Workplace Mental Health Trends and Insights for HR Leaders

Workplace Mental Health Trends and Insights for HR Leaders

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish Steed

Guest: Melissa Frieswick, President of Koa Health

Today, we spoke with Melissa Frieswick about about workplace stress and mental health trends for 2024. We talked about the critical aspects of mental health and wellbeing within the workplace, emphasizing the profound impact on the employee as a whole. We explored the benefits of prioritizing mental health along with the challenges and stigma surrounding it, shedding light on the emerging trends gathered through research. This episode provides valuable insights for fostering a supportive and normalized mental health culture for your organizational setting. Make sure to check out the following reports for additional resources.

2024 Mental Health Trends Report

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Transcript follows:

Steve 0:28
Everyone, welcome to the HR Happy Hour Show. We have a great show today. I’m excited for the topic. My name is Steve Boese, thanks for joining us. I’m with Trish steed. Of course, Trish, I am super excited for today’s show. But first of all, how are you? Good to see you.

Trish 0:43
I’m good. I’m back in Illinois today. So a different background than what people normally see me in. So it’s fun. I’m back visiting relatives.

Steve 0:52
America’s Heartland, there you go.

Trish 0:54
I’m in the heartland today, you got it.

Steve 0:57
So we’re talking about a topic we’ve hit before a few times over the course of the show, but one that is kind of eternally important, which is mental health, and mental health specifically in the workplace, right? We know that work in and our experiences at work plays such a huge role in our lives and impact our lives in so many ways. The topic of mental health, and particularly around what employers can do to better support employee mental health is it’s never been more important, I think. And so I’m glad we’re really talking about it today.

Trish 1:30
Me too. And I’m really excited because we’re approaching it not is something that you just react to, that this is something very proactive that you can do, right? Much like you would handle any other health issues that your employees may either be facing or potentially will face, right. We want to make sure we have really solid approaches to the way that we we value our employees and show them that so yeah, I won’t delay any longer.

Steve 1:59
And having some data around that to support us use to support our programs helps as well. And that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today. Our guest today is Melissa Frieswick. Melissa is the president of Koa Health. Her previous roles were a former chief growth officer at Up health Chief Commercial Officer at Total Brain, Chief Revenue Officer at Maven and Senior Vice President of Sales at Virgin Pulse. So we know from a background early days on the show, Melissa, welcome to the to the show. Good to see you.

Melissa Frieswick 2:29
Thank you, I very much appreciate the opportunity to be here with you both Steve and Trish.

Steve 2:34
Thank you. It’s great to have you. Well, you’ve had a long career and a lot of mental health and well being kinds of roles. Lots of big, great companies on that list as well. Of course, Koa Health the latest. Maybe we’ll start Melissa just learning a little bit more about you. And then if you don’t mind telling us a little bit about your connection and what keeps you in this wellbeing and mental health space, particularly what why it matters to you.

Melissa Frieswick 2:59
Absolutely. So I’ve been in this space for over 20 years at this point, very much started my career, even on the payer side prior to the startup world working with Cigna and very closely with David crew DNA through a number of roles within that organization, and then some time in health and productivity for very large employers on an international stage as well. So that’s kind of the background and the progression. I’ll tell you to answer your question up front of why I’m here, there’s been one North Star, and it’s guided every single move that I’ve made. But it truly is why I’m here. When I was 10 years old, my grandfather passed from cancer, my mother had been the navigator of that health care for my grandparents. And there were a couple of things I knew to be true about my mother. She’s brilliant. She’s understated. She’s an advocate. And she really knows how to navigate tough situations. I watched her over the years that my grandfather was sick really struggled with health care. And it wasn’t about how to treat my grandfather, it was how to navigate the healthcare system, whether it was the claims processing, whether it was seeking care at a local facility or going into the city or up to Boston for care. And that navigation made such an immense impact on me. And so throughout my entire career that Northstar has been how do we make the healthcare system drive better outcomes and also be easier to navigate for the average individual or consumer of that healthcare. So that’s really why I’m here and you can see that pathway through my career. There are always little nuggets, something that’s personal to me. My husband and I have three children. So you can see the connection my overall well being so you can be there and be present at work and at home. may even with the women and families healthcare and every single one of these in some way has connected to that. So that’s really at the heart of why I’m here.

