before the pandemic arrived.

The trend, they said, has been driven by a recognition that workplace benefits should address the mental and emotional challenges faced by employees and their families, from struggles with anxiety to caring for children with special needs.

For banks, the challenge is finding the right tools to help employees meet a wide range of challenges.

“What helps one person doesn’t necessarily help someone else,” Hesse said.

At the heart of most benefits packages for mental health is the employee assistance program, or EAP. Generally provided by outside contractors, the programs offer services like short-term counseling that help employees deal with personal or work-related problems affecting their job performance.

It wasn’t long ago that employees would be hesitant to discuss mental health struggles, fearing that doing so might jeopardize their careers. But that has changed in recent years, as younger generations have entered the workforce. Even before the pandemic hit and spurred more discussion about mental health, younger employees were already opening up — and inspiring their older colleagues to do the same.

Bethany Corum, chief operating officer at the $3 billion-asset Capital City Bank in Tallahassee, Fla., said that, while younger employers are more likely to take advantage of mental health benefits the bank is offering, “we have seen it across all age groups and we were seeing that even before the pandemic.

Read more: Best Banks to Work For

Corum herself has been more open about the steps she takes to control her diagnoses of depression and anxiety. “I couldn’t have had that same conversation probably even 10 years ago. There would have been a real label given to me,” she said.

There is a cost to adding mental health benefits to existing health plans, but HR executives say it’s worth the expense because it gives employees some extra peace of mind that allows them to stay more focused at work.

In the past, banks might have let go of employees with mental health issues rather than trying to address the underlying causes, said Mike Jacobson, the chairman, president and chief executive of the $850 million-asset NebraskaLand National Bank in North Platte, Neb.

When Jacobson founded the bank in 1998, he wanted to create a workplace that supported employees at every level, including offering help with personal matters from domestic violence to a cancer diagnosis.

“If you’ve got employees that you…