Beyond the One-Size-Fits-All Perks: Making Employee Mental Health Mission-Critical

July 14, 2025

If you had only a few moments to express your company’s core values, could you do it? As someone with a deep understanding of the heart and soul of your company, we bet the answer is an unequivocal yes. 

You understand what drives every team’s work and what your leadership cares most about. While these things might not be top of mind every day—you recognize that these core values inform the culture, create the environment, and guide every business objective for your organization. 

Paul Sale, Managing Director of HR Compensation and Benefits at Alaska Airlines, wants us all to think more about these core values and less about superficial “curb appeal” when it comes to employee benefits. When you take a deep look at the foundation, it’s always possible to draw a direct line between the impact of employee mental health and your business’s driving mission—and at Lyra Breakthrough 2025, Sale showed us how.  

For Alaska Airlines, safety is at the very core of their business. To maintain their value of “Owning Safety”, they need their employees to function at peak performance—able to spot a potential problem before it becomes an actual safety issue. 

In order to achieve this, you need to:

1. Map employee mental-health and your company’s ability to attain their core values and succeed.
2. See beyond the baseline demographics of your employees to the unseen issues (well-being, stability, contentment) that impact their ability to thrive. 
3. Develop work-group specific approaches to address unique employee experiences
4. Find the partners who also value the unseen (and less glamorous) aspects of employee benefits

Sale compares his strategy to taking care of a house. If you don't invest in the infrastructure, it can never serve as a home. Similarly, if you don't invest in the people who are helping you achieve your core mission, you won't be able to achieve it. 

At Breakthrough, Sale shared how he was able to help Alaska Airlines fulfill their vision—and live up to their core values—by advocating for mental health benefits that meet employees where they are. 

Here’s how you can connect mental health to your core business values, and make the case for meaningful benefits that go beyond the superficial. So your people can thrive, and your house can stay sturdy. 

Why mental health must be more than an “add-on”

“What does your company say is their greatest asset?”

When Sale asks audiences this question, the answer is immediate: "People!" But as he points out, there's often a critical gap between what a company might establish as core to its mission and vision and how they treat employees to bring it to life.  

“We say that people are our greatest asset... but do we truly act like that as companies?” Sale presses. “Do we treat our employees in a way that says to them every day: ‘you're our greatest asset’?"

When companies treat mental health plans like ad hoc “perks,” employees don’t utilize them (of the 89% of employees who experienced a mental health challenge last year, only 47% received care). Leaders don’t value them, and it’s nearly impossible to measure the impact of these one-size-fits-all benefits. Executives hesitate to invest in resources that show no tangible value, so the cycle continues. Employee mental health remains invisible and under-prioritized.

To flip the script, you must position mental health initiatives as essential to achieving core business objectives rather than as standalone HR programs. “It’s not a human resources strategy,” says Sale, “It’s a business and a human strategy.”

Integrating mental health into your business’s foundation: a 4-step process

To move beyond ad hoc and surface-level mental health initiatives, use Sale’s systematic approach to draw a straight line between employee mental health and business outcomes.

Step 1: Map mental health to your core business values

Consider the core values of your business and how the well-being of your employees connects to those values. These connections might seem intuitive, but take time to consciously draw connections between happy people and a thriving company.  

In the case of Alaska Airlines, their core values include: 

• “Own Safety,”
• And “Be Kind-Hearted” 

The link between employee happiness and the fulfillment of these core principles is strikingly clear:

• Distracted employees can't maintain safety standards 
• And unhappy ones can't deliver the caring experience customers expect 

“Our company’s values call for mental health in order to be successful,” says Sale. “I can’t expect a ground crew person to double check that latch underneath a plane if they’re not mentally healthy.”

To understand these connections in your own business, start by identifying the specific ways in which employee mental health directly impacts your organization’s core values and business-critical functions.

Creating your map:

1. List your company's core values and mission statement
2. For each value, identify specific job functions where your employees’ mental states directly impact the delivery of those values 
3. Document concrete scenarios where poor mental health could compromise your primary objectives
4. Quantify business risk and present these connections to executives as business imperatives, not just HR initiatives

Step 2: Analyze your employee population beyond demographics

Move beyond what Sale calls “brochure stats”—the sanitized employee categories that look good in presentations—to understand the full spectrum of human experiences in our workforce. Instead of “customer service” workers, “under 25,” include that these employees are working two jobs to make ends meet, paying off student debt, and juggling uncertain schedules. 

