Most EAP contracts are a bet that your staff never pick up the phone

Givenwell, the Dunedin wellbeing startup that picked up a pitchfest award at the HR Tech & L&D Techfest in Auckland in June, is back in the spotlight this week with an Otago Daily Times profile of founder Jonny Mirkin and chief customer officer Pauline Latta. The startup story is a good one. The bigger story is what it says about the employee assistance programme, a product most businesses buy on autopilot and few can prove is working.

Priced like insurance, used like a fire alarm

Traditional EAP providers, as BusinessDesk puts it, operate “akin to insurers”, collecting fees across total headcount and betting that few employees will ever claim. The bet has paid off. Historically only 2-3% of staff used a traditional EAP, even though roughly one in five New Zealanders experience mental unwellness in a given year. The Habit Health group alone earned at least $9.96 million from eight central government and council EAP contracts in the three years to 2025.

That is a comfortable business when usage is low. In 2025, UK consultant Pamela Gellatly, then with HCML, said the per-employee pricing model “worked well when service usage was low”. The implication is obvious. It works less well when people actually turn up.

Demand is climbing while contracts stay fixed

They are turning up, and with heavier problems. Clearhead founder Dr Angela Lim says long public waitlists are pushing “increasingly complex mental health presentations” into EAPs that were never designed for them. One UK industry figure summed up the squeeze in 2025: “No other industry I know sees demand go up while clients still expect to pay less.” The same commentator flagged the other weakness: confidentiality means employers never see the impact of what they are paying for.

Incumbents know the ground is shifting. A 2024 EAPAA survey of Australasian providers found all offered fee-for-service options, with 54% average uptake, against 45% for fixed-fee contracts. The bundle is already fraying from the inside.

A model that earns only when staff engage

Givenwell flips the economics. Employers give staff a monthly wellbeing allowance, which employees spend confidentially on a marketplace spanning therapy, coaching, gyms, nutrition, dental, optometry and culturally focused treatments. In 2025, the company told The Post it charged employers no fee, taking a commission only when an allowance is used. No usage, no revenue. That is the opposite of the insurance bet.

Mirkin launched the business in August 2024 after his own burnout. That year he told RNZ most firms ran an “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff” strategy. In 2025 Givenwell claimed 99% allowance utilisation and a 100% increase in staff reporting better wellbeing, with clients including BDO, LJ Hooker and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. Those are company-reported figures, not audited ones, but even heavily discounted they make a 2-3% usage rate look poor value.

The 2025 hire of former Xero managing director Craig Hudson, who built the Xero Assistance Programme, gave the pitch credibility. Then joining as chief customer officer, Hudson told the ODT in 2025 that Givenwell offered employers a wellbeing solution “off the shelf without them having to have the hard conversations”. For a time-poor SME owner, that is the real selling point.

Absence is the bill that keeps rising

Why should employers care now? Because the cost of getting this wrong is climbing. The Southern Cross/BusinessNZ Workplace Wellness report released in November 2025 found average absence hit 6.7 days per employee in 2024, the highest in the series, with close to 13 million working days lost nationally and each typical absence costing employers $1,319. Yet EAPs still ranked as the top wellbeing benefit larger firms used. Businesses are spending on the tool while the problem gets worse.

Givenwell is not alone in pushing in. Digital-first clinical providers like Clearhead, broad care apps like Sonder, and HR platforms folding support into existing software are all chipping at the standalone contract. Not every challenger will survive, and a marketplace allowance is no substitute for crisis counselling. But the direction is clear.

What to ask at renewal

The practical takeaway is simple. Before rolling over an EAP contract, ask how many staff actually used it, what you paid per user rather than per head, and whether you can see anonymised outcomes. If your provider cannot answer, a Dunedin startup has just shown you what a pay-for-use alternative looks like. Competition is doing what it does best, forcing an opaque product to justify its price, and employers should welcome it.

Sources

• Otago Daily Times: Dunedin startup giving traditional EAP model a shake-up (2026-10-30)
• BusinessDesk: Inside the EAP boom – The big providers, new tech and pricing shake-up (2026-05-12)
• Corporate Adviser: EAPs under pressure (2025-05-20)
• The Post: Hudson’s next play – Scaling mental health support with Givenwell (2025-08-23)
• RNZ: Mental Health and The Ambulance At The Bottom Of The Cliff (2024-09-03)
• Otago Daily Times: Benefits of employee wellbeing key to startup (2025-08-29)
• Southern Cross: 2025 Workplace Wellness report reveals major shifts in absence (2025-11-05)