Trish 4:51
Well, you can tell when you when you speak about it with such passion, that it’s really meaningful. And I think that’s important right is if you’re someone who’s listening to this episode, I, you know, we really strive to bring on people who are super passionate and have real reasons behind what they do. I think that many of us can relate to that, right? Whether it’s a grandparent that you’re, you know, helping navigate, like you said, or even even someone with children or you know, a partner may be going through something, these sorts of issues pop up when you least expect it, and we’re not ready for them. Right. So it’s about educating yourself quickly. And also dealing with the emotional and physical side of some of these health issues. Right. So how do you see that that plays together?

Melissa Frieswick 5:39
Yeah, it’s challenging, and also looking through the lens of the employer. And the research that we did, employers overwhelmingly, like 89% of them really want to improve the health of their employees in particularly around mental health. And the number one reason for that investment is because they want to protect the quality of life for their employees. Right, they’ve set it, that’s very clear in the research that we’ve done. So you have the lens of an employer that’s trying to help their massive populations really navigate this. And at the same time, as individual consumers, we’re trying to balance all these different aspects of our life in our world, in find the way that’s the quickest path to feeling good. I think that’s, you know, it’s a very complex web. What we can do, what feels really good, is when we’re able to look at deeply rooted scientifically validated care delivery pathways in simplify them into approach that makes them easily digestible for the average consumer of the healthcare and be able to help them navigate it, right, really guide them through the process. And the second thing, which I’ll just add to that is we can build an elegant system, we have to also keep in mind, everybody has their preference, right? It isn’t a consumer, we may have some individuals who really want the digital first and some that want the human touch. And so also making sure that what’s available to the individual fits them at that moment that they’re driving towards the care and they have the options. And then that’s the other thing that’s really important. We can’t forget as we solve for it.

Steve 7:14
Melissa, thank you for sharing that you touched on something I had in my notes towards the end of maybe the conversation, but it’s an important one, I think it which is you noted how people’s preferences are different when it comes to negotiating their way through this process, and even accessing care, and even mental health care, some will prefer digital kind of mechanisms, tools, technologies, others want that one to one in person, maybe the more traditional kind of what we think about when we think about mental health care. And one of your one I can’t remember who but one of the CO executives has a quote in when in the report I read, which was really telling which said, hey, the way forward is, it’s really going to be a balance of this. Because the 100%, one to one, you know, in person kind of thing. While it’s great and people like it, it’s hard to scale that, especially if you’re a really large employer with 10s, or maybe even hundreds of 1000s of employees. But yet, sometimes the fully digital kinds of interactions feel maybe a little less personal. Maybe you don’t quite have the stickiness or the engagement that you’d like to try to really drive those optimal outcomes. But that balance, right and trying to provide employees with a little heart, whether we call it hybrid or balanced approach to care is going to be the one that really is going to have the biggest impact at work. And I think that’s a big part of what you guys are doing too.

