With just under 14,000 employees across 22 regional offices in the UK, monitoring the effectiveness of KPMG’s mental health strategy is a must. Jessica Carmody, head of KPMG’s internal Be Mindful Network, says: “We work alongside our inclusion and diversity and leadership teams to devise an overall mental health strategy. This ensures we have a joined-up approach, enabling us to determine what we want to achieve and the budget we are able to obtain from the business to support this.”
As well as providing a range of benefits that support employees’ wellbeing, including an employee assistance programme, private medical insurance and a discounted subscription to meditation app, Headspace, KPMG offers a variety of training programmes. These include a stress awareness course for performance leaders. Later this year, it will roll out mental health training specifically for partners, as well as a colleague-level mental health resilience course.
Mental health awareness events are another important element of its strategy. “We recognised that we needed to run local events to reach out to colleagues throughout the business so we set up local committees in our regional offices to facilitate this,” explains Carmody. “In 2016, there were fewer than 20 events during Mental Health Awareness Week, with just seven in the regions. Last year, there were around 60 events with all of our regional offices running at least one.”
While numbers like this speak volumes about the way employees engage with the mental health strategy, Carmody also monitors a variety of different measurements that reflect mental health across the workplace. These include the engagement and wellbeing scores on the firm’s global people survey; its mental health survey; and employee feedback collected through charity Mind's Workplace Wellbeing Index. “We’re constantly looking at what’s worked well and how it’s affecting employees [because] this helps to determine the initiatives we offer,” adds Carmody. “We’ve seen some great results but we want to reach a position where support for mental health is fully embedded in our culture.”
