How The Access Group made mental health support feel personal at scale
For Stuart, Global Wellbeing Lead at The Access Group, the problem wasn't dramatic. It was quiet.
Their existing wellbeing provision wasn't failing in any obvious way. People just weren't using it. And when they did, the experience didn't always deliver. Stuart had seen enough to know that "available" and "actually useful" are two very different things.
The Access Group is a technology company with around 9,000 employees. Stuart made the decision to do something different: not to find a shinier version of what already existed, but to ask whether the current model was actually meeting people where they were.
When "don't forget you've got the EAP" stops being enough
Stuart describes the tipping point plainly.
"Everyone had got to a point where when anything was going wrong, offering 'don't forget you can call the EAP' just felt limp. It just felt like a real token — a lip service gesture."
The cases coming back from employees who had tried to use the service made it impossible to ignore. But for Stuart, the answer wasn't finding a better EAP. It was recognising that switching like for like wouldn't change anything.
"We could go to a different EAP provider and it will be exactly like for like but a different person. I don't see that breaking the wheel. If you want something different, you need to explore different things."
What actually made a difference
For Stuart, the differentiator wasn't a feature list. It was something more fundamental: the ability to choose your practitioner.
"I can go in and I can see who I want to talk to. The individualisation — it's in my hands who I want to speak to. Whereas with EAP services, you're blind. You don't know who you're talking to."
That shift — from being allocated support to choosing it — changes the dynamic entirely. For The Access Group's employee relations team, it opened up a new way of working: logging into the platform alongside employees and helping them find the right person, rather than just pointing them toward a number and hoping.
Two months into the partnership, Stuart couldn't keep up with the messages. Employees who had never engaged with wellbeing support before were getting in touch — often just from seeing an e-book or watching a webinar, before they'd even booked a session.
Wellbeing as a strategic priority, not a benefit
One of the things that stands out about The Access Group's approach is how they've positioned MYNDUP internally. It doesn't sit in the benefits team. It sits in employee experience — a deliberate choice that changes how it's perceived.
"We're very clear that what we do with wellbeing is not a benefit. Because then you're pitching wellbeing as a nice-to-have. And that's not right."
That framing matters. When wellbeing support is positioned as a perk, it gets treated like one — optional, peripheral, easy to deprioritise. When it's positioned as part of how the organisation operates, it becomes something different entirely.
What he'd say to someone on the fence
Stuart's advice is direct and unambiguous.
"The world of working is totally different now. People want to physically see and speak to someone. MYNDUP at the moment is the only thing I've really seen that made me go "Yes. That's what I should have."
And on what it says about an organisation that invests in it properly?
"I would like to think people think that we are being more proactive, that we are listening, and that we are trying to do something different for them and their wellbeing."