The question is. For all the talk of employers offering anonymous services, why should an employee trust it will truly be anonymous?
Could such services be trusted to keep your mental health information private and secure, with maximum recent data breaches across both financial and health industries.
So in case data is broken out in groups and those groups are small enough, for example, in utilization reports, it may not be difficult for a supervisor to discern who is utilizing the service.
Today, anyone can already take a mental health screening from us or a dozen other websites.
Conditions like depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, and ADHD all have screening measures available at the moment and without having anything to do with your employer.
Absolutely free. Although, best yet, these measures are all free and anonymous. Singling out mental illness as needing some sort of special treatment by your employer is just another way that they discriminate against folks with a mental health issue. Is not it a significant poser that can be readily solved by employees themselves? Why involve employers they aren’t a part of your relationship with your doctor or therapist. Nor must they be. Companies and startups see undiagnosed mental illness in the workplace as a poser and an opportunity they can a poser an employer should separate out from my mental health problems, if it impacts my productivity or effectiveness.
Just like my health status is none of my employer’s business, neither is my mental health status.
You may find your boss or supervisor making odd remarks, or allowances in your work that you never asked for.
Suddenly that ‘fast track’ promotion schedule you were on is slowed down, it may not even be a conscious effort. Biggest problem is when a connection is made purposely or not between your using one of these services offered by your employer and your work record. Well meaning but potentially very creepy and an invasion of your privacy rights. While decreasing their team’s cohesiveness and impacting the effectiveness and productivity of other employees, a person with mental illness who’s not being treated also can contribute to a work environment that is less pleasant to work in. It appears to come down to two things productivity and team cohesiveness. So a person with a mental illness that is undiagnosed or untreated is usually often less productive than other employees, and have more days absent from work.