Melissa Frieswick 8:33
It’s so important. So the quote that you’re remembering, which very good memory, but it came from Dr. Oliver Harrison, he is our founder and CEO, you’re absolutely brilliant, I think in what he’s trying to really put together is, to your point, it’s the digital human hybrid approach, right? It’s acknowledging that each one of us probably has our own bias and preferences on how we like to interact with our healthcare. And to be honest, I’ll add it nother layer of complexity, it changes in a moment’s notice, right? And it’s how I’m feeling how my mental healthcare is, at this moment changes very rapidly, and also how I want to be treated Canada that same. I’ll give you a very quick example. I woke up the other morning, and I was super excited. I was going into Boston for a meeting I was very excited about and I was playing top of my game, like mental health it was there, I was feeling great. And then still have the Bulldog vomited all over my kitchen. That my mental health totally changed right in that moment. Because now I am very concerned for my dog, what’s going on? I need to clean up my kitchen because there’s the mom’s side of me that’s got to keep it clean. And then there’s this third piece that’s now I’m going to be late for the meeting. Now I have to think about how am I going to get through Boston traffic to get there. My point is your mental health changes on the drop of a dime, and also how you want to interact in that moment. It was about I needed someone to just talk it out in that moment. In other times, I really like the digital approach I like being online. So I think it’s really important to just recognize that changes. The second thing is, when we talk about the inability to scale, the human touch, there’s no doubt clinician presence is vital to care. Overall, throughout all of health care, in many different facets, it becomes really important. What’s unique about behavioral health and mental health specifically, is that we don’t have enough clinicians, there aren’t enough clinicians in school to cover the amount of need we have. And it’s not just in the US, it’s global.

Melissa Frieswick 10:39
We have 3 million members around the world. And what we deal with in Germany and UK and France is the same that we deal with here in the US, there just isn’t a supply. And so we also have to be really honest about the fact that it’s not just about creating huge networks, we have to find a way to make that time with the clinician more efficient. That’s a really important piece. And even within like New York, I’ll give you another example. There is some supply that’s available, but they refuse to work with insurance. And so it’s cash pay, which also adds another barrier. My point is, in all of this, as we think about that digital human hybrid, it’s not just the traditional lens of here’s an app, and here’s a counselor and decide which mix. It’s also about looking into tools that are like digital therapeutics, right. So we’ve done a ton of work with Harvard and Oxford to develop different types of digital therapeutics. And the idea is those are medical tools, you know, to different degrees and categorizations of a true digital therapeutic. But the idea is have tools that enable you to progress the in person time with the clinician. And I think that’s another element that’s really critical in how we talk about, you know, moving forward for healthcare.

Trish 11:55
Yeah, I’m, I’m relating, and like nodding as you’re talking, because I was just speaking with a friend the other day, who was talking about having real physical medical issues and cannot even get in to see a physician. Yeah, it’s for months. And but then there, they don’t have all of sort of these other digital options for at this time, because I think it is still such an emerging area. And I’d love to just hear your thoughts on that, like, are you hearing and even through the, you know, through the retrans report you did, or the results showing that people are feeling some amount of mental frustration or mental exhaustion even? Because they can’t get the physical sort of things handled? Or is that just sort of an anomaly?

Melissa Frieswick 12:45
it’s absolutely consistent. We focused in our research very specifically around mental health. However, I would say across healthcare, in general, in delivery and in practice, and globally, it’s something that definitely is very present. There are a lot of research in numbers that we have in the report that talk about, you know, the impact of productivity, and the amount of the population that feels like they have stress and anxiety when they’re at work. And that has a very real cost associated with it for the individual, for their family, and then for the employer as well. So a lot of data there, that’s telling us it’s super important. I think where we’re challenged as a society, quite honestly, is that we have employers, we have health care, workers that really want to invest for all the right reasons, and help people along and they’re providing more and more support, our research tells us that it’s almost 90% of employers plan to invest even more in mental health in 2024. For their employees, they’re also seeing an increase in the utilization of benefit benefits. So it would tell you there should be maybe an optimistic lens. What’s interesting is when you flip it and we pull the actual employees or the consumers of the healthcare, it’s a very different story. They’re feeling like it’s almost overwhelming, I don’t know where to start. And so they’re not seeing the same level of support that the employers feel they’re really providing to the employee population. It’s not a new dynamic. I feel like I’ve been in the industry enough to see this kind of cyclical motion go through the solution, in my experience is trying to just simplify, put as many things together as you can keep it really simple. Don’t get carried away with the flashy, sexy apps and write it in keep it to what actually works and will move the needle for outcomes and then deliver it with messaging. That’s very real for the consumer. Anyone can pick it up and understand how to use it.

