Holistic Growth: Unleashing Employee Potential Through Mental Health

Cathy Manginelli: So we were meditating as we think about how to just get whole and focus with our mental health here today. I know I meditate a lot.

Alex Simmons: As do I.

Cathy: You do? Do you meditate at work?

Alex: Sometimes. Yeah.

Cathy: I do too. I'm working today. I'm working today and I'm meditating. How many of you meditate? Good. How many of you meditate at work? A few of you. Yeah. Those brain breaks are good, right? Just a few minutes. Just right. Center us and get us kind of good vibes going and making sure that we can stay focused. So welcome to unleashing. It's a big title, unleashing, but I don't know what that said. Anyway, we're going to talk about mental health, wellness and productivity and professional development in the workplace.

As the announcer said, I'm Cathy Manginelli, the chief talent and diversity officer here at TriNet. And I am joined with Alex Simmons, the CEO and co-founder of Boon. I love getting to know you. We've become fast friends, I think, recently as we're getting to know each other. And I'm not going to do a big, long bio because I think part of the bio is going to be his story, but Alex, you went to Michigan, not going to hold that against you. It's okay. I see you're sporting the colors there.

Alex: Stay blue.

Cathy: Yeah, stay blue. That's right. And 10 years in finance and investment banking and kids and the whole thing and the golden and the dog and the whole thing, right? We got the family. I just love this conversation today and you're having a good day today, aren't you?

Alex: Well, I've been looking forward to this.

Cathy: I mean, Ashley Judd. I mean, can we just give a round of applause for Ashley Judd and Michael Phelps? But you're seeing a theme here, aren't you? Everyone's talking about mental health and wellness, are they not? About how to bring your whole self to work

Alex: Mental health and AI.

Cathy: Yeah, AI. Yeah.

Alex: So, maybe we can figure out how AI can implement it to that. But maybe before we get started, in the spirit of the Michael Phelps conversation, I don't know how many of you saw that, but I've never done this before, but figured we'd give it a shot. Deep breath and a roar.

Cathy: You guys up for it? You up for it? She's up for it. Okay.

Alex: So, on the count of three, deep breath and a roar from everybody.

Cathy: Are you counting us down?

Alex: One, two, three. Ah!

Cathy: That was awesome.

Alex: That felt good.

Cathy: That did feel good, didn't it?

Alex: I like it.

Cathy: So, that's awesome. Thank you.

Alex: That'll go right to the video. My microphone.

Cathy: Trying something different. Listen, we want this to be interactive. We want to have a really good session today and really get all your questions answered. I have some prepared questions, that I'm really curious about, and I'm just a very curious person. So, I warned him already I might go off script a little bit because I'm just so interested in everything that him and his company stands for and their mission. So there are mics, if you do want to raise a question. Again, feel free to interrupt us, but we will have mic runners. So make sure that you speak into the mic so that everyone can hear you, okay? And if not, we'll repeat the question anyway. So, let's dive in. I want to know more about Boon. So, talk to me about why you started this company and a little bit about it.

Alex: Yeah. So like you said, I spent about eight years in finance prior to founding Boon. So I'm a CPA by background, worked at investment banking and private equity. It might be hard to see how does somebody from investment banking go to starting a mental health company? There is some connection there. So in the investment banking world, you hear about this hundred hour work weeks, everybody's stressed, anxious, burnt out. I didn't grow up in a world where you necessarily talked about your mental health. There was a stigma in my world around needing help and really being able to articulate your feelings similar to how Michael Phelps was speaking about his childhood. And during my days at investment banking, my now wife ended up actually introducing me to therapy and meditation and later coaching.

Cathy: Good woman.

Alex: The best. And it all had a transformational impact on my life. And there were two big things that I saw going back into the workplace. One of them was that all of my colleagues were going through very similar things to what I was. Everybody was stressed, everybody was burnt out, overworked. And the second thing was that my employer at the time, which is a pretty progressive 1,500-employee life group, all they had to take care of us from a mental health perspective, or professional really, was an employee assistance program, or EAP. And I had never heard that term before. I didn't even know what it was, but I came to find that's how roughly 80% of companies were approaching this topic.

