How This 109-Year-Old Company Leverages Mental Well-being to Attract Gen Z

Newsweek

08-05-2025

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It is officially the fifth month of the year. The month of freshly bloomed flowers, calling your mom and honoring those who have died while serving in the military. May is also Mental Health Awareness Month—an observance many companies often mark by promoting mental health initiatives to their employees.
But that's not really in Omaha Steaks' style. At the Nebraska-based meat-delivery company, employees' mental well-being involves an around-the-clock approach. In January, the company focuses those efforts on burnout. In February, the conversation circles around substance abuse. In March, it's parenting, and in April, it's about financial stress. And in May, Omaha Steaks encourages its employees to reflect on trauma.
The rotation goes on. The monthly topic for June is loneliness. July is depression. August grief, September suicide prevention, October stress, November anxiety and December anger—a full calendar year of mental health topics.
"Mental wellness and mental well-being is just as important, if not arguably more important, than physical well-being," Nate Rempe, the president and CEO of Omaha Steaks, told Newsweek.
For the second year in a row, Omaha Steaks appeared on Newsweek's ranking of America's Greatest Workplaces for Mental Well-being 2025, achieving 4.5 stars this year. The company received 4 stars last year.
The list, published in partnership with data firm Plant-A, was determined through an assessment of publicly accessible data, interviews with human resource professionals and large-scale confidential online surveys conducted among employees. The study incorporated more than 400,000 employee interviews and over 4.9 million comprehensive company reviews.
Plant-A's research found that 81 percent of employees believe mental well-being is important or very important to their overall job satisfaction. Companies that scored well on mental health were also more likely to be recommended to others.
Omaha Steaks' 12 Months of Mental Wellbeing
Omaha Steaks' 12 Months of Mental Wellbeing
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty
When it comes to wellness, Rempe said most of the conversation remains focused on physical health: We're constantly being reminded to get enough sleep, exercise, follow a healthy diet, take our vitamins, schedule routine visits with our doctors and so on.
But what we're not considering, Rempe said, is the "compounding effect" that many Americans feel due to increasing levels of pressure, adversity, fatigue and anxiety—both in their personal and professional lives.
"If employers don't take [mental health] serious and help their team members get the well-being resources they need... puzzle pieces start to miss, and the performance of teams start to degrade," he told Newsweek.
As part of Omaha Steaks' effort to provide mental health resources to its employees, the company recently increased the number of Employee Assistance Program (EAP) visits—which include free and confidential assessments, short-term counseling, referrals and follow-up services to enhance employee well-being—from five to eight sessions a month.
Since upping the number of EAP visits in 2024, the company has reported a 170 percent increase in sessions used. Rempe said these resources have also resulted in stronger retention rates and reports of higher resilience, job satisfaction and happiness in the workplace.
"We spend more time at work than we spend time with our family," he said. "Employers need to recognize that to have robust, dedicated, bought-in, vested team members, the company needs to provide a space where they can feel happy and healthy."
Nowhere is the concept understood as deeply as Omaha Steaks, a company that has been passed down through five generations of the Simon family over 109 years. However, much like America's definition of "family" has changed, so has the company's. In 2020, Rempe, who jokes that he's an adopted Simon, became the first person outside the Simon family to serve as the company's president.
When Rempe ascended into his current role, he was on a mission to focus on themes "you might say were associated with this next generation of CEOs in America." Those include leadership, connection and transparency—values he said are necessary for corporate leaders to connect with a younger workforce.
"These are the things [Gen Z workers] value, and we've invested significant time and money in making those things important," he said. "It doesn't really matter so much what the job is, what matters more is the culture that surrounds the job."
Rempe said every job can be exciting, but what differentiates workplaces for younger Americans is a company "that believes team members can do more than they think they can," one that can "elevate them and inspire them." That's precisely what he believes drives "Gen Z to want to work at Omaha Steaks."
Omaha Steaks also appeared on Newsweek's ranking of America's Greatest Workplaces for Gen Z 2025. The company received five stars, the highest available ranking. The list was published Tuesday in partnership with Plant-A.
Nate Rempe, the CEO and president of Omaha Steaks, is the first person outside of the Simon family to lead the company since the Nebraska-based business began more than 100 years ago.
Nate Rempe, the CEO and president of Omaha Steaks, is the first person outside of the Simon family to lead the company since the Nebraska-based business began more than 100 years ago.
Omaha Steaks
"Employers that offer mental health services are not only providing an immensely valuable benefit to Gen Z, they are also benefiting the employer through greater Gen Z engagement and retention," Jason Dorsey, a Gen Z researcher and generational expert at the Center for Generational Kinetics (CGK), told Newsweek.
Research conducted at CGK, an Austin, Texas-based firm that provides generational insights to business leaders, shows that mental health work policies are extremely important to Gen Z employees. In their 2025 State of Gen Z national study, CGK found that nearly three-quarters, 73 percent, of Gen Z believe there to be a mental health crisis in today's workforce.
"We consistently see that Gen Z values mental health work policies more than any other generation in the workforce today," Dorsey said. "We expect this trend to grow in importance as Gen Z becomes a larger part of the workforce every day."
As part of an effort to appeal to a younger workforce, Rempe has become a familiar face on Omaha Steak's TikTok account, which boasts 22.3K followers.
"I did a challenge where I tried to eat six of [our new smash burgers]," Rempe laughed. "That's super fun. A food company is a total blast to work at—and that's not to say that we don't have challenges like every other business, but again—having a healthy workforce and a culture that cares about people is what America's businesses need to attract and retain talent in the future, no matter where you are in the country."
Rempe said it's not enough for employers to just provide services where employees can see an outside professional. They also need to support those initiatives with internal resources.
At Omaha Steaks, those supporting components include "lunch and learns" that seek to socialize and normalize discussions about mental health. Plant-A's data shows that only 65 percent of U.S. employees feel comfortable discussing mental health concerns with their managers. Discomfort in discussing mental health in the workplace is particularly low among women and young adults.
Omaha Steaks' webinars also make a concerted effort to address the anxieties and stresses specifically experienced by younger employees who might be having kids for the first time and learning to juggle working with less sleep or more financial obligations.
But the real key to a company's mental well-being policy is to practice what you preach.
Rempe recognized that in order to create a workplace that values mental health, he and other leaders at Omaha Steaks need to lead by example. When he sends emails on the weekends, he makes a point to note that while he chooses to do that on his own time, there's no pressure for his staff to do the same and respond outside their working hours. He said Omaha Steaks encourages team members to take time off and have succession plans to avoid feeling paralyzed by the thought of leaving their desks.
"It is certainly a comprehensive approach that doesn't just require awareness and resources, but also requires modeling from leadership," Rempe said. "That's something that I think every company should be thinking about.
"As a leader, the behaviors that you exhibit set a standard and an expectation in the culture in which you operate."