This spring, Ovia Health released a study analyzing stress levels of parents, comparing how they felt pre- and post-pandemic. The findings: Lack of child care, financial stress, remote work and schooling, and domestic violence were taking a major toll. The most significant increases in anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation were among women age 35-39, those within the BIPOC community (especially Black mothers), and first-time mothers.

Such findings should not go unacknowledged by employers, says Amy Page, a regional sales director with Ovia Health, a family-health benefits platform. “Working parents need support now more than ever,” she said, “and they’re really looking to their employers to meet them where they are.”

Page joined four other speakers for a conversation on the transformation of health-and-wellness benefits driven by Covid-19, moderated by Insider Careers Editor Caroline Hroncich as part of From Day One’s June virtual conference, “The New Benefits that Employees Need and Want Today.” The time is ripe, panelists agreed, to increase focus on issues like maternal and family health, mental health, and a holistic integration of work and well-being. They also offered solutions and best practices to do so.

Ovia Health’s engagement with its members offers insight on what matters most to working parents: “Human understanding with a healthy dose of support, empathy and flexibility,” Page said. That translates into employee needs like flexible work hours, mental-health support, and backup child-care services.

Hannah Wilkowski, senior manager of global benefits at BuzzFeed, said the company has relied on its employee-resource groups, especially its parents group, to inform benefits changes. The company offered virtual resources for mental health, parenting, and pediatrics. It also instated backup child care for a certain amount of days per year.

BuzzFeed’s most popular innovation, however, has been offering one “self-care day” to every employee each month. “Everyone takes it,” Wilkowski said, partly because the days don’t roll over and can’t be cashed in. “One of the concerns we had before we implemented it was how it would affect productivity,” she said. “As it turns out, it didn’t impact productivity at all. I’d say it improved it.” The offering will be continued post-pandemic, she added.

Kimberly Young, VP of global benefits for PAE, an architecture-and-engineering firm, said that offering flexible scheduling has resonated with employees. “We realized the traditional work schedule wasn’t going to fit our employees in this new circumstance,” she said. Flexibility was offered “to meet deadlines in your own time.” Because employees weren’t traveling and taking as much paid time off (PTO), the company implemented “PTO flex,” in which employees buy, sell, or trade their PTO for other benefits, like contributions to their 401(k), paying off student loans, or cashing it out.

Mental Health on a Par With Physical Health

Alyson Watson, co-founder and CEO of Modern Health, a mental-health-care platform, offered suggestions on how employers could improve benefits in that area. Corporate leaders should acknowledge the difficulties in maintaining work-life harmony in the age of 24/7 communications, remote work, and global workforces. “This whole notion of balance is hard to achieve,” she said. “So how can we create work-life integration in which we support people while they are at work, and whatever it is they’re going through?”

By thinking of workers as individuals, companies can start strategizing on different mental-health offerings for different needs. “There’s no one-size-fits-all,” Watson said, affirming the current trend toward more personalized benefits. She suggested that companies think of mental-health needs as similar to our physical-health needs. “How can we get everyone to prioritize their mental health?” she posed. “It’s about offering something that covers that full spectrum and different modalities of care so everyone can engage.”

One example offered by Modern Health is Circles, a community-based care offering that provides mental-health support via virtual, provider-led group sessions. Initially created as a resource to extend support and relief at scale at the beginning of Covid–and recognized by Fast Company in its 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards–the resource has evolved into a core offering, supporting people of different backgrounds and life circumstances.

Balancing Costs With Comprehensive Support

Yet, in the face of ever-rising health-care costs, how can company leaders devise health-benefits plans that are both cost-effective and supportive? David Kristoff, VP of total rewards and HR services for the data-management company NetApp, called this “the eternal question.” With work so fundamentally changing, he believes it’s an opportunity for companies to step back and re-evaluate their programs. At NetApp, “we’re figuring out what is our working model going forward, and how that’s different from what employees are provided today,” he said. “If that means we have to reallocate resources, stop doing some things, or invest in others, that’s what we’re going to do.”

Companies can utilize engagement surveys or conduct a needs analysis to see how benefits are performing with their employees, he said. From there, companies should analyze the range of financial forecasts associated with new benefits. “From that, you’re able to build in whatever support mechanisms you might need, whether that’s a change in how medical or health care is set up, or it’s looking at different options for stop-loss or things of that nature,” Kristoff said.

Ovia Health’s Page also offered suggestions on how to measure return on investment (ROI). “Thinking about finding solutions that really drive results is a big part of what we do,” she said. “It’s grounded in clinical research and evidence-based curriculum.” Evidence-driven work must be coupled with engagement to make sure employees are aware of the benefits available to them and whether they positively affect them.

Using Tech to Boost Access

Page also suggested easily-accessible, digital solutions in which companies can measure engagement and impact according to metrics. “We saw, across our member data, that digital coaching and mental-health questions had a 200% increase year over year,” she noted. “We’re able to pass that information to our [corporate] clients and they’re able to think about where else they need to pivot.”

Technology tools can also help minimize confusion about benefits packages and engage employees with their options. NetApp, for example, uses a tool for employees to compare health-care options side by side. “It’s a smart investment with the ROI as it gets employees more engaged and gets them to think through the consumer-driven aspects of health care,” Kristoff said.

At the close of the discussion, panelists spoke about the importance of flexible benefits that are proactive, as opposed to reactive, and designed to meet employee needs. “Employees are going to remember how companies have treated them during the really hard times that lots of people have had this past year,” Watson said. “It’s really important to consider what your benefits program is communicating about your organization’s values.”

Emily Nonko is a Brooklyn, NY-based reporter who writes about real estate, architecture, urbanism and design. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Curbed and other publications.