The European Union has awarded Kara Connect a landmark €2.7m four-year contract as the sole provider of mental health and wellbeing support services to over 20,000 employees working across a network of 31 agencies across the EU.
Eurofound, the European Agency for Working Conditions based in Dublin, has led the public tender which will see the network of 31 EU agencies roll out a modern wellbeing support service. This will give EU agency employees access to high-quality, personalised care around the clock through Kara Connect.
The 20,000 employees and their eligible dependents across the network of agencies will now have access to human therapists online, with no triage barrier, through Kara Connect. This is being provided as an alternative service to the Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) which typically face low usage levels.
All employees will be able to choose their own practitioner via customised Wellbeing Hubs within 48 hours, to access high‑quality, personalised care across issues including mental and physical health, financial health, relationships and careers.
All practitioners are fully vetted and fairly compensated, a key requirement for the EU agencies. Security was an equally non‑negotiable requirement. Kara Connect stores and processes all data exclusively within the EU/EEA – all of which is fully GDPR compliant – and its privacy‑by‑design model means employee data is never exposed, unlike the call centre model which has left traditional EAPs facing serious questions over confidentiality.
Kara Connect typically sees 32% of an organisation’s employees using the service, reflecting how willingly people engage with professional support when it’s offered without triage or stigma.
In comparison, EAPs are heavily under‑used. Typical usage ranges from 3-8%, with many large employers reporting rates closer to 2%, despite the fact that one in five adults now experience a diagnosable mental health condition each year.
Employees are often reluctant to seek help, as access involves phone-line gatekeeping and triage, with support triggered only when problems are deemed serious enough to escalate. What’s more, it can take several weeks, often months, from enquiry to receiving an appointment.
According to Tobba Vigfusdottir (pictured left), Founder and CEO of Kara Connect, mental health is now the biggest concern in the workplace for employers. “Behind that number is a person waiting months for help that may never reach them.
“Most employers’ answer is still a check-in-the-box EAP, a service that as few as 3% of staff use. A benefit that then doesn’t protect a company; it exposes it. And that exposure shows up where the CFO feels it: in absence rates, in attrition, and increasingly in insurance premiums,”
Kara Connect, which originated in Iceland and is now headquartered in Dublin, is a Nordic employee mental health and wellbeing solution that provides direct access to personalised, professional help for mental, physical, and financial health, as well as relationships and careers.
The company offers around 3,000 practitioners delivering services to over 25,000 employees across companies which include Mercury, Vodafone, KPMG, The Blue Lagoon, Deloitte, Grundon and Iceland University. Over 90 companies have launched their own Wellbeing Hub, a customised platform giving employees access to one-to-one mental health and wellbeing sessions.
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