NEW FOCUS
Mental health is a high impact area
Additional analysis and research let us to an overall hypothesis that mental wellness is a high-impact area for Rally investment for the below three reasons.
FINDING EVIDENCES
There is a mental wellness crisis at work
20+ literature reviews around mental wellness combined with Optum stakeholder interviews revealed the severity of how declining mental wellness affects employees, Optum itself, and businesses globally.
Growing Population
80% of U.S. workers experience stress on the job. Moreover, 63% of workers indicated that they feel burned out
(American Institute of Stress & Indeed).
Declining Metrics
47% of Rally users are not enrolled in wellness programs. Engagements with wellness activities has decreased by 12.2% over 12 mo. (Rally Health, subsidiary of Optum)
Severe Impacts
Poor mental wellness is an illness people bring to work that kills productivity, and can drive other dangerous and expensive health outcomes. (Rand 2021 & Niosh 1990).
USER INTERVIEWS
5 in-depth conversations about mental wellness
With our new focus on mental wellness, we set out to conduct another round of user interviews with 5 participants of age 22-30, with 1-6 years of work experience, using the 4 themes below.
INSIGHTS
Three big hurdles to engagement
Through the interviews, we found many instances of participants not using — or even knowing about — the mental wellness resources offered by their employers. This led us to identify three main hurdles below for causing such behaviours:
1. Ingrained beliefs
Mental wellness is perceived as a matter of lifestyle balance, not a medical condition. Employees assume that it is up to them to bring about change, defaulting to not seeking help from employers when managing their wellness and responding to difficulty.
2. Existing approaches
People prefer their own routines for taking care of their mental well-being (such as walking the dog and playing video games), but employer resources do not fully leverage these routines. However, social opportunity encourages trying out employer wellness resources.
3. Transparency blockers
Public channels for sharing mental wellness states hinder vulnerability, as found when we created two conceptual prototypes that asked people to either publicly or privately share their mental wellness state. Moreover, internalized fears around appearing incompetent and burdening others prevent people from openly sharing their mental wellness issues in the workplace.
SYNTHESIS
Where do we currently land?
The three big hurdles led us to three corresponding thought starters guiding our upcoming research and design process for the summer.
I don’t want to talk to my boss about my therapy
I think I am pretty healthy
Ineffective
Wellness is just being happy with what you're doing
“Irrelevant”
Judged as "weak"
I can fix my own mental wellness issues
Pursuing hobbies outside of work
Talking to my mom helps a lot