How do leaders role model prioritizing emotional and mental well-being for our teams? It’s a question I ask myself often in my role with talent and culture at KPMG US.
The past two years have had a profound effect on our collective mental health. The number of U.S. adults who received treatment for mental health grew throughout the pandemic. There’s an increased need for mental health services, a growing awareness about the importance of caring for employee mental well-being, and, ideally, an increased willingness to seek out support when needed.
We have seen a similar trend at KPMG US. Throughout the pandemic, we leveraged our continuous listening surveys to check in with our people and better understand where they needed support. We expanded our benefits tied to our employee assistance program (EAP), including increasing the number of free counseling sessions and how they can receive these sessions (in-person, virtual, or text/web chat) and enhancing our Work/Life Coaching Program. This internal coaching program:
We hosted several events to increase awareness of these offerings and share personal stories about our peoples’ mental health journeys, recognizing that EAPs are typically underutilized due to a lack of awareness as well as stigma around using these services.
Most recently, we piloted a well-being program for our partners to help them learn the skills they need to role model well-being and create an unparalleled people experience. The program includes a self-assessment for partners to determine their current state of well-being, identification of areas they want to improve, and guidance on how to connect and support others’ well-being.
Utilization of our EAP is more than double the vendor’s average—evidence that our people are both familiar with the offering and feel safe seeking out these services without any professional repercussions.
We have also seen that our people are using the EAP for issues beyond work—seeking out counseling and training for relationship issues, grief/loss, and trauma, to name a few—demonstrating that the program is flexible enough to meet the evolving needs of our people.
In addition to EAP, we also offer other mindfulness resources, including:
While we are glad to see that our employees are comfortable leveraging the EAP for a range of issues, we must continue to create an environment where we can comfortably discuss and respond to these concerns and take preemptive steps to address issues closely tied to mental well-being.
Our approach is multi-faceted to fully support our employees and leaders.
This includes leaning into direct feedback from continuous listening surveys that ask how our people are feeling and what’s important to them. Recently, based on feedback we got from parents at the firm, we not only launched the well-being program for partners but also expanded access to our mental health resources by adding Brightline, which provides virtual mental health support for children ages 18 months to 18 years old, and offers resources and support for parents and caregivers.
Our business resource groups (BRGs), similar to ERGs, play a significant role here, hosting local events to tackle more specific topics around mental health that our professionals are grappling with—such as balancing work and family life, dealing with anxiety in children, and more. These local discussions, in combination with our larger firmwide events around World Mental Health Day, Mental Health Awareness Month, and other important moments of recognition, keep the dialogue going, driving understanding and decreasing feelings of isolation or stigma. Our KPMG Network of Women (KNOW) BRG is hosting a 4-part virtual series on self-care for thriving at work. The latest session focuses on self-advocacy and accountability, including tips on creating healthy boundaries and voicing your needs. This session was attended by around 400 people, with 100% of those surveyed saying that they would recommend it to a colleague.
To summarize what our Chair and CEO Paul Knopp stated last year: we have to make the complicated more simple. To date, this has translated into intentional steps to reduce burnout and improve work-life balance, including:
The issue is complex and multifaceted, and we are continually reviewing and evolving our approach. Keeping the lines of communication open—with our leaders, people, and stakeholders—is critical to that effort and to driving progress on this issue more broadly.