Here are some the groups of employees that Sale identified: 

• Well-paid pilots who work alongside part-time flight attendants who may be struggling financially
• Employees managing overnight shifts that may lead them to spend less time with their families
• Ground crews dealing with weather-related stress and the impact of physical labor
• Corporate workers facing different but equally real pressure to maintain airline standards

“We are human,” says Sale. “This is who I’m problem-solving for.”

Look beyond job titles. Document work-specific stressors for each group (shift work, travel, high-pressure deadlines) and identify which groups face the highest mental health risks. Let those insights—not baseline demographics—guide your benefits design.

Step 3: Develop “work group” specific approaches and partnerships

Often, HR leaders mistakenly "boil the ocean"—trying to get widespread buy-in without thinking about the individual needs and circumstances of different employee groups. Sale warns against this approach.

“Some of your work groups are going to be unique and more receptive to [mental health initiatives],” he says, “Find out their barriers to using [these resources] and their communication and provider preferences.”

Sale hosted meetings with various groups of employees to learn the answers to questions around barriers and communication preferences, and discovered key differences:  

• Pilots need coaching rather than clinical therapy due to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) licensing concerns
• Union employees want communications from labor leaders, not corporate HR
• Flight attendants need on-site airport support rather than resources that require them to travel to see a provider in an office

When considering mental health benefits in your own organization, meet directly with representatives from each major employee segment to understand their individualized barriers to your existing mental health or employee programs. Then design group-specific solutions that address their work environments, life scenarios, and limitations.  

Pro tip: test different approaches with focus groups before rolling out changes across the entire organization.

Step 4: Build strategic vendor partnerships for customization

Once you’re clear about the link between your employees’ well-being and your core values, invest in partners who share your priorities. Some vendors rarely think beyond the surface level. They’ll recommend ad hoc solutions and offer little in the way of customization. 

Alaska's partnership with Lyra extends far beyond standard benefits offerings. It was a first for Alaska, “In other [partnerships], we were afraid to ask for help,” says Sale. “With Lyra, I just thought, ‘What if we ask?’ And every time, they’ve delivered.”

• During the 2023 Maui wildfires, Alaska partnered with Lyra to pitch community support to the government of Maui for impacted families (although many of the impacted families weren’t Alaska employees, they were part of a shared community) 
• During the 2025 collision between an non-Alaska airline jet and an Army helicopter near an airport where many Alaska employees worked, Sale called Lyra reps at 10PM and got immediate crisis support. 
• When there was a tragic incident at an Alaska gate area, Lyra provided on-site counseling.

Don’t settle for “what you see is what you get” partnerships. Prioritize mental health benefits partnerships that can create custom solutions for your unique organizational needs.

Questions to ask potential partners:

Does your contract include crisis response capabilities and customization options?

Do you have protocols for immediate mental health support during organizational crises?

Can this partnership extend beyond our employee base when community events impact our workforce?

Are you able to provide on-site support options for employees who can’t access traditional office-based resources?

Are there integrations between your mental health providers and primary healthcare benefits for seamless and holistic care?

When someone calls in the middle of the night with a pressing need, will anyone answer?

Learn more

“Sure, go find it in our portal” vs. mental health as a core part of your company DNA

When your EAP becomes common language—"Oh, have you called Lyra about that?"—you know mental health has become more than just a perk. At Alaska, mental health support is so embedded that senior leaders automatically suggest Lyra resources when colleagues face personal challenges.

Something magical happens when you connect mental health to your business strategy:

• Executives automatically include mental health resource links in all crisis communications
• Leadership knows how to activate immediate support for employees affected by workplace incidents
• Utilization spans across generational cohorts and employee types, showing engagement from diverse populations

When you treat mental health as foundational infrastructure rather than decorative benefits, you create sustainable competitive advantage. Then, your greatest asset—your employees—can finally deliver on the values your company claims to hold.