Yet, the average usage of these programs were somewhere in the 1% to 3% range. And it's really designed to be more of a crisis intervention tool than anything. It's designed to be there for end of the line care, things like substance abuse, divorce, suicide ideation. You have this end of the line support system as a company. But it wasn't really there to support the everyday challenges that me and seemingly everybody around me were dealing with. So that was the first time that I really thought, okay, there's a big opportunity here in a void. And that's how Boon was initially founded. And the initial idea was, we really wanted to become the most accessible means for mental well-being in the workplace through a personalized one-to-one coaching platform for employees that was a more approachable way to approach the topic of mental health.

Cathy: Yeah. So the statistics, depending on what you read, it's like 80%, we're hearing 50%. People are struggling. Yeah. They're just struggling out there. So I was in the front kind of by the turnstiles, I think they're called. Yeah. And I turned to my coworker and I said, "Am I having anxiety right now or is the subway moving underneath me?" because the floor was shaking. Yeah. But I sometimes suffer from anxiety as well, so I was like, "I know I'm nervous about this afternoon." And she's like, "No, actually I think it's the subway." I think the floor is actually, I was like, all right, cause I was about ready to go start breathing. What is going on here? But it's pervasive, right? Yes. Yeah. So, I'm so curious the word Boon, like, how did you come up with that name?

Alex: Well, when I first came out with Boon, I mean, it is a more well-being centered business and as I was looking at potential names, came to find that a lot of the well-being businesses out there, they screamed well-being, whether it be empower you or be your best self, etcetera. And I wanted something that kind of spoke to the values and the mission, but it was a little bit more subtle. So Boon means something that's helpful or beneficial. It also means a desirable state.

Cathy: I learned a new word. I have to tell you. I didn't know that. I don't know if you all knew that. That's what that word meant.

Alex: It comes off the tongue.

Cathy: I got smarter. So thank you for helping me with that. Let's talk about your wife. Yeah. I have to go there.

Alex: Talk about my wife.

Cathy: I have to go there. So, when we were getting to know each other, you talked about the inspiration that she has been to you and kind of, I'll use Michael Phelps' word, that vulnerability piece.

Alex: Yeah.

Cathy: Talk a little bit about that and share with your now closest 50 friends.

Alex: Oh, I always get emotional talking about my wife, but yeah, I think, she was obviously the one who introduced, initially introduced me to therapy, so she introduced that idea that it's okay to be vulnerable and it's okay to not be okay and sorry.

Cathy: We're here for you. Yeah yes, right.

Alex: But yeah, I think a few things that she really taught me was just that really, it's okay to not be okay. Really not making assumptions about what others are going through. You really never know what other people are dealing with and really just learning to love all parts of yourself was just, yeah.

Cathy: Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, through the pandemic and through so much that we've all, in our own, ways been going through in rediscovering these parts of ourselves and whatever age you are, I know you have kids, I have kids, they're struggling, they've struggled. It's definitely an epidemic out there. And I love your approach to making sure that it's scalable and accessible to everyone. That's huge because there is nothing more intimidating than doing what he said, which is reaching out, right? So Michael talked about that, phone a friend, reach out, right? Ask for that help. It is really hard and can be intimidating. And you know, EAP is a great resource in many organizations. I'm sure many of your companies like TriNet, we have EAP and they're really good. But sometimes, you gotta put your employee number in, then your name, and then it's another call, and it's like a process, right, to actually get access to someone, so talk to me a little bit about how Boon is different in that way, because I think you're quite unique.

Alex: Yeah, well, so we started as this accessible mental well-being platform, but as the company has evolved, it's really turned into this bridging of the gap between mental health and professional development. So, the story that I use is, I'm stressed and anxious on a daily basis. It's something I struggle with. A lot of it has to do with how can I be a better manager to my team? How can I grow Boon more quickly? How can I have this difficult conversation with my colleague that's coming up? So the lines have become so blurred between our personal lives and our work lives where you see most mental health and behavioral health resources today, they are, whether it be a comprehensive behavioral health solution or EAP, they are exclusively focused on your mental health and that's great. As you're talking about, there's a huge need for those sorts of resources. What we found most employees are really looking for is actually sitting at that intersection between personal and professional and I think that's really the niche that we've been able to hit on.

