Keep your team up and running by giving them the support they need to deal with personal and professional challenges with Spill.
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- Talk therapy helps anyone going through a tough time or struggling with their emotions to understand what’s happening beneath the surface.
- At work, talk therapy is an effective support measure for common work-related emotional challenges like stress, burnout, and anxiety, as well as difficult life transitions like job loss, a relationship breakdown, or grief.
- Different types of talk therapies will suit different people, problems, and conditions.
- Offering talk therapy at work can improve team communication, build psychological safety, grow self-confidence, reduce turnover, and attract top talent.
What is talk therapy?
Talk therapy is a highly effective, medication-free type of mental health support that involves talking to a trained professional about what’s on your mind, how you’re behaving, or the emotions you’re having. Talk therapy helps anyone going through a tough time or struggling with their emotions to understand what’s happening beneath the surface.
“Talk therapy is about making the unconscious conscious,” explains Eva Popova, Spill’s Clinical Lead. “We all know we have things in ourselves that don’t give us the outcomes we want, but we don’t know why that’s happening or where it is coming from — and that’s how talk therapy helps.”
Talk therapy is available for the NHS or privately, but many employers are also choosing to offer it as one of their company benefits. Employee assistance programmes (EAPs) and employee health insurance are well-known ways to provide workplace mental health support, but talk therapy providers like Spill are a popular option for companies looking to provide fast, high quality, and effective support (more on that, later).
In the workplace, talk therapy is an effective support measure for common work-related emotional challenges like stress, burnout, and anxiety, as well as difficult life transitions like job loss, a relationship breakdown, or grief. And for many employees, the seemingly simple act of shaping and sharing their emotions has a profound effect on their wellbeing.
“Talk therapy is about feeling heard, feeling listened to,” says Rory Smith, a Spill counsellor and member of the Clinical Team. “For a lot of my clients at Spill, it’s their first time in therapy. That initial experience of opening up and feeling listened to can be really powerful just in itself, with a lot of people voicing their sense of relief at just getting their worries off their chest.”
Types of talk therapy
All types of talk therapy involve working with a trained professional. Mental health is an incredibly personal experience, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach: different talk therapies will suit different people, problems, and conditions. Integrative therapists (like the therapists at Spill) will draw on a variety of approaches, combining them to best support the individual and their personal situation.
Below, you’ll find a list of five common types of talk therapy but it's by no means exhaustive: check out the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) therapy A-Z for a more comprehensive overview.
- Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) focuses on how your thoughts and beliefs affect your feelings and actions, helping to identify and challenge negative thoughts and behaviours. CBT provides coping strategies to deal with different problems.
- Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) is a specialist type of talk therapy for trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Using a combination of talk therapy and side-to-side eye movements, EMDR helps the brain to reprocess memories of a traumatic event and make them less distressing.
- Psychodynamic psychotherapy explores how your formative experiences have shaped who you are today. It’s used to find the root cause of a problem, and is used to support anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and addiction.
- Person-centred therapy is a type of talk therapy that’s led by the individual rather than the therapist. It’s a dynamic designed to help someone realise what resources and support they have available, build self-confidence, and grow into their true self. sessions are led by the individual rather than the therapist
- Solution-focused therapy is a common type of talk therapy in the workplace as it tends to be a more short-term experience that works through a current problem with practical steps and goal setting.
The benefits of talk therapy at work
We might be biassed but here at Spill, we believe giving your team access to talk therapy is one of the most valuable benefits a company can offer (and it’s not just us saying that👇).
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Why?
Because our workforce is struggling. One in four adults will experience mental health challenges this year. Half of all long-term employee sickness absence in the UK is due to mental health, and a new report from Mental Health UK found that 35% of adults experienced high or extreme levels of stress ‘always’ or ‘often’ last year.
These figures don’t just highlight the mental plight of individuals either — they affect business outcomes, too. Emotional distress, whether triggered by personal or professional events, affects job performance, which goes on to affect productivity, staff turnover, and company finances.
And that’s where talk therapy comes in. Here are 12 reasons why investing in talk therapy at work can benefit both your team and your business.
1. Talk therapy reduces the amount of absences from work ⛔
Various studies highlight the effectiveness of talk therapy: one analysis found that CBT is as effective as medication in preventing relapse for people with depression, while another found that CBT (again) is more effective and can have longer-lasting effects than medication once treatment stops for those living with social anxiety. The point here is that by accessing talk therapy through work, stressed, burned out, and anxious employees can all get effective support before these mental stressors turn into something much more serious: after all, 50% of long-term sickness absence in the UK (over 4 weeks) is due to mental health.
2. Talk therapy improves team communication 🗣️
At work, effective communication is more than just being polite, honest, and respectful: expressing your needs, offering constructive feedback, setting necessary boundaries, and responding with empathy are all communication skills that improve team dynamic. For many of us, this doesn’t always come easily, and that’s where talk therapy can help. During a session, your employees will learn how to clearly communicate their feelings and needs to help them do their best work.
3. Talk therapy helps build psychological safety 🧠
Following a study into the benefits of talk therapy, researchers found that the primary benefit of this type of support is an improvement in the individual’s ability to relate to others. Offering talk therapy to your team can build social sensitivity, emotional intelligence, and communication skills. And all of these skills lead to more psychological safety at work, a team feature hailed by Google’s Project Aristotle as the ‘strongest proven indicator of team effectiveness’.
4. Talk therapy helps your employees better connect with others 🤝
“People can respond to situations, like pressure at work or doing badly on a task, and to other people because of something that’s happened to them in the past,” explains Eva. “And these reactions can prevent collaboration or team connection. Talk therapy helps uncover the reasons behind these reactions and can help change them. At work, this personal development may look like better collaboration, effective communication, or closer connection with colleagues.”
