Lyra Health

““By no means are we done with the mental health issue,” said Crawford. “We’re looking for more and more Lyra. We’ve seen in Lyra the commitment to continually evolving the platform. For example, we now have Lyra Learn, which is video-based training. We’re constantly looking for those opportunities to remind everyone of the program and reach more people.””

““We have an incredibly diverse population within our company and within all of our stores all over the country,” he noted. “It was very important for us to respond and reflect back that diversity in the solution that we deliver to our people—one of which is making sure that the Lyra population of therapists is diverse itself with options for race, gender, ethnicity, etc. Lyra has done that for us.””

““It’s wonderful how much they love the benefit and how strong Lyra is in their minds.””

““The mental health of our people was so important,” he said. “We had just launched Lyra, and we pushed on the accelerator and started a massive communication campaign about the benefit. We communicated the heck out of it and used it as a business tool to get our people back to where they needed to be, so that we could open our stores and serve our communities. It was a really challenging time. I feel very fortunate that we launched with Lyra, and we definitely used every single part of Lyra that we possibly could to help us get back on top of our business.””

““In 2019, anxiety and depression were popping up as more of an issue for our partners than ever before. What we found is that we have a dysfunctional mental health system in this country. At the core, it just doesn’t work. We actually stopped our bid for a new EAP when we realized that we needed a brand new solution,” said Crawford. “That’s when we found Lyra. It was very intriguing to us because Lyra went after the core of the mental health problem.””

““One of the key tenets for us is listening to our partners, which takes a variety of formats from surveys, to focus groups, to personal emails, to stopping me in our headquarters hallway, to spending a half day working in our stores. The listening is constant.””

“As my daughter approaches her teenage years, she has taken an active interest in prioritizing her mental health, thanks to the information and awareness provided by her school. When she expressed a desire to try therapy, we turned to Lyra, and the process couldn’t have been smoother. She was matched with a therapist and able to meet weekly from the comfort of our home. Lyra made this journey convenient, accessible, and—most importantly—comfortable.”

“If your employees are happier, healthier, more mentally sound, then they're going to be more productive at work. From an ROI perspective, supporting employees when they need support is not only the right thing to do, but it's also a good business case.”

““People are constantly looking at what’s the future of work. The reality is, it’s here. I think it’s an important concept of realizing that the future of work already exists. And so embrace what’s happening now; your employees will tell you what they need. Figure out how to match that to your financial goals. And when you marry the two is when you’ll have the most success.””

““As a chief people officer, 1) I want our people to be healthy, and 2) we have a huge business that needs to perform. And then through COVID, we began to talk about not just physical wellness, but mental wellness, way more,” said Hyder. “We started surveying employees and built an entire benefits portfolio based off of employee feedback. I think listening to that feedback and being flexible is important. You cannot have a performance culture without focusing on the wellness of your employees.””

““The most important person in this formula is the manager—it’s the direct manager, it’s the supervisor,” said Hyder. “For most of us, you can have empathy through personal experience, but you can also teach it through benefit programs and training. When an employee comes to you and says they’re struggling, templates can offer what to do and how to respond. You don’t take away employee accountability, they still have to perform, but what tools you can offer and actions you can take as a leader—you can teach that.””

““You can have a high accountability culture and wellness. As we move through the post-pandemic transition over the next couple of years, don't let mental health become just a footnote. The reality is resilience is the number-one employee attribute in my mind for Salesforce, because the marketplace requires it. And to be resilient, you’ve got to be healthy.””

““Lyra was significantly more expensive than our existing EAP, but we were able to prove that the value of the solution was worth the cost. The majority of the costs are variable and based on the amount of care our employees are getting. We’re not paying a high fixed cost for care that our members may not use.””

““If you look at your health care claim data for any other condition, mental health is absolutely the outlier. There is no other condition category where people are using so much out-of-network care. So you have to ask yourself the question: Why?””

““We’re doing a lot around mental health and wellness. This is an area we chose to win in as a company and want to lead. Lyra has been a big part of that.””

““Mental health is core to our business and authentically modeled at lululemon,” said Le.”

““The retention we’ve seen and the happiness scores on our employee surveys throughout our company show that our mental health programs, including Lyra, are working.””

““Our biggest win this year is that mental health is now our priority, from the top down,” said Tracy Taylor, lululemon’s benefits program manager.”

““We have to be really deliberate in how we support each of these groups. A flexible strategy with unique resources for each population is super important. With Lyra, we can do different things for different groups, in addition to therapy, from virtual webinars to onsite support.””

““A one-size-fits-all approach to mental health won’t work for our varied employee populations,” said Le.”

““We can’t go at this alone. We lean on Lyra’s team as a thought partner. I believe Lyra will continue to be at the forefront of ‘what’s next’ in this space, and to be in good company with other customers of Lyra’s is a good thing.””

“For those who connect with data and metrics, it provides scores across three key areas, along with an overall score for your organization. It’s also color-coded, which makes it intuitive and accessible for people who process information more visually. It becomes a real springboard for future planning.”

“What stood out right away is how the report meets people where they are,”

“I’m really focused on connecting the Lyra data back to our annual report meetings with our other vendors. It’s been helpful to have a discussion around what we’re seeing across the medical plans, top conditions, and top behavioral health claims, and see what’s happening in Lyra Connect that might help us tell a more accurate story with the data.”

“This guide is meant to be a practical playbook, not a theory document.”