More than 80% of employees do not use mental health benefits, according to a Gallup survey.  Some employees do not need these benefits, and for others, they seek to avoid the stigma of having a "mental health disorder" instead of using such services.  Yet, 50% of Americans will utilize mental health services at some point in their lives--a quantity that has been increasing over time.

And it gets worse.  Most people avoid getting mental health support until they have a crisis.  Even then, people often have to wait months to see a psychologist or psychiatrist due to clinician shortages and insurance snafus.  

To see that staying ahead of mental health issues is important, let's look at some data.  The US is near a record low unemployment rate and has been below replacement fertility since 1990. This means employees are increasingly valuable and must be nurtured and protected. For comparison, Germany fell below replacement fertility in 1975 and it has continued to stay low since then.  The inflow of new employees is equally dire throughout Europe, Japan, South Korea and many other middle-income and high-income countries whose populations are shrinking.  

We cannot afford to lose increasingly valuable employees because they face mental health issues.  In the US, employees who rate their mental health as fair or poor lose, on average, 12 working days annually.  Those with good, very good, or excellent mental health miss work due to illness only 2.5 days per year. Gallup estimates the lost output due to poor mental health of employees in the US exceeds $47 billion a year.  Every year.  

We have a suggestion: forget employee mental health.  Rather than wait for employees to become incapacitated with an illness, empower them to measure and improve their emotional health proactively.  We call this emotional fitness.  

The SIX app from Immersion Neuroscience is increasingly used by forward-looking companies that want to sustain productivity and profits.  This employee benefit enables people to privately measure and improve their emotional fitness by identifying the daily experiences that create the most neurologic value for each individual. Published research has shown that those who have six or more high-value social-emotional experiences a day are fully engaged in life and build up resilience against life's downturns. People with four Key Moments per day maintain their emotional health, while those who have three or fewer have low energy and low mood.  

The data are private to each individual and show when and where Key Moments are occurring.  Analyzing anonymous data from multiple companies shows that employees have more Key Moments when they work in the office than working remotely.  Returning to the office builds up emotional fitness because social creatures like humans need to be around others to feel connected and sustain social support. The data also show that those with strong romantic and family relationships regularly get Key Moments outside of work hours, especially on Sundays, the traditional day of rest.  

The SIX app also allows users to automatically share the number of Key Moments they have with trusted friends, colleagues or family members. By doing so, people are on an emotional fitness journey together, supporting each other when times get tough and celebrating good times.  Think how good you feel when a friend calls to check on you and tells you that they love you.  This is how people can avoid some mental health crises: they reach out to others for support.  And, if someone is in crisis, the SIX app will alert friends or family to get them help before they spiral downward when treatment is less efficacious. 

SIX—it’s an app and a goal.  We all need to build emotional fitness by having six Key Moments a day.  Smart organizations understand that providing employees with a technology that continuously guides them to improved emotional health is important.  SIX's trained AI assistant guides users to take actions that build emotional fitness so they continue to create value for the organization and get satisfaction from their work.  Sustainable companies require sustainable workforces and emotional fitness is the missing metric ensuring sustainability.  The app is free so try it today and see how it improves your own emotional fitness.