Available Doesn’t Mean Used

Organizations have invested heavily in employee wellness.

EAPs. Peer support. Wellness apps. Fitness rooms. Mental health resources. Training programs. Crisis lines.

Then we sometimes look around and wonder:

Why isn’t anyone using them?

This came up for me again when I saw that researchers at New York University recently received a $2.36 million National Institute of Mental Health grant to study people’s actual experiences with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Among the questions researchers want to better understand are people’s expectations and experiences with 988, barriers to its use, and whether someone who used the service would use it again.

That’s important research.

But it also raises a question we don’t need a multimillion-dollar grant to begin asking inside our own organizations:

Do we understand how our people actually experience the resources we’re providing?

Availability Is Only the Beginning

I’ve been part of plenty of conversations where someone points out that a resource exists.

“We have an EAP.”

“We built a wellness room.”

“Everyone has access to the app.”

That’s good.

But available doesn’t necessarily mean accessible, trusted, relevant, understood, or used.

Sometimes the problem is awareness. People simply don’t know what’s available.

Sometimes it’s trust.

Sometimes the resource doesn’t feel relevant to the people we’re asking to use it.

Sometimes there’s too much friction involved in accessing it.

Sometimes the marketing is poor.

And sometimes we may discover that the resource we thought people needed isn’t something they actually value.

We shouldn’t assume we know.

We should ask.

Start Developing the Picture

You don’t need a research team to begin.

Look at utilization where you can.

Talk to employees.

Ask supervisors what they’re hearing.

Ask people who use the resource what made them use it.

And perhaps more importantly, ask people who don’t use it why they don’t.

A simple starting point might be:

Do people know it exists?

Do they understand what it’s for?

Do they trust it?

Is it easy to use?

Does it feel relevant to them?

Providing resources matters.

Understanding whether those resources actually reach the people they’re intended to help matters too.

Don’t just inventory your resources. Understand their use.