"Wellness" took on a whole new meaning this year, with employers racing to support workers facing a pandemic and all of the disruptions it created.

Companies moved fitness benefits online and increased offerings around mental health but more was needed. Such offerings were "designed to address a set of wellness issues that were rooted in a pre-COVID environment," Visier Chief People Officer Paul Rubenstein previously told HR Dive. Instead of just moving the programs into a virtual environment, the question became, "how do we get people to engineer their work differently as a part of wellness?"

To that end, employers offered flexibility and tried to take a holistic view of employees' lives. But the fall promised a new set of challenges, as employers predicted the school year would bring a "mental health tsunami." The following stories explore these issues and feature insight from experts and those on the front lines.