Trish 14:50
Yeah, I wondered if it needed to be simple because of that reason, like you’re saying because especially if you’re in a time of stress, whether it’s your own anxiety, your own, maybe depression or whatever you’re dealing with. The last thing you need is something that’s flashy and overstimulating, right? You some, some very, it’s very calming, right? Something that’s going to just feel like help, right? I’d love it. One of the things, obviously you’ve, you know, the report, we’re going to link to it. So everyone can download this report, there’s so many, just great nuggets of information. But when you were talking about kind of that benefits use, and one of the things that stood out to me was that, although it said eight and 10, saw an uptick in benefits use in 2023. But data had told us that nearly seven and 10 employees say they don’t use their benefits to their full value. And I wanted to just dig in a little bit, because I have worked in HR many, many years before becoming an analyst. And, you know, of course, we always had sort of resources, right EAP programs and so forth. It wasn’t as mental health focus back then. But but we just felt like for many decades, people have not taken advantage of their benefits. I’d love to hear, what do you what do you think about that? What are you hearing? And if you see that your employees are not taking advantage? what are maybe some things that, you know, these HR leaders or other leaders can be thinking about to make that possible?

Melissa Frieswick 16:21
Excellent question. And for anyone who’s feeling that sense of overwhelming and kind of facing the same issues that you’re talking about, think what’s important to keep in mind is you’re not alone. This is a universal issue that is felt by all size employers and around the globe, I’ve had conversations around the very topic, if you think about some of the benefits that are offered. And a lot of times when we talk about mental health, in particular, employers will think about things like health plan coverage, right, or maybe if it’s outside of the US, it’s private insurance to supplement the national, because about 67% of the population is covering those benefits for their employees. They also will frequently think of EAP, as global EAP is in particular, and it’s about half the population will offer those to their employees. So my point is there all these benefits, and that’s before you get into solution for the specific for, you know, very targeted types of care, like disease management or, or disease prevention or prescription use, things like that, that also add more complexity. So it is somewhat overwhelming. And we do find that employee ease, they have to be reminded of the tool that’s available to them, somewhere in the time that they actually need it. I’ll remember back is my signal days, it always blew my mind that one of the most impactful things we ever delivered to an employee population was a magnet with our telephone number on it. Right? And it seems so silly and almost ridiculous. But it was amazing that if we provided that because it was a reminder, it was right in front of them when they needed it. Right? It was the same reason I have a magnet for the repair. Gentleman from my washer dryer, you need it, you encounter it. So, you know, I would say don’t overthink this sometimes keep it to the very basics. Do you have an intranet site, and is that intranet site, something your employees really are familiar with, then provide the information there. So they have one site to go to. Right? If there are champions within the community, a lot of employers will use wellness champions, it’s a great network to get tapped into, because they can really help to spread the message when populations needed facilities that are located in the office a little more challenging now with all the remote work. But ways to tackle that as well.

Melissa Frieswick 18:44
I think the the overarching message here is build a simple plan, and then make it readily available but don’t over engineer it think about really traditional ways that people touch information that they need. The other thing that I think is really important, and this is a growing trend that I’ve seen over the last probably five years really take flight. We’ve always had manager training. But I feel like a lot of the employers that are doing this really well, that manager training has evolved. We are sitting with one of our customers next week. And it’s with the women’s empowerment organization within their company. And we’re talking about things that are really important like impostor syndrome and things like that. So that someone might be listening and realize that that’s an aspect of their mental health that really does impact them they never thought about. And so that opens the door to these other tools that are available to them. So I think using manager training in an effective way, thinking a little bit more broadly about what that could mean and then providing the tools beneath that. Super important. And then just one last point. A lot of times we get carried away in the marketplace, we think about driving utilization and consumption all great, right? We want people to engage with us, but I think we We also as a just industry need to think about which programs, we want people to engage with different ways. Like, for example, I probably don’t need my employees to engage in therapy all the time. And it’s probably not even my whole population that needs to. So we need to also, you know, be really specific and intentional when we work as partners, between vendors and employers to really think about the engagement strategies and what you want to drive for each specific. Otherwise, you’re kind of just throwing everything in every time you talk to an employee, you’re saying, Here’s everything that’s available, instead of maybe financial planning is more important, the beginning of the year around the holidays, right, and mental health maybe throughout the year, but maybe other things aren’t. So I think it’s that balance as well, that can be really helpful.

