A new generation of workers demand more from work than a pay-check and somewhere to go in the mornings. They see work not just as something to fill time or as a means to an end, but as an opportunity for meaning and connection. At the same time, being removed from the working environment during the Covid pandemic has given all of us time to pause and reflect about what we want from our employment, and hopefully how we can, in turn, feel like we want to contribute more to the overall success of the companies where we work. 

Employee Assistance or Wellness Programs (EAPs) have been around for a full generation now. They started with much promise; a new beginning of human and industrial relations where the everyday stressors facing a workforce were recognised as real and valid. Corporates would assist employees to get the care they need: emotional support, financial and legal advice.

It’s a great idea, but a few problems arose.

• Implementing an EAP has become a tick box exercise where management, in good conscience, transfer the anxieties of their employees to a third party. Though well-intentioned, this may create an even bigger social and personal gap between management and employees.
• An even bigger issue arose with the unintended consequences of the way that EAP’s contract with employers: the conflict at the heart of utilisation. EAP’s are incentivised to keep utilisation as low as possible in order to protect their margins, while employers want their employees to take full advantage of the services for which they are paying not insignificant premiums.
• A difficulty for the EAP’s, especially with regards psychological services, is not wanting to compromise on quality of care by offering a potentially sub-standard offering. So, most of the time employees in psychological distress are referred directly to specialist psychologists at very high hourly rates. More and more rules need to be made to manage the costs- from limiting the number of sessions to reduced rates for the psychologists over time.
• For employees who are already in stressful situations, the fact that their employers might be given information – regardless of how scant that information is -about their use of the EAP services, only served to disincentives their use of the services.

Panda has been established to provide those in psychological distress access to the right care and resources, at the right time. When we developed Panda, we knew that most people don’t get the help they need because of three important factors: the stigma that is still associated with seeking psychological help; the fact that mental healthcare services are not well-defined and difficult to navigate; and, because of the way that the industry is structured, the first point of call – where those in need seek the help of specialists like clinical psychologists and psychiatrists – is often also the least cost effective.

Panda was established by Allan Sweidan, an experienced clinical psychologist who previously established the largest group of psychiatric hospitals in Africa, and Alon Lits, an actuary with expertise in matching the right consumer with the right product having previously been the director for Uber in Sub-Saharan Africa. Launched on World Mental Health Day October 10, 2021, Panda is fast becoming the go-to platform for anyone needing to explore the world of mental health information and care.

Within Panda, employees can anonymously engage in the Panda Forest: audio only sessions offered 12 hours a day, 365 days a year on topics our users tell us they need to talk about, like depression, anxiety, work and financial stress and overcoming trauma. App users can engage with videos and articles to find out more about mental health, and solutions that have proven to work, and in another key feature, they can do assessments that will guide them to the right level of care at the right time. Panda is an efficient and easy way to get the right kind of care. Social workers and wellness counsellors (wo)man our unique text-based chat support service where employees can discuss everyday worries with an experienced real human on the other side of the conversation at a fraction of the price of a psychologist. If they need to meet with a psychologist or a coach or a dietician, they can be matched with the right one within the app.

Panda is the technology that businesses have been crying out for. With Panda, the more employees engage the better the experience at no additional cost*. Employees need never concern themselves with the loss of anonymity as all reporting is anonymised and aggregated. Quality of care can be retained while driving down costs by using evidence-based screening tools to ensure that everyone gets the right level of care when they need it.

*Fee for service offerings like specialist consultations will always lead to higher costs, but there are no additional fees for higher utilisation of the Forest, content or assessments.

About the Author

Written by: Allan Sweidan, Psychologist and Co-CEO of Panda