5. Talk therapy provides your employees with coping skills and strategies 🧘
As well as helping your employees understand their triggers, reactions, and emotions during challenging situations (e.g. a growing workload, a disagreement with a colleague, anxiety about commuting), talk therapy helps develop coping strategies to keep them on track when these situations inevitably arise again in the future.
6. Talk therapy builds confidence 💪
Low self-esteem and imposter syndrome are common feelings in the workplace, and when employees feel this way, they may shy away from pushing themselves or an idea forward. Talk therapy is recommended by the NHS for people struggling with low self-esteem, and as this grows, you may notice team members speaking up more, taking risks, and constructively challenging ideas.
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7. Talk therapy saves your company money in the long-run 💰
Sick days, staff turnover, and presenteeism (coming to work everyday but being too mentally unwell to be productive) due to mental health issues cost, on average, £1,529 per employee, per year. Considering 25% of your team is likely to experience a mental health problem of some kind this year, that amount will add up. Investing in talk therapy may feel like a big spend at first, but research shows you can expect a return on investment of £7 for every £1 invested in mental health support.
8. Talk therapy creates more effective managers 🌟
Being a leader at work comes with its own set of unique challenges, and talk therapy provides a safe space to talk about the mental challenges and responsibilities that come with being a decision-marker. This is particularly important for young teams with inexperienced managers.
9. Talk therapy supports professional development 📚
Talk therapy isn’t just about sharing emotional experiences: it’s about being challenged as an individual. It can be a space in which personal beliefs, fears, and opinions are not only exposed, but opposed. A journey of personal growth, talk therapy can help your team develop as a whole individual — and that means professionally, too. Work doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
10. Talk therapy reduces turnover 👋
61% of UK employees who left a job in the last year or plan to leave in the next 12 months cite poor mental health as a factor for this change. For an employee in emotional pain, work is often a major contributor and as a result, the first casualty. With talk therapy, you can help your team safely navigate life’s more challenging moments.
11. Talk therapy attracts top talent 🏆
As well as keeping hold of valuable employees, workplace talk therapy can give you the competitive edge when it comes to hiring: 81% of people plan on prioritising workplace mental health support in their next job search.
12. Talk therapy reduces the stigma of mental health at work 💙
By offering talk therapy to your team, you’re sending a very clear message that you value their mental wellbeing. As a visible and accessible service, providing talk therapy brings the conversation around mental health front and centre, creating an inclusive environment where your employees will feel safe to discuss their emotional health.
<div class="summary-block"> PLACE THIS ELEMENT BEFORE YOUR INTENTED BLOCK. THIS CREATES A STANDARD GREY BLOCK </div>
👉 Check out our ‘Ask a therapist’ page to find out more about the kinds of worries and concerns employees address in therapy.
Spill gives your team access to high-quality talk therapy in just three clicks.
Spill as a talk therapy provider
Spill is a talk therapy provider supporting over 80,000 employees across 500 companies. Offering next-day therapy sessions with a qualified and experienced talk therapist, Spill removes the availability and cost barriers associated with accessing (good) therapy.
Unlike the mental health support offered by EAPs or health insurance packages, we provide high-quality, proactive, and inclusive care that’s quick and easy for employees to access whenever they need it .
Here’s five ways (of many) that Spill stands out from other talk therapy providers:
1. Spill gives employees access to a catalogue of registered, vetted therapists. Every single Spill therapist goes through a five-stage hiring process and we personally manage their supervision, training, and performance.
2. Spill gives employees access to next-day talk therapy sessions. It takes just three clicks for an employee to book a virtual talk therapy session with a professional for the day and time of their choice — weekends and evenings too! Plus, we offer talk therapy in 15 languages across eight time zones. (And yes, online talk therapy is just as effective as face-to-face sessions.)
3. Spill lets employees choose their talk therapist. Filter the available sessions to speak to a therapist of a specific gender or with a specific area of expertise (we have over 80!), and choose to continue seeing the same therapist or try someone new.
4. Spill proactively cares for your team. Spill Safety Net is one of our most-loved features. A meeting add-on, Safety Net checks in with how your team is feeling, and if anyone is struggling, one of our qualified therapists reaches out to offer personal support.
5. Spill can be used by everyone on your team (plus, it’s free at the point of use). Unlike the mental health support offered by EAPs or health insurance plans, anyone and everyone can benefit from talk therapy with Spill regardless of their financial situation or whether they have a pre-existing mental health condition.
Does talk therapy with Spill work?
As a general form of emotional support, talk therapy is considered highly effective — and that’s not just us saying this, but science, too. Not only is there evidence for talk therapy in significantly reducing workplace absences, it also lowers anxiety and depression, and has been shown to generate a notable return on investment. Plus, providing talk therapy for your team supports your duty of care as an employer.
But, what about the effectiveness of talk therapy with Spill? If you want the numbers, we can tell you that Baltic Apprenticeships reduced their employee sick days due to mental health by 22% with Spill. Or that Funding Circle employees value Spill so much, they’ve had 400 one-off talk therapy sessions and over 200 courses of talk therapy. Or that employees at Octopus EV gave Spill a feedback score of 9.7/10.
But to get the full picture, we’d urge you to take a look at our Trustpilot reviews as there, you’ll get honest feedback from nearly 100 employees on how talk therapy has improved their lives for the better. Like this 👇
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Talk therapy with Spill reduces mental health symptoms in 72% of cases and can be accessed by anyone on your team.
