Workplace Mental Health in Boston, MA
An EAP your people will actually use — because we will not hand you the usage data that stops them.
Four Design Problems, and What We Do Instead
Average EAP utilisation across the industry sits in low single digits. That is a design failure rather than a demand failure.
Reporting that identifies people
Utilisation broken down by department or team is de-anonymising in any organisation under a few hundred people, and employees know it. We report organisation-wide totals and themes only, and we will decline a request for the breakdown in writing.
What HR receivesA hard six-session cap
Most workplace problems do not resolve in six sessions, so the cap lands exactly where the work gets useful. We start at eight and extend on clinical judgement rather than on a contract number.
How sessions workA call centre, not a clinician
Ringing a triage script and being sent a PDF is the experience that teaches an entire workforce not to bother twice. Every first call here is answered by a licensed clinician.
For employeesNothing for the managers
Managers are the ones holding the difficult conversation, and almost no EAP supports them. Our manager line takes unlimited calls from anyone with a report, before the conversation rather than after.
Manager supportExactly What You Receive, and What You Do Not
This is the part of the contract most providers keep vague. Here it is in full.
You receive: an organisation-wide utilisation figure
One number per quarter, plus the trend. Enough to know whether the investment is working and to budget against. Not enough to identify anybody, which is precisely what makes the number worth having.
You receive: themes, above a threshold
Aggregated presenting themes — workload, management relationships, bereavement, financial stress — reported only where the count is high enough that nobody is inferable. Where a theme falls below threshold it is suppressed rather than rounded.
You do not receive: names, departments or teams
Not on request, not for a named individual, not for a manager who is 'just concerned'. We will decline in writing every time, and we tell every employee this on their first call because the promise is worthless unless they know it exists.
You do not receive: session content, ever
Even where an employee was referred by their manager. A management referral tells us to expect a call; it does not create a reporting line back. If an employee chooses to share something with you, that is their disclosure to make.
Your Employer Pays for This. They Do Not Get to See It.
If you are an employee reading this because a poster in the kitchen has your company's logo on it, this section is for you rather than for HR.
Your employer pays for the service. They do not receive your name, your department, the fact that you called, or anything you said. What they get once a quarter is a single organisation-wide number and a list of broad themes with small counts suppressed. That is the entire data flow, and we will decline in writing if they ask for more — which they occasionally do.
There is no cap you will hit at the worst moment. We start with eight sessions and extend when it is clinically warranted, decided by your clinician rather than by a number in a contract.
Your first call is answered by a licensed clinician, not a triage script. You can also self-refer without telling your manager, and if your manager did refer you, that only means we were told to expect you — it does not create any obligation to report back.
If you need longer-term work than this service is designed for, we will help you find it locally and, where your plan covers it, connect you to it directly.
- ✓Your employer never learns that you called, let alone what you said
- ✓Eight sessions to start, extended on clinical judgement — no hard cap
- ✓First call answered by a licensed clinician, not a triage script
- ✓A manager referral means we expect you — it creates no reporting line
What's Included
Six services in one contract. Priced per employee per year, with everything below included rather than modular.
All six are included in the per-employee price. We do not sell modules, because the ones organisations drop first are always the ones that make the rest work.
We Cannot Fix a Workload Problem With Counselling
Worth saying plainly, since it is the thing that determines whether any of this works.
The strongest evidence in workplace mental health is not about counselling access. It is about workload, autonomy, recognition and job security. If a team is understaffed by a third and on permanent on-call, an EAP is a way of treating the casualties rather than a way of reducing them — and offering counselling while declining to change the conditions is, over time, corrosive to trust.
We will say this to you. It is a strange thing for a provider to put on its own website, but it is the reason our leadership consultation exists and the reason our quarterly reviews report themes rather than only volumes. When a theme keeps appearing in one function, that is a finding about the function.
What a good EAP does very well: catch the ordinary human things that happen to everyone — bereavement, divorce, a diagnosis, a bad year — and stop them becoming a resignation or six months of absence. That is genuinely valuable and it is what you are buying.
What it cannot do is absorb a structural problem indefinitely. If we think that is what is being asked, we will tell you.
