2020 FirstMark People Practices Survey: Mental Health
The talent team at FirstMark is excited share a couple of key themes that emerged in 2020 within the People Practices realm. For our first post, we would like to address the most sought after employee benefit of the past year — mental health services.
2020 was a watershed year for human capital as companies old and new were forced to reconsider typical workplace norms and expectations amid a very atypical year. From the worldwide pandemic that demanded a remote workforce, to a national moral reckoning on racism that demanded actionable change, company leaders needed — and continue to need — to think strategically and deliberately about their people management infrastructure.
At FirstMark, staying attuned to the best practices in people management comes to fruition each year with our annual FirstMark People Practices Report — and in this, at least, 2020 was no exception.
While the results of the survey are only shared with those who participate in its data collection (see the form HERE if you are interested in participating), we wanted to highlight a couple of key themes.
About the FirstMark 2020 People Practices Survey
The People Practices survey, and corresponding report, is based on an annual survey we send to the exceptional members of the FirstMark People Guild* — a private community for over 150 HR executives at breakout, venture backed tech companies across the country. It is rich with both quantitative details and qualitative insights; in 2020, we covered a breadth of critical topics including:
- COVID-19 workplace adjustments
- Best-in-class practices for employee health benefits and perks
- People/HR-software vendors and ratings
- PTO policies
- DE&I initiatives
- Culture-building ideas
and much, much more.
Today, we would like to address the most sought after employee benefit of 2020 — mental health services.
Employee Benefit of the Year: Mental Health Services
Unique employee perks and benefits have long differentiated startups from their corporate competitors as tech companies, in particular, have relied on them to court — and retain — hard to get talent. However, as employers quickly shifted to a remote work environment, those sought-after in-office perks lost their relevance. Instead, as HQ doors (and the perks housed within them) closed, home doors (at least virtually) opened. Suddenly, the line between personal and professional lives disintegrated as colleagues compared makeshift home offices and analyzed revenue numbers over the all too common sounds of kids playing or dogs barking. If employees were to perform at their best in this new normal, then an acknowledgement of the marriage of personal and private — and the struggles inherent in both — became the only way forward.
The change in how companies approached the employee experience was confirmed when data of our 2020 survey revealed that more than 50% of respondents offered their employees (subsidized) mental health services, a significant increase compared to our 2019 results.
When we broke down the data by stage, there was a consistent uptick in companies of all sizes; i.e. early stage (companies with 1–75 employees) growth stage (76–150 employees) and later stage companies all revealed an increased commitment ( averaging 10%) to mental health.
Specifically, 70% of the companies that added mental health services to their employee benefit bundle offered the services in the form of a paid for third party app like Headspace, Talkspace, Calm or Maven Clinic. The remaining 30% shared innovative ideas that included a number of proud FirstMark investments:
- Leveraging existing relationships with PEOs like Justworks (the preferred provider for the majority of survey respondents) to help employees find affordable mental health care providers.
- Using platforms like Bonusly, to publicly recognize and reward employees’ hard work and dedication during these especially difficult times.
- Relying on Donut’s remote onboarding experience to build meaningful relationships with teammates and reduce feelings of WFH isolation.
More creative ad-hoc initiatives include:
- Monthly, company wide opt-in roundtable discussion with a psychologist.
- Mental wellness stipends that could be used on anything from childcare, to subscription therapy sessions, to exercise bikes.
- Additional mental health PTO days.
The Data Matters
We want to share this data with the larger tech ecosystem as a way to encourage all companies to reassess health resources and attitudes about mental health. The long-term costs associated with not addressing employees’ mental health issues — i.e serious healthcare conditions, turnover, and diminished productivity — are far too dangerous to ignore, and we hope to see this shift reflected across the venture community — and specifically in the 2021 FirstMark People Practices results.
*Are you a senior people leader at a venture-backed tech startup? Email leigh@firstmarkcap.com to join our Guilds. Members enjoy benefits including invites to private expert events, access to a full archive of playbooks and templates, inclusion in the private forum with other senior leaders, and much more.
To be eligible for Guild Membership, you must be a C- or VP-level leader at a technology company that has raised significant venture capital or grown to tens of millions of revenue.
