Athar Siddiqee still remembers how thrilled he was when he got his first company-issued cell phone. “How cool is this?” he recalls thinking. But he had no idea he was stepping onto a treadmill that would never stop.

That moment of innocent excitement captures something essential about the modern workplace: the tools meant to make life easier have steadily erased the boundary between work and rest. For HR leaders, that erosion has become a defining challenge—one that Covid forced into the open, and that no single app or assistance program has fully solved.

The question of what genuinely supports employee well-being, and not just what looks good in a benefits brochure, was the focus of a panel at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference, moderated by Rachael Myrow, senior editor of KQED’s Silicon Valley News Desk. 

One Size Fits No One

Siddiqee, head of total rewards at Micron Technology, was candid about the limits of standard benefits packages. During the pandemic, Micron rolled out an employee assistance fund, a home-office setup stipend, Headspace subscriptions, virtual fitness classes, and one “Innovate and Invigorate” Friday off per month. All of this was useful, yes—but not universal.

In India, for instance, the employee assistance program went largely unused. Mental health struggles are handled within extended families, and the stigma of seeking outside help made formal EAP channels a non-starter. Micron responded by building flexible benefits programs in India, Singapore, and Malaysia that let employees allocate funds toward whatever they actually needed, such as childcare, gym memberships, or other priorities. “We realized that one size didn’t fit all,” Siddiqee said. Those localized programs have stayed in place.

The Quiet Cracking Problem

Myrow introduced the phrase “quiet cracking,” or employees buckling under sustained pressure, and asked for a clinical perspective on what the early warning signs look like.

“The term might be rather new, but this has been going on for a long time,” said Inderpreet Dhillon, MD, senior medical director at Grow Therapy. A board-certified adult psychiatrist with 20 years in practice, Dhillon says what has changed is the intensity. The commute that once served as a mental buffer between work and home has vanished for many people. “My living room is on the first floor and my office is on the second floor. I used to drive 20 or 30 minutes to get back home. That used to be my time to unwind.”

Without that buffer, personal stress and professional pressure have merged into a single, unrelenting weight. By the time people reach clinical care, the situation is often already serious. The challenge, Dhillon says, is reducing friction well before that point—making it easier to find a provider, understand insurance coverage, and sustain treatment rather than seeking help only in crisis and disappearing once the acute moment passes.

Preventive Care Over Reactive Fixes

At VIAVI Solutions, musculoskeletal claims have ranked among the top two cost drivers for years, a problem compounded by a workforce that skews older than the broader tech industry. 

“Once musculoskeletal issues become significant, it’s hard to reverse,” said Nancy Yang, VP of total rewards at VIAVI Solutions. Working with medical providers and benefits brokers, Yang’s team developed a virtual physical therapy program that employees can access from home, combining guided PT sessions with routine stretching, designed to interrupt that trajectory early rather than treat it after the fact.

Dhillon reinforced the logic from a mental health angle. Patients who drop out of care after one or two sessions, then return months later in the next crisis, never complete a full episode of treatment. At Grow Therapy, the company has developed coaching tools to support patients between weekly sessions, helping them stay engaged across the full arc of recovery. “The ROI shows up,” Dhillon said, in reduced healthcare costs, lower absenteeism, and recovered productivity, but only if employees stick with care long enough to get there.

Connection, Trust, and the Importance of Being Seen

Olga Bobin, head of global talent mobility at EPAM Systems, relocated from Belarus to the United States 18 years ago, raised two daughters, and spent most of her career working remotely across time zones and cultures. When Myrow asked what actually carried her through the hardest moments, she didn’t mention a single program.

“It was three things,” Bobin said. “Real human connection, people who genuinely cared, not because the system told them to check in. Real flexibility, when my company truly trusted me in how and when I work. And recognition, knowing that my work mattered.”

She was blunt about what that trust costs when it’s absent: the energy employees spend proving their availability instead of doing their best thinking. “When organizations remove that tax through genuine trust, people become better, feel better, and perform better.”

Bobin also issued a challenge to the audience: “When was the last time you told someone on your team specifically what they did and the real impact it made?”

Building Systems That Surface the Human Moment

“That small moment, which compounds across many people across an organization, those small moments are what lead to greater disengagement,” said Katie Cunningham, director of product at Augeo Workplace Engagement. She pointed to a pattern most people recognize: a moment of going above and beyond that passed without acknowledgment. The technology question her team is trying to answer is not how to automate recognition, but how to surface the right signals so that managers can act on them in a genuinely human way.

“We’re not talking about removing humans from acknowledging that,” Cunningham said. “We’re talking about how do we surface those moments and make them very, very easy to act on.” She noted that managers are already stretched thin, responsible for both cultural cohesion and business outcomes, and that AI tools can help by handling the preparatory work, freeing managers to focus on the actual human interaction.

AI as Accelerant, Not Replacement

The panel closed with a question about AI and job security. Siddiqee pointed to a program Micron created that keeps the human element central: a licensed behavioral therapist stationed at each major location, available for 20-minute drop-in sessions. The slots book out a month in advance. For that kind of support, he says, AI needs to step aside.

Yang described her team’s use of AI-generated video skits that turn compensation conversations into coaching moments, short scenarios drawn from real VIAVI situations that help managers explain pay structures, leveling decisions, and promotion criteria in plain language.

Cunningham’s team built an AI-assisted coaching tool to help product staff communicate more effectively with executive stakeholders, raising the baseline before those conversations happened rather than replacing the mentorship that follows.

Dhillon offered a caution. The human need to feel seen, heard, and connected is not a feature that organizations can automate away. If rising productivity expectations (enabled by AI) come at the cost of psychological safety and cultural connection, “we’ve got a little problem on our hands.”

The through line in every answer was the same: technology can reduce friction, surface signals, and scale support. But the moment of recognition, the expression of trust, the sense that one’s work matters—those still require a real person to deliver them.

Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.

(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)