Many companies are expanding their mental-health benefits, but getting employees to take advantage of them can be challenging. Puget Sound Energy is on a mission to change that.

Last year, 98% of the utility’s employees watched a 20-minute mental-health training video, and managers were offered a two-hour live mental-health training. The sessions included tips on how to recognize and respond to mental-health issues in themselves and others, information on what mental-health resources the company offers, and personal stories...

Many companies are expanding their mental-health benefits, but getting employees to take advantage of them can be challenging. Puget Sound Energy is on a mission to change that.

Last year, 98% of the utility’s employees watched a 20-minute mental-health training video, and managers were offered a two-hour live mental-health training. The sessions included tips on how to recognize and respond to mental-health issues in themselves and others, information on what mental-health resources the company offers, and personal stories from PSE workers who had experienced mental illness in their own lives.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based company tied bonuses to participation in the training, which was planned before the pandemic. “We have all these mental-health benefits,” says Jenny Haykin, Puget Sound Energy’s manager for integrated leaves and accommodations. “We want people to use them when they need them.”

PSE is one of many companies expanding their mental-health benefits and talking about mental health in the workplace in new ways. Workers, especially millennials and Gen Zers, are asking for it, and many large companies recognize it’s good for the bottom line, since poor mental health among employees has been linked to lost productivity, increased turnover and higher medical expenses.

Most midsize and large companies already offer some free mental-health counseling through an employee assistance plan, or EAP. These offerings typically provide employees with a set number of counseling sessions annually, with no deductibles or copays required.

The problem is that EAPs, which were developed decades ago primarily to address drug and alcohol abuse, are often underused. While research indicates that 20% of the adult population experiences a mental illness each year, less than 8% of employees take advantage of their company’s EAP, says Darren Brooks, executive director of the Center for Human Resource Management at Florida State University. Even during the height of the pandemic, when employees reported experiencing anxiety, stress and depression in record numbers, EAP use barely budged, he says.

What’s behind the disconnect?

In some cases, workers don’t know their employer has an EAP because it isn’t well-promoted, says Terri Rhodes, CEO of the Disability Management Employer Coalition, an educational association for human-resources professionals. “They are overshadowed by the medical-benefits program and often missed in major benefits communications.”

In other cases, workers are reluctant to tap company-sponsored resources, fearing there could be repercussions if their employer finds out they have depression, anxiety or another mental illness.

Still others face long waits to book an appointment with an EAP network clinician due to a national shortage of counselors, says Arielle Trzcinski, director of product marketing at Lyra Health, a behavioral-health provider.

Millennials and Gen Zers, however, are driving a change. According to Mind Share Partners’ 2021 Mental Health at Work report, 68% of millennials and 81% of Gen Zers have left roles in the past at least in part for mental-health reasons, compared with 50% of workers overall.

Replacing and retraining workers is just one of the many costs of poor employee mental health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says depression alone accounts for 200 million lost workdays annually, costing U.S. employers between $17 billion and $44 billion in lost productivity. Delaying treatment for a mental-health condition also can increase the cost of medical-health claims by as much as 300% a year, says Ms. Trzcinski, referring to research she performed in her previous role as a principal analyst at Forrester Research.

A flier on mental-health resources on Ms. Haykin’s desk. ‘We want people to use them when they need them,’ she says.

Photo: Jovelle Tamayo for The Wall Street Journal

With that in mind, some companies are increasing their efforts to understand and remove the barriers that prevent employees from using mental-health resources. Here is a closer look:

Expanded offerings

Employers are learning that one size doesn’t fit all for mental-health needs. Some people, for instance, prefer and benefit from digital therapy tools. Others need in-person care but live far from a clinician. More than 60% of U.S. counties have no psychiatrists. Telehealth visits can be a good alternative, but not if the employee lacks the necessary privacy or the internet connection at their home or office.

EBay is trying to meet those various needs. In 2017, the company began hiring mental-health counselors to work on-site at its San Jose, Calif., headquarters and in its call centers in Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah. During the pandemic it has worked with its EAP provider, Lyra Health, to offer digital coaching for employees and family members experiencing stress but not depression or anxiety.

Many employers, including eBay, Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley and Ernst & Young, have increased the number of annual counseling visits offered in their EAPs amid the pandemic, and some plan to maintain that higher level. Ernst & Young, for example, permanently raised its annual covered counseling sessions to 25 from five for employees and family members. “We wanted the number of visits to be significant enough so that people would feel they had the time to meaningfully invest in a relationship,” says

Kelly Grier, the firm’s U.S. chair and managing partner and Americas managing partner.

In 2020, Morgan Stanley increased its EAP counseling visits to 16 from five for employees and family members and rolled out the digital mental-health tool Headspace to its employees globally.

Reducing the stigma

Improving access to mental-health services is only part of the challenge. Another part is convincing people that it is OK to use them. “It’s a weakness for men in particular. They don’t seek these services out,” says Mr. Brooks.

Destigmatizing mental health at work requires a culture shift that involves everyone from top-level executives to individual contributors, says Joe Grasso, senior director of workforce mental health at Lyra Health. Among other things, it requires training managers to recognize signs of mental-health distress and to have an empathetic and structured conversation about it.

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“In a psychologically safe workplace, managers learn to lead their teams in a way that allows employees to speak up if they are struggling or being affected by something that is happening at work or in the world at large,” says Mr. Grasso.

Speaking about mental health in general, though, isn’t always effective, says Russell Glass, CEO of Headspace Health, a provider of virtual mental-health care, offering behavioral-health coaching, therapy, psychiatry services and digital wellness tools. “You can’t just talk about mental health because 90% of people when they hear mental health just shut down. They don’t think that’s for them—that’s for people who are really sick,” he says.

A better approach, he says, is to speak about specific challenges that people experience in their daily lives. “For example, work-life balance during a pandemic is hard. We have resources that can help,” says Mr. Glass. Or getting a good night’s sleep is important, and we have resources that can help.

Some companies are leaning on employee groups such as those for people of color, the LGBTQ community or parents of special-needs children to help get their mental-health message out. When these groups meet, employees versed in the company’s mental-health benefits can remind co-workers what resources are available and emphasize that they are free and completely private.

Ernst & Young’s Black professional and pan-Asian networks have met regularly to discuss their experiences during the rise in racial unrest and anti-Asian hate over the past year and a half. “The employees share their experiences, creating a sense of unity and support for one another, and talk about how they have used our resources to support themselves and their families,” says Ms. Grier, who sometimes has joined the groups.

Personal stories

To make employees more comfortable asking for help, companies also are encouraging management and front-line workers to share their own mental-health stories. At Facebook, employees share their personal stories under the hashtag “Openup” on Facebook Workplace channels.

“The initiative is based on research that the best way to reduce stigma is for people to connect with others who have experienced mental-health issues, not for us to talk about signs and symptoms,” says Clare Miller, mental-health benefit manager at Facebook. Among the most common subjects are depression, anxiety and resilience.

Ernst & Young, Fidelity Investments, Puget Sound Energy and Morgan Stanley have similar programs. Gene Rubenstein, head of shared services benefits and compensation at Fidelity, says that the company’s new mental-health programming launched in 2020 helped increase EAP use by a factor of 10. At Ernst & Young, utilization nearly quadrupled in the year ended April 2021.

Some of that increase is due to the pandemic, but experts expect that the improvement in benefit plans and the new willingness to discuss mental health in the office will have a lingering impact on the number of people using the programs.

Ms. Oliver is a writer in New York. Email her at reports@wsj.com.