B.Komplete Wellness Thought Leader Interview: Tom Finn with LeggUP

Yep.

Welcome to our Wellness Thought Leader campaign. My name is Beryl Krynski, and I'm the founder of Be Complete, a corporate wellness firm. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Tom Finn, who is the co-founder and chief executive officer for Leg Up, the first company to ensure employee productivity, retention, and well-being for their clients. Today we're going to be talking about mental health, and that is a condition that impacts so many businesses across our country and our world. Mental health is the single most expensive healthcare category, and within industries, it costs roughly 200 million lost workdays and almost $17 billion in lost revenue. We have a lot to cover off today. Welcome, Tom. We are so excited to be speaking with you, and Carly Manlove on our team is going to be facilitating the questions.

Thank you, Beryl, and thank you again, Tom, for joining us today. First, we all know that COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the mental well-being of many employees. In your opinion, what do you think are some of the effects that we'll continue to see?

Well, Beryl, Carly, thanks so much for having me, first of all. Great, great to be with you. The first question is really an important one, but let's start with prevention when we talk about mental health. For those of you that don't know, the US did release a new mental health number for those that are in crisis. Similar to 911, it's 988. So I think it's important to start with prevention. And if somebody is having a mental health crisis, there is support available on a suicide and crisis lifeline across the US. There's about 200 crisis centers nationwide that are taking those phone calls. So we'll start there. I think when we start to look at the data on mental health and we start to think about the impacts This has had on employees over the last couple years. It really comes down to stress and burnout that we're seeing in the workplace, and those two are combining to create this fear of future, the fear of future state and what that looks like, not only in the workplace but in society, within our families, within our homes and our communities. And so our data at Leg Up is showing that stress and burnout continue to be on the rise for employers and employees alike. Now, there are lots of mental health providers out there that provide networks of therapists for various acute diseases or care that's needed, and that's really important. But what I would tell you is we're going to continue to see that burnout and stress that leads to bigger issues for employees. And if we can get in front of it, if we can really start to think about mental health as prevention, we're going to have a lot better opportunity to sort of help people long-term. 1 in 5 people in the US have a mental health disorder. And I would argue that some of us along our journey, almost all of us are going to have some need for mental health services at some point in our lifetime.

Thank you. That's great advice. In the experience that you have with coaching, how do you think that coaching helps to support the mental well-being of the workforce population?

Yeah, I started a coaching company 5 years ago, primarily driven by the fact that we wanted people to feel good at work and function well. And if we start to just think about ourselves, right, we're all connected. Our work and our home life is connected. Our, our physical body and our mental well-being is all connected. And so we started thinking about that very holistically. And One thing that's really important for organizations, you've got to help people thrive as part of your, as part of your workforce. And it really does come down to how productive are you in terms of leadership and management and detail in your job. And then also, how do you feel from a well-being standpoint? So are you physically healthy? Are you emotionally healthy? Do you feel confident? Are you satisfied with your job? They, they really play together, productivity and well-being, because we have to have both to be successful in our career. So as I think about, you know, how coaching can help, it comes down to having the right coaching models and the right products that all align together in a holistic way that create a better lifestyle for that employee and ultimately for the employer. It creates a better and more productive employee. It creates lower costs on the medical side and their insurance. It creates lower absentee rates. And so there's a lot of really good reasons to coach and develop people in productivity and well-being.

Thank you. That's a lot of good things to think about. From an HR perspective, how can improving the mental well-being of my employees have a positive impact on my company as a whole?

Yeah, I think to understand this, we want to just break it down a little bit because when we say mental well-being, it just feels like such a big topic. And I feel like when we, when we say it that way, it just gets a little generic. And so what I want to do is just encourage everybody to start thinking about maybe yourself first in really 3 ways. Are you, are you struggling? Are you surviving? Or are you thriving? And I think we've all been in each one of those buckets if we're being honest with ourselves. And so what's really important for an employer to understand is What percentage of my population is struggling? These are the folks that are gonna utilize mental health resources. They're also gonna utilize physical health resources in terms of your, your medical plan. And so that's really important to understand who's struggling, right? Where we focus on at Leg Up is those folks that are surviving and those folks that are thriving. So what we wanna do is take people from the struggling and move them into surviving. That's important. And then we wanna take those folks that are just simply surviving and move them into thriving. So what, what do I mean by that? When you have integrated people development and mental health, you really want to be proactive rather than reactive, especially when it comes to mental health of a population. So if you can put in programs that help move people through the continuum, you'll increase performance, And again, lower cost for your company.

That's great advice. I know you're talking about developing programs to help your employees surrounding mental well-being. But we also know that there's a stigma that exists around mental health. How do you— what recommendations do you have of reducing that stigma and starting the conversation about mental health within a workforce environment?

Yeah, I think it's a great point. There does still tend to be a bit of a stigma around mental health. I think we've gotten away from the physical health stigmas of sort of generations past, but mental health is still around. And I think we all tend to look at ourselves and think, my goodness, I should be able to handle this. I should be able to handle that. I'm better than this. I can do this on my own. And what I've learned personally along my own journey is that I don't have to do everything on my own. There are wonderful people in the mental health space that can help you really focus on improving your own ability to deal with pain and discomfort in life. And so I would start by saying, my own personal journey is we've come a long way, but we have to start looking at mental health as an area where there's prevention. And today what we look at is, oh my gosh, I'm depressed and I need to see a therapist. Okay, go. And what about the 2 years prior where I was dealing with stress and burnout, right? And what did I do along the journey? And the answer today is nothing, um, until you get to that point where you're sort of really in a difficult spot. And so I, I would tell people that reducing stigma is really about understanding that You have to have some sort of behavioral change ahead of the major issue. And I encourage, as a second point, equality between physical health and mental health. So we've all come to the realization that our physical health is important and how we treat our bodies is important and what we eat is important and how we, how we live that life will determine, you know, how we proceed. So let's think about mental health in the same way. How can we feed the soul and the brain of our bodies and minds and do that in a preventative way so that we're not experiencing stress and burnout over long periods of time that cause acute pain down the road? And so the other thing I would encourage people in terms of stigma to do is just be kind to others that are dealing with their own journey and their own challenges, because we've all been in struggling, surviving, and thriving modes in our life. Maybe I'm in thriving today and somebody else is struggling. I should really recognize that and be kind and thoughtful about my approach with that individual. And so if we can all do that as a society, as a culture, as a global community of friends, then I think the stigma will lift and we'll all start working on ourselves a little bit differently.

That would be great. You've given us a lot of advice and insight and things to think about when dealing with mental health and our employees in a corporate environment. What other advice do you have surrounding mental wellbeing and employee populations for us today?

Well, I think it comes down to understanding your population through data. So for those employers that are starting to think about how do I, how do I really get into my population, understand thriving and surviving and those folks that are struggling, you probably don't have the data to be able to, to really depict what's going on within an organization. And so that's okay, because a lot of this stuff is emerging. And there's a lot of emerging companies like, like ours that really focus on the productivity and well-being of an organization. And then we can handpick who the folks are that really need that preventative support along their journey or their performance enhancement within an organization, those top performers that we want to support as well. So it starts with data and then using that data to create cohorts and to create a multi-year plan of attack for an organization to really help all of their employees thrive.

Thank you so much for all of your advice and your insights and tips for us to think about moving forward in the future. And we really thank you for for taking the time out to talk to us today.

Carly, thanks for moderating. Appreciate it, Beryl. Great to be with you.

Yeah, thank you again, Tom. This is such valuable advice, and we all need to really take to heart the advice that mental health affects every single person in our world, and the more that we can support ourselves and each other, the better that we'll all be.