Global vehicle software solutions organisation Keeptruckin has enhanced its mental health wellbeing programme for all of its 1,500 employees worldwide.
The organisation wanted to help support all of its employees' mental health needs to ensure that all employees, no matter what their state of mind, receive the support they need.
Ron Storn, chief people officer at Keeptruckin, says: "There are different states [of mental health] that people go through; [they] can be in a normal state, [they] could still need access to a sounding board whenever [they] have some issues, and [they] might have some other high stress in [their] life and personal issues. How this affects everybody is different; how [they] react to work and how [they] can be a productive member of the team. Using an outlet gives [them] perspective. It's not always about extreme cases, what [they] really need is an proactive approach to stop things before they develop into anything more serious."
When Storn joined the organisation in February 2020, he focused on transforming the organisation's mental health strategy, The first step was to partner with mental health benefits platform, Modern Health, to focus more on proactive benefits that support mental health rather than the pre-existing benefits that focused more on a reactive approach. Employees now have access to coaches, therapists and on-demand digital programmes.
"We really don't want to be thinking of it in terms that someone has a problem and we need to take care of it," says Storn. "Our employees are our number one asset, all of our people are critical."
Most departments have regular check-ins with their teams to talk about how everyone is doing while working from home, keeping the conversation light and ensuring that employees feel cared for during these unprecedented times. Managers are also encouraged to get the support they need to manage their mental health so they are well equipped to focus on helping their direct reports.
The organisation also keeps employees up-to-date with all the benefits on offer by adopting a regular communications approach with emails informing employees what benefits they have access to; this includes a virtual therapy kit which features games, music and other resources on mental health for employees to use and learn through.
"We've got such great feedback. Employees are trying to balance education, remote [working] and everything else going on in the world right now, and giving them mental health support is really important right now," says Storn.
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