We recently hosted a webinar on Employee Retention During the Great Resignation featuring Modern Health’s Sr. Director of Clinical Research Cynthia Castro Sweet and Senior Vice President of Sales Hannah Wilson. Here’s a summary of their discussion and key takeaways: 

Retention is a top priority

Amid today’s Great Resignation, employee turnover and retention are top of mind for employers. A competitive labor market has HR and people leaders hyper-focused on trying to retain employees and grow headcount significantly in 2022. Talent attrition not only has a widespread impact on productivity and team morale but can also be costly to organizations. It costs an employer an average of six to nine months’ salary to replace an employee who leaves. 

The workforce has changed dramatically in the past few years, with companies shifting to remote-first workplaces, employees becoming more mobile, and burnout at an all-time high. HR leaders are searching for new and innovative ways to increase retention rates in this new work landscape, and research shows that employees are willing to stay at or leave a company based on the quality of their mental well-being benefits. 

According to a recent survey of 1,200+ employees and 500+ HR leaders and C-level executives from Modern Health and Forrester Consulting: 

• 73% of employees and 81% of managers indicated they would be more likely to stay at a company that offered high-quality mental health resources.
• 73% of non-managerial employees and 76% of managers said they valued mental health benefits over other employer-sponsored perks.
  

Digging deeper 

Employees are asking for quality mental health benefits and say they are willing to leave if their employer isn’t able to meet their needs. But is there an actual link between the provision of mental health services and employee retention, and what business ROI can employers expect? To try to answer this question, we looked at our customer data to see if employees who utilized Modern Health services had higher retention rates than those who did not. 

We analyzed records of 149,451 unique employees across 104 Modern Health customers and calculated the total percentage of employees retained on eligibility files relative to the percent removed from eligibility files over one year. We compared differences in percentages between employees engaged in the Modern Health platform versus those who were not engaged. 

You can find a detailed breakdown of our results in our Employee Retention: Modern Health Engagement Research Report, but here is a summary of our findings: 

• Retention was 5.5% higher among employees who engaged with Modern Health versus those who did not — an average of 23.56% of employees who never used Modern Health were terminated (voluntarily or involuntarily) compared to only 18.03% of employees who engaged with Modern Health.
• This trend in retention among employees who used Modern Health was consistent across all years of employee tenure. 

How does this translate to better business ROI? 

• For an employer with 10,000 employees, turnover savings of 5.5% would result in an additional 137 employees retained. 
• Assuming an estimated replacement cost of $28,155 to $42,233 per employee, employers would save $3,857,235 to $5,785,921. 
  

How much could your organization save?  

If you’re interested in determining your organization’s estimated turnover savings from implementing a mental health solution like Modern Health, we have a calculation you can use. The only inputs needed are your total number of employees and average salary: 

Watch the webinar on-demand

In the webinar, Modern Health leaders Cynthia Castro Sweet and Hannah Wilson provide further context around current struggles with employee retention, clearly explain our methodology and results, and discuss how your organization can positively impact turnover by investing in mental health support. You can watch an on-demand replay of the webinar right now!