Steve 20:48
Melissa, thank you for saying that you kind of alluded to something that I wanted to ask you about, or at least have us talk about here, which is a little bit about you said, not all employees need to be in therapy, right, right, or in person kind of clinician led therapy. And I believe that it is true. And then I also think that many times, though, that becomes what we feel like is the default, because preventative steps have not been taken along the way. And look, we’re all people. And I’ve been in this case, Trisha and I were talking before the show about some of these topics as well. You don’t necessarily think about mental health, often the same way we think about physical health, right? We’re, we’re sort of trained in our through, you know, years and years of annual physicals, at the doctor’s office, and annual checkups, and things like that, and the various things you do to keep your body physically in shape, but we don’t often think of our mental health that way. Certainly, I’ll admit I never did, honestly. So I’d love for you. Maybe, Melissa, if you could talk a little bit about that this this idea of how people and then certainly the organizations that they’re working in, they’d be better supported by taking a little bit more preventative, the bit more proactive in kind of both from a an intervention kind of standpoint, but also just a cultural standpoint, hey, this is a thing we’re going to talk about and normalize it a little bit in the organization.

Melissa Frieswick 22:11
Yeah, it’s so important. There’s a couple of themes within what you just said. I think at the very beginning of our conversation, Trish, you alluded to as well, the physical health connection. And I think you’re bringing up a great point, Steve, for physical health. We train children very young, right, when my children were going through grade school, we had like the President’s activity challenge, and we had athletics and we talked about taking care of your body so that you can play your athletics wouldn’t have been nice to be like, take care of your mental health, right, you’ll learn how to interact and you’ll be really, you know, show up present for those games in those times that are really important. But there has been historically, this stigma, and we even maybe put it on young children where we don’t want to really talk about mental health, you know, it’s kind of like, that’s something that you hold into yourself, maybe you push it down or don’t acknowledge it in the right way. And I think there were small steps taken, school started to talk about things like meditation and, and that’s wonderful. And that’s a really important aspect of care for some people, doesn’t work for everyone doesn’t work for all children. So I think the narrative needs to change to what’s prevention, for mental health in just like physical health, and asthmatic, someone else might be a diabetic, your physical care is going to vary one by one, the mental health and how we think about it needs to vary one by one, right? We have to think about this in different we have to make it okay to have those conversations. When I was speaking earlier about like the mental, the manager training, that’s an enormous step. And not every organization is there yet, it’ll take time, right. But even the presence of being able to say this is a day that we’re going to talk about a topic that is difficult. Sometimes it sends a loud message. I had an employer that I worked with once in the president of the company actually released how he struggled with anxiety. It was a game changer. As soon as he opened up about his own experience, their utilization went up. Because it humanized it, it made it okay to talk about and it also took away this fear, which is very prevalent in a lot of organizations. And we found it in our research as well. Sometimes employees think if they talk about their mental health, it’s going to be held against them. And again, we need to really change that narrative in and talk about it in a different way. There were a couple of things we would be naive not to pay attention to. There are generational differences. I think Trish mentioned this earlier. But if I think about technology, to be honest, my younger generations and ironically, older generations, right I was always surprised by that. But sometimes they’re lonely and technology actually does work for them. There are gender differences, right, the mental health index that was done for several years during the pandemic, it showed us that men and women carried the weight of mental health in different ways. My point is, as we think about the tools, as we open up the conversation, we also have to make sure we’re opening it up to individuals, and what feeds into the variation that they need. It may be generational, it may be gender, it may be traditions, regions of the world, right? All these things matter. But you have to open it up to the conversation first.

