27 May Employee Mental Health Is a Business Issue. The Data Makes That Clear.
As we move into summer, it is worth stepping back and naming something that has quietly shifted in how organizations think about employee well-being.
This is no longer just an HR conversation.
Mental health at work is now directly tied to retention, productivity, absenteeism, and long-term business performance. The organizations treating it that way are building stronger teams. The ones still treating it as a soft benefit are paying for it in ways that show up on their balance sheets.
What the Research Shows
The numbers coming out of recent workforce studies are consistent and hard to ignore.
According to Lyra Health’s 2025 State of Workforce Mental Health Report, nearly 89% of employees globally experienced at least one mental health challenge in the past year. Yet fewer than half received the support they needed. That gap between prevalence and access is where productivity loss, absenteeism, and turnover quietly accumulate.
SHRM’s research found that employees experiencing burnout are almost three times more likely to be actively searching for another job. Nearly 45% of workers report feeling burned out from their jobs. And around 1 in 3 employees ages 18 to 29 say they have considered quitting because of their job’s impact on their mental health, according to the NAMI Workplace Mental Health Poll.
The Lyra data also shows the flip side: employers offering comprehensive mental health support are 13% more likely to report higher productivity, 17% more likely to see stronger employee engagement, and 10% more likely to achieve a clear return on investment compared to organizations with less robust programs.
The business case is no longer theoretical.
The Gap Between Offering and Accessing
Here is where many organizations stall.
Nearly 98% of employers say comprehensive mental health benefits are essential for attracting and retaining talent, according to Lyra’s 2026 Workforce Mental Health Forecast. But 65% of those same leaders report a rise in mental health related leaves, which suggests that offering benefits and employees actually using them are two very different things.
SHRM research reinforces this: nearly 70% of U.S. workers say they are either unaware or only somewhat aware of the mental health resources available to them. Half say they do not feel comfortable using or asking about those benefits at all.
This is not a supply problem. It is a friction and culture problem. When employees cannot find what they need, do not trust that using it is safe, or feel stigma around asking, even well-designed programs sit unused.
What Actually Moves the Needle
The data points to a few consistent drivers of real change.
Manager training matters more than most organizations expect. Research from MHFA England found that employee desire to quit fell from 35% to 18% when managers were trained to have supportive mental health conversations. That is close to a halving of quit intent from a single intervention.
Flexibility and structural changes to how work is designed consistently outperform perks added to a broken environment. Employees regularly report that mental health days, flexible scheduling, and reduced workloads would help them more than additional apps or benefit programs.
And access to care navigation, reducing the friction between an employee knowing they need help and actually getting it, is where organizations can create the most immediate impact. The harder it is to find and use support, the less support gets used.
The Bigger Picture
At Muse Health, we continue to see how accessible, human-centered healthcare experiences shape whether people can show up fully, at work and in life. When the path to care is clear and supported, people use it. When it is fragmented or intimidating, they do not.
Summer is a natural pause point. Teams shift, workloads change, and people have a moment to recalibrate. It is also a good time for organizations to ask whether the support systems they have built are actually reaching the people who need them most.
The data is clear on what happens when they do. And on what it costs when they do not.
References
- Lyra Health — 2025 State of Workforce Mental Health Report: lyrahealth.com
- Lyra Health — 2026 Workforce Mental Health Trends Forecast: lyrahealth.com
- SHRM — Employee Mental Health in 2024 Research Series: shrm.org
- SHRM — 2025 Insights: Workplace Mental Health: shrm.org
- NAMI and Ipsos — 2024 Workplace Mental Health Poll: nami.org
- MHFA England — Manager Mental Health Training and Retention Data: mhfaengland.org