- ✓The strongest evidence is on workload, autonomy, recognition and security
- ✓Counselling alongside unchanged conditions erodes trust over time
- ✓Themes recurring in one function are a finding about the function
- ✓What an EAP does well: stop ordinary life events becoming resignations
Franklin Street, and Your Offices
Sessions happen in our Financial District rooms, at your site where that is preferred, or on video anywhere in Massachusetts.
Shared With Permission, Companies Anonymised
Our previous provider gave us a dashboard with utilisation broken down by department. Fourteen people. We could all do the arithmetic, and so could everyone else, so nobody used it. Steadyworks refuses to give us that data and our uptake tripled.
We lost a colleague suddenly on a Thursday. They had two clinicians in our office on Friday morning and, more usefully, told us plainly which of the things we were planning would help and which would not. That second part was worth the entire contract.
The manager line is the part I did not expect to use weekly. Being able to call an actual clinician before a difficult conversation, rather than after it has gone wrong, has changed how my whole team of leads operates.
Per Employee, Per Year, Everything Included
Most EAP pricing is quoted only after a discovery call, which mostly serves the provider. Here are the actual bands.
Under 100 employees: $58 per employee per year. 100 to 500: $46. Over 500: $38, with a bespoke quote above 2,000. There is no per-session charge on top, no separate incident-response fee, and no module pricing — the six services listed above are all included at every band.
Critical incident response is included as standard rather than billed per event, because a provider who charges by the incident has an awkward incentive and organisations hesitate to call at exactly the moment they should not hesitate.
Annual contracts, thirty days' notice to cancel. No auto-renewal traps, and no penalty for leaving after a year in which nobody used it — although if that happens we would want a conversation about why, because it usually means the launch failed rather than that nobody needed it.
For organisations under twenty people a full EAP is usually the wrong purchase, and we will say so and point you to a sessions-based arrangement instead.
- ✓$58 / $46 / $38 per employee per year by band — all six services included
- ✓Critical incident response included as standard, not billed per event
- ✓Annual contract, 30 days' notice, no auto-renewal trap
- ✓Under 20 employees? We'll tell you an EAP is the wrong purchase
Things HR Teams Ask First
Can we get utilisation broken down by department?
No, and this is the question we decline most often. In any organisation under a few hundred people, departmental breakdown is de-anonymising — employees can do the arithmetic and so can their managers. We provide organisation-wide figures and suppressed themes, and we will confirm that refusal in writing so you can show it to your own people.
What if a manager is genuinely worried about someone?
They call the manager line and we help them think it through — that is exactly what it is for. What we will not do is confirm or deny whether that person has been in touch with us. A manager can refer someone, which tells us to expect a call, and that is the extent of the information flow in either direction.
Is there really no session cap?
There is a starting allocation of eight and an extension decided clinically. In practice the average is around five, and a small number of people use fifteen or more. The reason it works financially is the same reason insurance works: most people use less than the average, and the ones who need more are the ones for whom the service justifies itself.
How fast is critical incident response?
Clinicians on site within 24 hours, and a call with you within about two. The call usually matters more — the first decisions after an incident are made in the first day, and a good number of the instinctive ones (all-staff emails, mandatory group sessions) do more harm than good.
What does it cost?
$58 per employee per year under 100 staff, $46 from 100 to 500, and $38 above that, with everything included. We publish these because quoting only after a discovery call wastes your time and ours, and because a provider unwilling to print a number usually has a reason.
We're a 15-person company. Is this right for us?
Probably not, and we will say so on the call. Below about twenty people the per-employee model stops making sense and confidentiality becomes genuinely hard to guarantee at that scale. We offer a simple sessions-based arrangement instead, and we would rather sell you that than a contract you will not use.
Twenty Minutes, and a Written Quote Within a Week
Headcount, sector and what prompted this now. The proposal includes the full data agreement so your legal team can read exactly what we will and will not report before you commit to anything. You can also write to hello@steadyworks.com.
Request a Quote
Headcount and sector are enough to start. If you are an employee rather than an employer, you can use this form too — nothing you send here is shared with your organisation.
- Visit us260 Franklin Street, Suite 1100, Boston, MA 02110
- Call us(617) 555-0154
- Email ushello@steadyworks.com