Video: Employee Wellness Conference: How Baker & McKenzie created its wellbeing programme

Laura Smith, senior reward officer at Baker & McKenzie then explained how the law firm created and launched its wellbeing programme.

Watch the video ‘7 steps to create a wellness strategy for your organisation’ as well as the Baker & McKenzie case study, in full.

O’Neill said organisations had to look first at who should have overall responsibility for the strategy within their businesses. “Try and identify who your wellness and wellbeing champions will be,” she said. Once that was agreed she urged delegates to look at their data and demographics to decide what they needed to do and any particular risk factors the profile of their business has.

Setting objectives, and where possible aligning them with the rest of the business was particularly effective. “Have an idea what you want to achieve and identify how to achieve it and whether it’s a short, medium or long term objective. If you are able to align it with corporate objectives then you will get buy-in,” she said.

Last year law firm Baker & McKenzie launched BakerWellbeing – its new health and wellbeing strategy with a particular focus on mental health using the seven step approach outlined by O'Neill in the full video.

Laura Smith, senior reward officer at the firm, presented a case study into what her company had done in the same session. Smith said the scheme was developed after it was identified as an area that the business needed to improve in the company’s bi-annual engagement survey. The scheme was launched around four pillars: mental resilience, health, exercise and diet.

“We launched a focus group to find out what they wanted us to do and also have a partner sponsor,” said Smith.

In May 2015 the BakerWellbeing scheme launched with a full communications campaign that included an external speaker visiting the firm to talk about their experience of stress and depression and how to tackle it. “We also ran a pilot workshop and got senior people to attend the pilot session to help recognise signs of stress and pressure in their teams and themselves and understand how to stay resilient,” she said.

The company has also been involved in the This is Me campaign – a citywide mental health initiative aimed at reducing the stigma around mental health in the workforce.

Under the health pillar of the company’s strategy it has introduced initiatives such as health kiosks, physio, a cancer support group and provided staff with fit bugs to promote exercise.

“It will continue to be an evolving programme for us,” said Smith. “Two key areas in the next six months will focus on emotional resilience training rollout and a look at other ways to support mental health and analyse data from our health kiosk,” she said. 

This video was filmed at the REBA Employee Wellness Conference 2016.