Trish 25:31
Yeah, thank you for sharing all of that. i You said a couple of words. And I even Steve said, when I wrote down just talking about first of all the stigma attached to it, I’m glad you just address that. That was one of the questions I had. And definitely think that can be tied to generations, right? As you were talking about even little kids, I’m thinking, how many times as a child are you told, like stop crying? I’ll give you something to cry about? Oh, man, like we were literally trained to hold it in hold in your emotions, right?

Steve 26:01
I don’t think that’s technically like good parenting advice.

Trish 26:10
That’s who’s now leaning these organizations. And we’re the ones who are supposed to be, you know, so open and accepting. And we’re not the other thing. Melissa, you you know, when you’re talking about kind of that stigma and normalizing and sharing the stories, I was like, Oh, my gosh, yes, thank you for that example, I think there is something to be said for that the way things get normalized in communities. And it could become bubbling up from the younger people who are more comfortable in talking about and bringing these things to light. It could be just as we age, getting more comfortable with ourselves and our own approaches to life, but but being able to have some place, whether it’s electronic, or actually physically in your place of employment, or both. I think that ability to share stories is how we all learn. It’s why you’re on the show, right? It’s to when we are vulnerable, as leaders and as employees. And as colleagues, I think we do make it better for everyone. And it sounds like maybe the study backs that up a little bit.

Melissa Frieswick 27:18
does, definitely does. And it’s a combination as well, this study gave us a lot of insights into how employers were thinking about their 2024 planning specific to mental health. There’s so much more rich data that we have. And part of this is it’s the unique nature of cola. Cola was founded not to produce, you know, a software SAS platform for employers. It was founded with scientists, with clinicians, doctors, that were actually trying to advance how we deliver health care, and a lot of research that was pumped into clinical validation. And out of that came some great science, and really focused in on how do you actually move the needle? How do you change outcomes, you know, the elegant SAS platform that sits on top of that came later. And that’s relatively new, the depth of what we learned in the clinical research with all the clinicians that we have on staff, the content writers of my platform, are literally psychologists instead of marketing, you know, like, there’s the difference in why I bring that up is, is you put that dynamic around. And in practice, you can also connect a lot of dots that aren’t as transparent as some of the obvious ones that we’ve talked through. And that piece as well, right, we can do little bits of study, but it’s the research and how things evolve over time when your clinician is trying to deliver care directly. That’s probably the secret sauce or the you know, the real piece that comes through that can impact the outcomes. It’s kind of exciting.

Steve 28:53
Right? We just did a show, Melissa on menopause, health and menopause care in the workplace, right, just just posted the other day, and a friend of ours had shared the show to her network. And I was thankful that she did that. And she wrote in her comment, something along the lines of like, healthy people just performed better both at work both at home, in their communities, as parents and family members and friends, on and on and on. Right? Healthy people just are better. And I think this same comment can be made as we’re discussing mental health. And we talk about the conversations that both we’re having here, but also the important work that Koa Health is doing in the community with the communities that they’re serving through their customers and, and maybe that’s the last thing I want to I just want to say and maybe we can talk about it a little bit, which is I had this idea I wrote in the pre show that like everyone benefits from better mental health, for being concerned with their mental health, even if you don’t think you need to, right just thinking about it. And maybe I’ll ask it this way. If Have you might want to, and you can anonymize it, you don’t have to say, you know, Acme companies found this or that, but maybe just describe a little bit of some of the impacts you’re seeing when companies or organizations really take a thoughtful technology certainly supported but a thoughtful holistic approach to employee mental health, what are some of the beneficial outcomes that we can say?

