Lincoln Financial Research Shows the HR Technology Gap Is Now About Using Mental Health Benefits

For employers, offering mental health benefits is becoming less of an access problem and more of an employee-experience challenge. New research from Lincoln Financial and the Integrated Benefits Institute (IBI) finds that many workers have mental health resources available but do not use them, pointing to a growing role for HR technology, benefits communication and manager enablement in turning employee benefits into actual support.

The modern workplace can have a sophisticated benefits package and still leave employees unsure where to turn when they need help.

That is the central finding from new research by Lincoln Financial and the Integrated Benefits Institute, which examined workplace mental health through national industry data and a focused survey of more than 1,500 employees in U.S.-based call centers.

The resulting whitepaper, Putting Mental Well-Being Data to Work: Practical Employer Strategies, shifts the conversation from whether employers offer mental health benefits to a more difficult question: can employees understand, trust and use those benefits when they need them?

The research found a significant disconnect between availability and utilization. More than 75% of surveyed call center employees said they have access to mental health benefits, but fewer than half reported using them. Among those who did not use available resources, 59% said they did not need them, while 26% cited a lack of time and 15% identified stigma.

Communication presents another barrier. Only 44% of respondents considered their current benefits outreach effective, while 32% said communications need improvement.

For HR technology teams, those findings are important because benefits increasingly sit inside a broader digital employee experience. Employees may encounter an employer’s mental health resources through an HR portal, benefits administration platform, employee assistance program, mobile application, intranet, chatbot or manager-led communication. If those channels are fragmented, difficult to navigate or poorly personalized, simply adding another benefit may have limited impact.

The research also highlights substantial differences between employee groups. Women in the study were less likely than men to rate their mental health as good or excellent—70% compared with 83%—and were less comfortable discussing mental health at work, at 34% versus 47%.

Age is another differentiator. Workers aged 18 to 29 reported the highest use of mental health days, at 77%, while also reporting the lowest level of supervisor support, at 34%.

That combination creates a challenge for workforce technology vendors. A single employee-benefits communication strategy is unlikely to work equally well across a multigenerational workforce with different levels of financial pressure, caregiving responsibilities, job autonomy and comfort discussing mental health.

The manager relationship is particularly important. Twenty-eight percent of employees surveyed said they were uncomfortable or uncertain discussing mental health with supervisors. The implication is not that managers should become mental health professionals. Rather, employers need to equip managers to recognize when employees may need support, communicate available resources and create psychologically safer workplaces without asking supervisors to diagnose or treat conditions.

That is where employee experience platforms, HR SaaS, workforce analytics and benefits-navigation technology increasingly intersect.

A benefits platform can make resources easier to find. Workforce analytics can help employers identify patterns in absenteeism or benefit utilization. AI-powered HR assistants can potentially help employees navigate complex benefit information using natural-language questions. But each technology introduces a corresponding requirement around privacy, security, data governance and appropriate boundaries for sensitive employee information.

The business case extends beyond employee sentiment.

The World Health Organization estimates that 15% of working-age adults live with a mental disorder and that depression and anxiety result in roughly 12 billion lost working days globally each year.

Deloitte’s workplace well-being research similarly found that only 58% of surveyed employees rated their mental well-being as good or excellent, while 40% said their job negatively affected their mental well-being.

Those numbers help explain why employee well-being is becoming part of workforce planning rather than remaining a peripheral HR initiative.

For enterprise HR teams, the Lincoln-IBI findings suggest three practical priorities.

First, benefit discovery needs to become easier. Employees should not have to understand insurance terminology or navigate multiple disconnected systems to find appropriate support.

Second, communication needs to be continuous and targeted. Employees are more likely to encounter benefit information when it is integrated into relevant moments in the employee lifecycle rather than delivered through a once-a-year enrollment campaign.

Third, managers need tools and guardrails. Technology can provide managers with guidance on having supportive conversations while protecting employee privacy and avoiding the impression that managers are responsible for clinical intervention.

The competitive HR technology landscape is already moving toward this kind of integration. Platforms from Microsoft, Workday, SAP and Oracle increasingly connect employee data, workforce planning and HR workflows, while specialist providers focus on benefits administration, employee engagement, wellness and mental health support.

The challenge is that integration alone does not guarantee adoption.

IBI’s own research infrastructure illustrates the industry’s shift toward using workforce health and productivity data to evaluate benefits strategies rather than simply catalog them. The organization says its tools are designed to help employers assess benefits-program performance and understand workforce health and productivity.

For Lincoln Financial, the latest research continues a relationship with IBI that the company says has lasted more than a decade. But the broader significance extends beyond one insurer or one call-center workforce.

As employers invest more heavily in digital benefits platforms, the next competitive frontier may be benefits usability: whether employees can find the right support quickly, understand what it means and feel sufficiently safe to use it.

That changes the role of HR technology. The most valuable system may not be the one with the largest benefits catalog. It may be the one that reduces the distance between an employee experiencing a problem and a resource capable of helping.

Market Landscape

The HR technology market is increasingly converging around employee experience, benefits administration, workforce analytics and AI-powered HR automation.

The traditional HR stack separated HRIS, benefits, payroll, employee assistance programs and workforce analytics into distinct systems. Enterprise buyers are now looking for more connected workflows, particularly as employees expect consumer-like digital experiences from workplace technology.

The mental health benefits problem exposes the limitations of that approach. An employer can have an EAP, telehealth service, counseling resources and wellness programs while still producing low utilization if employees cannot easily discover or trust those services.

This creates opportunities for benefits-navigation platforms and AI assistants that can translate complex benefits information into plain-language guidance. It also creates risks. Sensitive health-related information requires strong privacy controls, clear data boundaries and careful governance. HR leaders should distinguish between systems that help employees navigate benefits and systems that attempt to infer an individual’s mental health status.

The market is therefore moving toward a model in which employee well-being data informs workforce strategy while individual health information remains appropriately protected.

For enterprises evaluating HR SaaS, the key questions are increasingly practical: How easily can employees find benefits? Can communications be personalized without becoming intrusive? Can HR measure utilization and outcomes? And can managers support employees without accessing sensitive personal information?

Top Insights

• Lincoln Financial and IBI found a major gap between mental health benefit availability and usage, challenging HR teams to improve benefits navigation and employee communication.
• Women and younger employees reported distinct mental health and workplace-support challenges, reinforcing the need for segmented employee experience and workforce well-being strategies.
• More than 75% of surveyed call center employees had mental health benefits, yet fewer than half used them, exposing an adoption problem beyond benefits access.
• HR technology can simplify benefits discovery and analytics, but enterprises must balance personalization and AI automation with privacy, security and sensitive employee data governance.
• The findings position managers as a critical part of mental health support, increasing demand for HR tools that enable supportive conversations without clinical overreach.

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