So we've been able to really flex in either direction. And what it also does, you talk about the stigma of mental health when you talk about it as a personal and professional resource, as opposed to a mental health resource. You're all of a sudden appealing to such a wider audience across an organization and because of that, roughly half the users who are using Boon today have never used any form of coaching or therapy before. This is their first time, in some instances, ever talking about what's going on in their life. So seeing it through that lens of personal and professional versus behavioral health is really, I think, the key to what makes us different.

Cathy: I would agree. So let's pull the thread a little bit more on the stigma. Because I saw an article that you talked about, the fact that the stigma is coming down or getting better.

Alex: Yeah.

Cathy: It's getting better. Others were talking about it more and we're supporting each other more. But, what advice do you have for SMBs, folks that don't really have maybe the expertise that you or your company has to help destigmatize some of this stuff?

Alex: Yeah, I think what we've seen in a lot of cases is, and I talked about this with my original organization that I worked at during my investment banking days, was there's a lack of awareness as to what sorts of resources are available for most employees today. So being aware of that as HR leaders and just understanding that in today's day and age, there still is a big lack of awareness as to what sorts of tools and resources are out there. And then I come back to this idea of how can you normalize some of the language around this? So, if the word mental health is a…

Cathy: …dirty word.

Alex: …scary term in your workplace and maybe you don't have senior leadership buy-in to be talking about this in as open of a way, can that personal and professional language serve as a gateway and an entry point to start having more of those conversations? So I feel like that's been a really big thing for us. And then also, what's really worked well is manager training. That's been a huge one where we've seen across almost all HR leaders that we're working with, one of the biggest themes is—we are growing rapidly, there's younger inexperienced managers who don't quite have the EQ skills required to be an effective manager in this remote hybrid environment. And so how do you equip these younger managers on how to have difficult conversations, how to hold effective one-on-ones, how to support their employees more holistically, as that's going to cascade across the entire organization?

Cathy: Yeah, you hit on something, a word there that we're hearing a lot today, which is “holistically.”

Alex: Yes.

Cathy: I've been doing this 30 years. The gray hair, the wisdom streaks show. And it's just different now.

Alex: Yeah.

Cathy: In a good way. The responsibility of leadership, of business owners, of HR, to make sure they're caring for the whole person is crucial and critical.

Alex: Yep.

Cathy: So, I mean, you've worked with a ton of companies already, small, medium, you know, some even large.

Alex: Yeah.

Cathy: What approaches do you use with them to help them, you know, make sure that they're caring for the whole person?

Alex: Yeah. Well, I think the first thing that we focus on is democratize coaching that is available to everybody. I think the biggest thing with that is that it's personalized. So the days of having a one-size-fits-all approach for your employees, whether it be, you know, you have a software platform that's available, you go through your training and courses and everybody has the same thing available to them, those days are behind us.

And it's the next era is—how do we personalize this to our employees according to what their needs are, both personally and professionally? So how do we provide something that's personalized, that's human centric and flexible? And those are some of the biggest themes that we're hearing in the workplace in terms of what employees are looking for more broadly.

But that's how we focus on it from our personalized coaching perspective. And then also thinking about it from, how can we have leadership buy-in where there's authentic, vulnerable leadership buy-in talking about their own struggles, talking about their own experiences and walking the walk with a lot of this stuff that, you know, you're telling your employees that it's okay to start using these resources, what are you doing in your own life? Because a lot of times your employees are looking to you to see like, "Are they actually okay with me taking advantage of something like this?" So, leadership buy-in has been far and away, I would say that the number one thing that.

Cathy: Yeah, it's the whole, you know, make sure that they're not saying, "do as I say, not as I do."

Alex: Right.