Melissa Frieswick 30:21
It’s an excellent question. And I think the magic is that you have Northstars, that are most employers are looking for these outcomes, right? But the nuggets that I get super excited about are the ones that are unexpected, right? It’s, what percentage of the population comes in through the digital door, and they build trust through it, and then they move on to therapy, that, to me is a magical thing, right, because you probably wouldn’t have gotten them into the therapy lens, without the first piece. And again, I’m not saying therapy is for everyone, I don’t believe it is. But I think that sometimes it can help the right people get to where it needs they need to be. The second thing is I love it, when you see and we see this with a lot of our customers, the engagement will vary time over time, right. And you can see how users will kind of maintain, maintain, maintain, and then something happens. And they start to utilize a lot, and you work through it. And then you see it taper down, down, down, down. And when we do member feedback, or you do any kind of a focus group, you talk to the members that have had that kind of experience, it’s that you carried them through a tough time. That for me, gets me super excited, right. And then the third thing I’ll say is there is an element I get passionate about. When we talk about what we’re doing. And we share our outcomes with business leaders that have nothing to do with our company. Right there. They’re practicing universities and health systems around the world. And they get it and they see the application of how it can be done across large populations. To me, that’s the other piece. It’s a sign of outcomes. It gets me really excited. What’s challenging is how do you do that now like, you know, bring it back and make it digestible for the average buyer and the average consumer. That’s probably the challenging part. But yeah, I think it’s the energy that you see, when people are changing their behavior for the man norm. That’s probably where we get the most excitement from buyers.

Steve 32:25
That’s a thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it. It’s a fantastic story. It’s a great report to once again, it’s the 2024 workplace mental health trends report you can find on the Koa Health website, we’ll direct people there, we’ll link to the report in our notes, there’s a lot of other supporting content and other content that’s out there as well. Code is doing a great job, both with research but also providing this platform for organizations to interact with and to step in. And it’s so important, right, one other last little piece of data from the report, almost every organization, there was only 1% of organizations. Mental health is not important to them. That’s right. I don’t know who those one percenters are. But everyone realizes it. And you know, the organizational leaders that you guys talk to almost universally agree, this is a challenge. This is important. We’re gonna prioritize this. And so the question is, let’s make this happen for more organizations for more people. And so we do want to make sure that folks who are interested, can engage with the team MCO with Melissa and learn more and take that step to make these kinds of interventions possible available and the the impact we could we could probably do a whole nother show homeless on the impacts, right. But it’s true, and it’s meaningful, and it’s important.

Melissa Frieswick 33:47
Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And appreciate the dialogue here with both of you. I think every conversation, right? If we can inspire more people to think about it in a different lens. That’s a great thing. It’s a great momentum. So I really do appreciate that. If anyone does want to reach out as well. Feel free to reach out via my LinkedIn. I’m always very anxious to talk to others in the market who are viewing things different ways and share a conversation.

Steve 34:13
All right, great stuff, Melissa. So great to see you. Great to meet you. Thanks again for being with us today. Trish, I love this. I’m the benefits person. I mean, I really wasn’t but I should have been one in my life. I really was where we I said I mentioned the menopause show that we just did this show on mental health. I we just we should make this like our benefit. A year.

Trish 34:39
I think too, it’s it’s having Melissa and other people like that who come on and you’re really a teacher. I know Steve, I learned not just in sort of the prep work and reading the report, but in also just those little stories you’re sharing where I’m like, wow, I didn’t know that and I just I’m grateful. I’m great. for your time, and I’m grateful for your examples and your expertise because I know that if I’m learning while we’re recording this, this show that the people who are listening are also learning as well. And to and for me, that’s the best thing we can do in this community is really reach out to each other and be that support. So, so grateful you did that for us today. Thank you.

Melissa Frieswick 35:18
Thank you so much, Trisha.

Steve 35:19
All right. Thank you so much, Melissa Frieswick from Koa Health. This has been a great show. We’ll put all the links to all the resources we mentioned. Once again, it’d be in the show notes, or trustee. My name is Steve Boese, remember to catch all the HR Happy Hour archives on HRHappyHour.net. Of course, and thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai