Mental health toolkit: How six founders find calm

The same report showed that, in 2025, organizations that provided mental health support for their employees increased their employee engagement, performance, retention, productivity and more.

Robyn Platt, a professional development coach for Groove Technology Solutions, emphasizes the social and emotional benefits for everyone involved in supporting mental health in the workplace. She says, “You walk away from it being so grateful every day and witness sacred moments of growth.”

Here’s how six Utah companies are supporting employee mental health and fostering a mental health-positive work environment that goes beyond traditional approaches.

“We have a licensed psychologist come in three days a week to offer free sessions. He specializes in things like addiction, trauma resolution and grief. He has a private office that no one can access except the person who manages our building. We also have Lunch and Learns. The psychologist and I present on mental health topics once a quarter, and we provide lunch for everyone who wants to attend.

We have free coaching, a workout facility, a massage room with a licensed massage therapist who comes in two times a week. Each year we’ve added something more. We check in with employees multiple times a year with surveys and assessments.”

— Robyn Platt

Professional Development Coach, Groove Technology Solutions

“The environment itself is designed specifically and intentionally to promote mental health. We hired an architectural firm that had experience designing mental health spaces, and our space has a very bright, warm, inviting feeling. It reflects the properties of nature, with sky blue, sunny yellow, greens — all the colors that bring hope and healing to children and families as they enter our center for services, and that environment also supports our team.

We have a mindfulness room available to all employees. We provide a lactation room for nursing mothers and ways to support families, like hybrid and remote work opportunities, paid and unpaid family leave, parental leave, help transitioning back to work after maternity leave, and a generous PTO policy. We also offer one hundred hours of online training for employees every month, and some of that time can be scheduled for reflective supervision and consultation.”

— Rebecca Dutson

CEO & President, The Children’s Center Utah

“We have a specific mental health program through a vendor that provides all sorts of resources for employees wherever they’re at, whether that’s prevention, meditation, tech space coaching or a 24/7 app that can help with stress, sleep, etc.

We offer free therapy, psychiatry, and even family and children’s counseling, both digital and in-person through partners. Therapy is normally super expensive, so it’s really important to employees to help break down those financial barriers. And instead of having to wait three or four months, you can get an appointment within five days. We want employees to choose the mental health provider that works best for them, so we cover out-of-network the same as in-network.

We also have reimbursement programs, including $1,200 a year for things related to wellness, like a gym membership, massage therapy, shoes, etc. Our time off is really robust, with 20-30 days per year, which goes up with tenure, and unlimited sick time.”

— Kristen Chan

Global Benefits Analyst, Qualtrics

“We use Impact Suite, which provides comprehensive mental health support that’s free to all employees and family. It’s an anonymous, secure smartphone app that connects employees with counselors nationwide and has a 24/7 AI therapy option and telehealth therapy.

We offer four weeks PTO, 10 holidays and floating holidays. We feel that if our employees feel supported mentally and emotionally, they’re a lot more likely to be innovative and collaborative, which is important in our space as a tech company.

Our employees work all over the U.S., so we allow for remote work and flexible work environments and provide all the equipment for comfortable at-home offices. We also have a UnitedHealthcare rewards program to reward healthy habits, like sleep, steps, workouts, etc., by earning money on a debit card or HSA.”

— Madeline Heintz

Corporate Communications Manager, InsCipher

“ARUP has a free primary family health clinic for employees, spouses, independents. We offer medical care here, and I get pulled in for mental health concerns or crises to offer resources and get them connected to a therapist in the community. I also set up corporate initiatives for mental health, like we had service animals come and a speaker series on different mental health topics that’s free for employees.

On our campus, we offer free mental health services and have two on-site therapists and online resources through the Employee Assistance Program (EAP).

I also can act as an advocate for employees. I’ve worked a lot with HR as a middleperson to support the employee. For example, if there’s a mental health component, I can educate HR on mental health issues.”

— Riley Speth

Clinical Mental Health Counselor, ARUP Laboratories

“We have nine-hour days Monday through Thursday, so we have every other Friday off, which lets employees recharge consistently. We work primarily in-office because of the collaborative culture we’ve tried hard to foster, but employees can work from home as makes sense. We offer three weeks of paid time off for new employees, and that can rise with seniority.

We also offer free therapy through Tava Health. You take a mental health survey and are paired with a licensed therapist. Employees get 10 free visits a year. We’ve seen a lot of success and have pretty high usage.

We try to provide opportunities for employees to socialize inside and outside of work. Every year, people are assigned a group or community that’s spread across departments and locations. We give them a budget to do activities together, which builds stronger relationships.”

— Eric Borland

HR Manager, VCBO Architecture

When winter weighs heavy: Why your workplace culture matters

For Americans who grew up between the 1970s and the 1990s, so many memories have a similar setting: the mall.

In their heyday, malls were the epicenter of convenience, capitalism and community. You could get a massage, see a movie, play at an arcade, eat, get a makeover, buy a new wardrobe, shop for an engagement ring, get your ears pierced and maybe even see Britney Spears perform — all in one place.

In the 1980s, there were over 2,500 malls in the country. Now, there are around 700, and that number is still declining. Mall staples like Sears, Payless, Toys R Us, Macy’s and J.C. Penney have mostly closed up shop.

Turning aisles into ecosystems

Some malls have creatively adapted, offering new forms of entertainment and community events, like the world’s largest Dungeons & Dragons game. These modern malls have added VR experiences, escape rooms, art installations, axe throwing and even indoor theme parks.

Others have cleared out their stores and transformed them into hotels, community centers, schools, government buildings, churches and health centers.

With limited downtown real estate, a mall can be an excellent place for businesses, explains Aimee Edwards, executive director of BioHive. Infrastructure like electricity, escalators, elevators, lighting, ventilation — even food courts and bathrooms — is already in place, and public transportation routes have already been built to stop at malls.

The Gateway expands its dynamic offerings with new merchant openings this Fall

Outdoor Salt Lake City mall The Gateway opened in 2001, riding the last waves of the mall craze. When the billion-dollar City Creek Center opened just a few blocks away, The Gateway lost many customers. Crime began to rise around it, and people experiencing homelessness regularly camped out nearby.

However, after Vestar bought it in 2016, The Gateway rallied. The mall became a venue for concerts, art pop-ups, festivals, conferences and local dining experiences.

The Gateway has also welcomed the BioHive hub, a central place for life science companies in Utah to build offices and research labs. Salt Lake City zoning has made it fairly easy to establish clusters of life science companies in one area.

“A lot of life science companies in Utah are looking for space to build out. They want to stay downtown, close to institutions, universities and the airport,” Edwards says.

Life science is a $21 billion industry and one of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity’s five targeted industries in the state of Utah. BioHive began in 2021 and was created to fill a gap in the life science ecosystem with a “mission to brand, build, and bring together.”

“The life science industry has traditionally been pretty siloed,” Edwards says.

She explains that companies dealing with medical devices, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and digital health all work in their own sector and often don’t communicate with each other.

“We help connect individual companies so they’re sharing their story, getting to know what other people are doing, talking about challenges, building the ecosystem and drawing the attention of capital investors,” she says.

BioHive supports over 1,600 life science companies, many of which are small businesses. The nonprofit helps with workforce development, connects students to life science companies, and builds mentorship and leadership opportunities for women and marginalized communities.

“What these companies and individuals all have in common is patient health,” Edwards says. “Health is one of the greatest connectors. Everyone knows someone with health challenges. It’s part of life. Companies like this focus on impacting and saving lives.”

All-in-one community

While some organizations remake the modern mall with updated facilities, others have decided to create new forms of community shopping, like Maven District, a neighborhood of local small businesses in downtown Salt Lake City.

In 2017, Maven District co-founder and CEO Tessa Arneson purchased a building for a new Pilates studio and needed other tenants. She decided to bring together local wellness businesses for convenience. If someone was working out and got injured, they could go to a physical therapist next door.

Rocky Donati — now Maven’s co-founder and “chief misfit officer” — was a client at Arneson’s previous studio. She had moved from San Francisco and missed the “neighborhood feeling” she experienced there. When Donati helped Arneson move into her new space, she made a suggestion: buy more buildings to create a neighborhood of their own.

How Tessa Arneson co-founded Maven District

The partners made friends with their neighbors in the surrounding buildings and eventually managed to purchase and fill them with local businesses, making the area more walkable and connected.

“It just organically kept unraveling and became larger than we would have anticipated,” Donati says, “But that’s the motto of dreaming big. You’ve got to ask for what you want and go after it.”

Maven now has 10 buildings with 250 total tenants.

After purchasing the building located at 945 S. 300 W., Arneson and Donati began thinking about how to make Maven a stabilized community with a diverse portfolio. They decided to split the building 50/50, half retail and half residential.

“The idea is that people aren’t just going to work here. We can connect residents and businesses to create a 360-degree ecosystem and localize the whole city,” Donati says. “Most people don’t travel more than a few miles outside of their home except for leisure. If you’re not connected to where you live, what’s the point?”

Arneson and Donati’s ultimate goal is to build a community designed for its people that incorporates their continual feedback instead of just profiting off them.

“The idea is that people aren’t just going to work here. We can connect residents and businesses to create a 360-degree ecosystem and localize the whole city.”

Rocky Donati

When Donati explains Maven to people, she thinks back to the ’90s when she and her friends would spend so much time idly shopping at the mall.

“We want people to stay and linger and not just go to one business and leave,” she says. “There’s something so incredible about shopping locally and quite literally supporting your neighbor in the process. I don’t know if a mall was ever capable of doing that.”