Cathy: In that scenario. Yeah. When you were talking, it reminded me that maybe Burger King was onto something. I'm having it their way. Yeah. That, I don't know. And then I'm hungry because it's dinner time. So anyway, back to the regular scheduled programming. I think we have a question that came in, mental health or mental wellness. Have you found one works better than the other? Wow. Who wrote that? It's anonymous. So, can you speak to that a little bit?

Alex: Yeah, it's a great question. And we actually go with neither of those two. I think they're both, I mean, I think they're all great. We have, we've actually found that mental well-being is the word that resonates best in our language. So we think of ourselves as bridging the gap between mental well-being and professional development or performance management. And we've just found mental well-being to be a very approachable word relative to mental health or mental wellness. I think mental health can come across as, you know, for the person who's never taken advantage of those sorts of resources, that can be the scariest term to look at: mental health or behavioral health.

And then we have just, we've thought about mental wellness as a term that's a little bit more focused on—you think about meditation, you think about some of these other resources that are out there and wellness has just become such a big buzzword today, that we've just tried to differentiate from that a little bit.

Cathy: Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah. We need a mic up here in the front. Yeah. And then I see a couple other hands, so we'll get to you in a minute. Thank you.

Audience member #1: Can you build on performance management? Because I'm thinking that might be a term that, it definitely feels different and, unfortunately, sounds more positive than mental anything. Yeah. Because of the stigma associated with just mental health, wellness, etcetera, well-being. So, performance management, that's not something I've ever heard used in this context, so can you talk more about how you all are doing that at Boon?

Alex: Yeah. So, essentially we have a network of coaches and there's a cohort of coaches that are more mental health type coaches. So there are master's levels clinicians who have formal coach training in their background. On the flip side, we have more professional coaches or performance coaches who are former HR leaders, former L&D leaders, former operations execs, former C-suite leaders who are all ICF accredited coaches, which is considered the gold standard in the coaching world.

And essentially, what we're doing is we're creating a personalized experience for the client, whether they want to work on something that's more mental health focused, more professional, or in most cases, it's a combination of both. But, how we see the performance management angle is, you know, if somebody comes to Boon saying, "I want to work on something like time management and productivity" or "how to have a one-on-one," or "how to deliver feedback to my team," or something that's clearly more performance or professional in nature, we would be taking them down that professional coaching path with a coach that either has a shared experience, what they're looking for or is in that specific topic where they have expertise in that area. And a lot of those coaches that have the HR, L&D background who are ICF accredited coaches, they have the ability to flex more personal if somebody's looking to work on something that is more professional, but then they're also stressed and anxious and want help with that as well. They're able to flex in either direction there.

Cathy: So, I'm going to share a story you shared with me about that. So, operationally, he was sharing with me as we were getting to know each other about how he would go to prep for a meeting, but because of anxiety around, "how am I going to say this or what I'm going to say," the coaching did that intersection, right? So it not only coached him through the mechanics of how to have that conversation, it also coached him through how to get out of his own head, how to breathe beforehand, how to do some things that would help his mental state through the interaction so that it would be the most successful outcome. So that makes sense. Okay. We had a couple of other questions. I saw some hands, one here in the blue jacket in the front and then in the back. The second round. Thank you.

Audience member #2: Thank you so much. So I love that you're doing what you're doing. Men's mental health in particular. So I'm—just a little background. I'm Dr. Roshan Akash. I'm a behavioral clinical neuroscientist. I love what you're doing and men's mental health and across different cultures is very different.

Alex: Yes.

Audience member #2: So the white male will have certainly his challenges that as you have both been talking about, your wife started to introduce you to that because, you know, men have a unified narrative almost worldwide unlike women, which as you know, "I have to be the hero, I can't." It's like what Michael Phelps was saying, "I'm the swimmer. You identify with what you're doing and any chinks in the armor could mean the enemy's gonna come in." Yeah. And the higher up you go the worse that gets you know, hence the need for executive coaching, etcetera. And the black and brown community, it's much worse. And access to mental health support is not readily available, has a much heavier stigma. And what you find available in most of these neighborhoods are liquor stores, as opposed to mental health professionals or any other kind of support. To that end, do you have anything available to the different sort of groups of people in your network that would speak to gender, culture, etcetera?

