Jeremy Hill from Standard Chartered Bank on building a strategy with wellbeing at the centre
The impact of COVID-19 will be a key discussion topic for the employer panel on Wednesday 23rd September at the virtual Employee Wellbeing Congress. Join Dame Carol Black; Paul Farmer, chief executive at Mind; Vish Buldawoo, VP – global benefits and wellbeing at Centrica; and Nicola Wells, global director reward at Unilever as they discuss the legacy of COVID-19.
That means making sure we have support and buy-in from senior business leaders. We also make use of our various networks within the organisation both at a global level, such as our Diversity & Inclusion council and our integration group that leads on from that, and at local level through champions and communities. Then, we can adopt global wellbeing approaches that reflect our overall thinking and introduce local initiatives that flow from that. So, a gym membership is still relevant, but it is tied to our global strategy and global thinking, which is part of our overall culture.
As we have looked at the future of work generally, and explored different models of working with our partners, we have also examined the relationship between the employer’s role and that of the country it operates in.
We’ve been exploring questions such as whether multinationals should be a driver for strategy, or whether change is about individuals (the rising number of gig workers, for example).
We feel wellbeing is central to all of those situations. So, whether strategy is driven by the individual, the corporate or nation, wellbeing is at the centre. From our perspective, we have taken the view that it doesn’t matter what the balance is between contractors and permanent staff, for example, wellbeing needs to be at the centre of all that we do.
From a pensions and benefits perspective, this also means reversing our thinking – considering wellbeing first, then putting benefits and products in place to support wellbeing, rather than simply introducing them for their own reasons.
Covid-19 has prioritised some initiatives that we had already been planning. For example, we had an employee assistance programme operating in most of our markets and were moving to a global approach, but we are now doing that more quickly.
We’ve also introduced a digital app so that we can provide support for all of our workforce, and not just during acute situations. The app particularly focuses on mental health, which is so important.
Mental wellbeing support is an area of development for us, so we are now exploring how we expand our approach and what we can offer for our global population. However, we are aware that in some markets talking about mental health still has significant stigma attached to it, which needs to be overcome. We think that can be supported effectively by giving people access to personal, independent, anonymised tools so that they can take advantage of the help on offer without having to open up to their people leaders, or to make a declaration that they need support.
The author is Jeremy Hill, head of pensions and benefits at Standard Chartered Bank.
This article is featured in REBA’s Employee Wellbeing research 2020, in partnership with AXA PPP healthcare.
