Media group Bauer Media UK has offered its around 1,700 employees mental wellbeing benefits and initiatives for many years, including a partnership with Mental Health First Aid England introduced in 2018 to train staff to become mental health first aiders.
The group, which employs 16,000 employees across the 13 countries it operates in, now has more than 80 mental health first aiders so that there is a representative in each of its offices. These individuals have specifically been trained to spot signs and be on hand to support anyone struggling with poor mental health.
The organisation recognises there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to mental health, and that a multi-level approach is needed to adequately support all employees, says Sarah Barnes, vice president, people and culture development at Bauer Media Group.
“At Bauer, our strategy to support mental health in the workplace is well established; we call it Thrive,” she says. “We worked with work wellness platform GetZen to ensure that our mental health first aiders were supported themselves, running a programme exclusively for this group. It delivered both data and human insights so we could better understand their needs, along with its ‘How are you?’ product that listens in confidence to employees, with nothing ever assumed.”
Based on this data and insights, the organisation can point its workforce in the direction of mental health and wellbeing therapies, including counselling, psychotherapy, lunchtime learning sessions and Reiki healing, that are targeted to each employee’s specific needs.
In addition, it runs Living Well sessions throughout the year through its Bauer Academy, and it has a mental health channel featuring toolkits and guides to help line managers to support their employees. It also offers access to the My Healthy Advantage App, which provides personal daily feeds and mini health checks, as well as a 24/7 employee assistance programme.
In order to ensure it delivers on these mental health support promises, Bauer Media builds wellbeing into its overall organisational strategy.
This offers a good chance to build a strong culture that attracts and retains the best talent, explains Barnes. “On average, people spend so many hours in the workplace in their lifetime and I believe that it is fundamental to support the health and wellbeing of our people, particularly since we have seen the increase in mental health issues following the Covid-19 pandemic,” she concludes. “There is so much talk of blurring of boundaries since Covid. We simply want to create a healthy, happy working environment where people can do their best work.”