A team of scientists at biotech company Genentech started using a meditation app in 2015 and, not long after, noticed that they felt more content and happier at home and work.
After conducting their own experiments and submitting the data to human resources, Genentech decided to roll the Headspace app out to all of its roughly 14,000 employees the following year, said Nancy Vitale, senior vice president of human resources at Genentech, a unit of Roche.
More than 2,500 Genentech employees now use the meditation app Headspace four times per week, on average, Vitale said.
Headspace has spent the past year aggressively chasing corporate clients like Genentech and already has 250 companies that cover the cost of their employees’ subscriptions. Executives say they expect to double that number by the end of the year, said Chief Business Officer Ross Hoffman.
Corporate clients give it access to thousands of new customers, slashing the cost of acquiring new ones.
For employers, it gives them a way to help ensure their employees mental health. Quantifying how much stress and mental illness costs companies is challenging because it includes direct costs like medical visits and indirect costs, such as lost productivity.
More than half of working adults said they experienced a great deal or some stress at work in the past year, according to a 2016 study by Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and other researchers. Meanwhile, about 8% of Americans reported meditating in 2012, according to the National Health Interview Survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Workers, especially millennials, are demanding more wellness benefits from their employers. Buying meditation subscriptions can be an attractive opportunity for companies—and a promising avenue for Headspace and competitors.