Alex: That's a great question. And we have been really thoughtful about building our coaching base in the most diverse, inclusive way, because in any company that we go to, that's one of the first questions we get is like, "What sort of resources do you have for the black and brown community, the LGBTQ community," all of the different expertise areas, but also diversity areas that a company would want to know about. We've been really thoughtful about building our coaching base with that in mind, and you're absolutely right about clinical shortages and also the fact that a lot of people in those communities may not take advantage of a mental health solution, a behavioral health therapist, but if it's a more approachable coach where you're seeing it as a more of a gateway sort of conversation, it's become more approachable. We definitely been very thoughtful about the way we approach it.

Cathy: And if they look like me and they can relate to me and they understand me.

Alex: Shared life experience has been the number one determinant in terms of what people are looking for in a coach.

Cathy: Yeah. Okay. Question. I'm sorry. We have to go quick. Yeah, sure.

Audience member #2: Thank you so much. Very quickly, I think that's really important because where health is concerned, mental, physical, etcetera, the workplace is where people really can turn to and do turn to. Think of your health insurance; it comes from work. Yeah. So having that available where other places they won't have accessibility can be huge for all kinds of outcomes as the whole 360-degree person is concerned.

Cathy: And sometimes the workplace actually might be a safer place, right? Because a lot of this is, Michael talked about fear, and we have to feel very safe to be able to take advantage and tap into those pieces and those vulnerabilities. And I really love how language is—it's just so important because it has an association for us in so many ways. And it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So I love how you are paying particular attention to what you're calling it, how you're representing it in order to really help people understand it's not scary. This is here to help you. All right question in the back.

Audience member #3: So, this is totally just my personal experience. Unfortunately, some of the organizations I've worked for that are health care and mental health focused actually have like very limited resources for their staff and find that sometimes there's resistance from management, when sometimes like lower-level managers or staff kind of try and advocate for that with leadership. So my question's a little bit two-fold. One—is this something you've experienced? Like some healthcare companies maybe being either like resistant or, you know, feeling like, "Oh no, we're the experts. We don't need Boon to come in and tell us how to support our mental health clinicians." And if that's the case, like, what has been helpful in terms of maybe breaking that resistance a little bit?

Alex: Yeah. And I would say that is consistent with what we're seeing. I think the biggest thing we're seeing in health care right now is that a lot of these larger hospitals and health care systems, they're deep in the red and they're losing money and they don't have any budget for actually dealing with any of these issues. So I think first and foremost, that's been a huge issue. And then I think what we've also seen is that it's such a pressure cooker for these doctors to get through med school, to get through residency. It's this strive for perfection. It's like the chink in the armor story that you're talking about.

That's very pervasive in the healthcare culture. And what we've seen is that, I think again, it just comes back to this accessibility story, of how do you make it more approachable, and really see the business case for something like this as a starting point, and seeing the ROI associated with a resource like this.

And so we've actually had a lot of success with healthcare institutions seeing it through that professional lens. And the biggest thing that we've actually seen is that the case to be made for clinicians, is that a lot of these clinicians who have risen to top administrative ranks or head of hospital systems or whatnot, they've gotten there due to clinically being exceptional or they've done great research, but not necessarily because they're great managers of people or leaders. So talking about it in that sense of—we can actually help your people grow from a professional lens. That's what's been more interesting than anything that we've seen in the healthcare space.

Cathy: I'm checking, I'm time checking. I see we have a question here. I just want to give my perspective on that question real quick. And then we probably have time for maybe one or two more questions. So I'm not in the healthcare space. I haven't been in the healthcare space. I can't speak to it specifically, but from, I was in financial services before I came to TriNet eight years ago, and the good news is, it's changing, right? That's the good news. But the other thing that I love about what Alex said and I would second that is positioning it around professional development, cause there are a gazillion. I'm a certified executive coach, ICF, there's a gazillion out there, right? Executive coaching is considered a privilege, right? It's not scary. It's like, "Oh, I have an executive. Oh, the company's investing in me." Right? But so many of our executive coaches now, like me, are trained. I'm not a trained social worker, but the training that I got has deep segments around how to help with the mental health piece.

