The power of pause: Engaging employees in simple steps to better well-being

September is National Self-Care Month. It’s the perfect time to reflect on how well your benefits strategy addresses one of the urgent and growing concerns in workforce health: mental well-being. A recent PwC study found a 45% rise in utilization of behavioral health services claims between January 2023 and December 2024. Employers are not only seeing the impact on healthcare costs, but also on employee productivity, engagement, and retention.

Additional research has found that:

• 76% of U.S. workers reported at least one symptom of a mental health condition.
• 1 in 3 (36%) say their mental health has suffered because of work in the past year.
• 40% of U.S. workers experience burnout, with the highest rates among project managers, healthcare workers, community service professionals, and educators.
• Globally, an estimated 12 billion working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety at a cost of US $1 trillion per year in lost productivity.

Castlight is committed to treating the whole person—and that includes their behavioral health. We do this in many ways, including:

• using claims and health risk assessment data to intelligently connect at-risk individuals with relevant behavioral and mental health programs offered by their employer
• integrating behavioral health services into our Vera Whole Health near and on-site care centers, as well as, our local primary care partners, to better manage whole-person (physical, mental, financial, and social) health
• our full-population well-being engagement resource, a behavioral health challenge called Recharge

What is Recharge?

Put simply, the Recharge challenge is an interactive journey to better behavioral health. Why is this needed? 9 out of 10 employees are concerned about their burnout levels—showing just how urgent it is to provide meaningful, proactive support.

Hosted on our Castlight navigation platform, Recharge guides members in practicing quick and easy mindfulness activities grounded in evidence-based health research to improve mood and decrease stress. This journey uses a fun, interactive, team-based approach to help individuals build skills, improve positive thinking, and encourage social connections.

This Challenge helps achieve the following goals:

• Change mindsets: This experience is centered around helping members build healthy skills and habits, which can lead to better health and productivity.
• Connect colleagues across your organization: Focusing on social support—a proven method of building resilience to stress—this journey has built-in opportunities for positive encouragement and inspiration from one another.
• Increase utilization of healthcare navigation tools and services: Data has shown that creating organization-wide experiences with Castlight is one of the most effective drivers for increased engagement with Castlight, leading to improved health outcomes.

The science behind Recharge

Recharge was built on evidence-based science, leveraging research proven to positively affect mental health outcomes. 

The three core concepts of this journey are:

• Skill building: By exposing members to different activities and strategies, they can determine which ones are most helpful for them; letting them build their own toolbox, so to speak, where participants can pull learnings out and use them in their daily lives when needed.
• Positive thinking: Recharge helps members boost their self-confidence and self-efficacy—because ultimately, believing in your abilities helps with actual achievements.
• Social support: Connecting with others (like members of a Recharge team will do) has many proven benefits in feeling a sense of belonging, boosting mood, and managing stress. Recharge makes it easy for colleagues to interact, share learnings, and cheer each other on.

Together, these three core concepts enable members to improve mindfulness, mood, and community connectedness.

Recharge activities

Recharge encourages participants to try 10 different types of activities, each of which revolves around developing more mindfulness to help members reflect on their current state of being, change their habits and mindsets for the better, and feel a sense of renewal and connection with themselves and their colleagues. All of the activities are evidence based and have research to prove their effectiveness, all based on peer review, scientific papers, and academic studies.

The activities include: deep breathing, reflecting on favorite songs, practicing gratitude, spending time in nature, visualization, writing down mantras, mindful eating, window gazing, connecting with a friend or family member, and more.

Participants will progress through the 10 levels of the Recharge challenge, with each level introducing a new activity, so they can experience each and figure out which activities work best for them. At each level, participants will also be encouraged to complete a breathing exercise and a journal entry in addition to the new activity for that level. Incentives may also be turned on in Recharge by the employer, providing an extra boost of motivation for members to get involved and take action in improving their behavioral health.

Lasting impact of Recharge

Though Recharge is recommended to be held over the course of 14 days, the takeaway is for participants to carry these healthy habits and skills into their daily lives. Additionally, at the end of the Recharge experience, recommended mental and behavioral health programs offered by the participant’s employer are surfaced to encourage individuals to continue on their journey towards better health and overall wellbeing.

And programs like this truly make an impact—70% of employees who enrolled in company-offered wellness programs report higher job satisfaction than those who haven’t. When employees engage in initiatives like Recharge, they’re not just building healthy habits—they’re becoming more resilient, more connected, and more engaged in their work.

As behavioral health continues to impact workforce productivity and healthcare costs, employers have a critical role to play in turning awareness into action. Recharge offers a powerful way to do just that—by making behavioral health approachable, interactive, and evidence-based. With its team-based design and practical activities, Recharge not only encourages personal growth but also drives organizational engagement with mental health resources.