Now, again, I'm not a therapist. There is definitely a difference. So, I'm trained to know how and where I can go and then when I need to refer off for some deeper therapy work. But that's a really good entrance, right? That's a really good entrance to how to get an organization excited about this kind of work when maybe they're still stuck in that fear stigma place, which I know that's right at the heart of your company.

Yeah. Okay. So question, what tips do you have? I'm sorry, I'm not into my mic. What tips do you have for CEOs who want to hold their employees accountable while keeping their mental well-being in mind?

Alex: Yeah, I think it's a great question. The biggest thing that comes to mind for me, and we operate a remote team, and most of the companies we're talking to, either are some remote or hybrid team today, and that chart that in the consumer behavior, it seemed like we're plateaued at this 50% in office. So remote or hybrid is here to stay in most instances, and I think what's come with that is a great deal of increased flexibility for employees. That's something that everybody's looking for in today's day and age. And so, for me, my regular workday today is, I'm working a full day. I actually have it set up in my calendar where 6:30, 8:30, I'm gonna be with my family. I'm gonna put my daughter to bed. And I may plug in after that, but you have that increased flexibility. And it's this term around work life integration that I think people need to get a little more comfortable with, where if you're asking for more work life, if you're asking for more flexibility, there has to be more of this integration that comes with that, especially as the lines become blurred. So I think there is an opportunity to still hold people accountable while giving them that flexibility that they're really looking for.

Cathy: We will need a mic on you. Sorry. I can repeat it.

Audience member #4: How do you think mental health affects the body, like, intrinsic?

Cathy: How do you think mental health affects the body? Everywhere.

Alex: Yes. I guess my personal anecdote on this is, I think about a few different pillars for taking care of my mental health. One of them, I do therapy, I see a coach, I work out three to four days a week, and I meditate. So that's a lot. But if one of those things is out of whack, like if I haven't worked out for a few weeks, it's hard to explain, but I start to feel like increased anxiety, increased stress in my own body. And I know there's a lot of data behind that, but personally, when I feel like I'm not taking care of my physical well-being, I'm seeing the way that, and my mental health is, it's all very correlated.

Cathy: I can tell you what my husband tells me. That's helpful. "You get short, you start yelling at me. You have no patience." Right? I do. I get stomach issues, you know, headaches. It's all of it. Right? It's all of it because we're so connected and I do those things that you do. I need to work out more, but I do those things you do. I also, write three intentions every morning and then I journal three gratitudes at night because I am very grateful and I am very blessed for the life that I have. And it's just important at times to just be reminded of that. And so it helps me. And it's not like, "Oh, I'm grateful for the air I breathe." It's like very specific little things that just help me go. "Yeah, I'm okay." I'm okay. You're okay. We're going to be okay. So, we have to wrap up because I think we are between you and someone else.

But I have one last question. And I didn't tell you I was going to ask this question. But I was so curious because I was on your website. I was really looking at all the stuff you have. And you mentioned you have something called the Boon Effect. I want the Boon. Do you want the Boon? I don't know what it is, but I know I want it. Tell me. Right? So what is this Boon effect? Talk to me.

Alex: Well, I think like most mental health resources, you would think, okay, well, obviously confidentiality is of utmost importance with any of these things, especially there's a lot of concern over confidentiality with most EAP programs and other resources. So, we hold that confidentiality very closely. But what we've started to find is that after a few months of Boon being within an organization, it's something that starts to come up in town hall meetings. It's something that starts to come up in different group meetings where it's like, "Hey, I just met with my Boon coach, she taught me XYZ and we talked through this upcoming one-on-one."

Cathy: I want one of those.

Alex: So it starts coming up in these meetings. It starts becoming almost like a viral resource within the organization and there's a lot of stats to back up some of the impact that we've had. But I think just generally, the overall impact that it's having on culture and the conversation around talking about what's going on in your life, it's just approaching it from a different angle, but it just becomes pervasive across the company.

Cathy: I love it. Thank you all for being such a great participating audience. I hope you're enjoying PeopleForce. Thank you.