Maintaining a positive and productive environment to support mental wellbeing
We actively promote and build a culture of wellbeing. This is achieved by building wellbeing into all our people processes. Mental wellbeing has been embedded into the company culture through policies, resources, initiatives, and activities that encourage people to focus on their work-life balance while also delivering for their clients.
Empowering people to not only grow, but thrive is our wellbeing strategy ambition
Wellbeing is core to who we are and is underpinned by our values of taking care of each other and fostering inclusion. We empower our people to make choices that support their wellbeing, creating an open, collaborative and inclusive culture that allows people to be their true selves at work. We prioritise the mental health and psychological safety of our people by facilitating open dialogue about mental health, taking steps to minimise work related stress and burnout, as well as providing effective, accessible wellbeing supports.
Our approach focuses on reducing the stigma around talking about mental health and encourages looking after wellbeing on a day-to-day basis as well as long term. To achieve our ambition, we offer training and supports throughout the year. We have over 50 mental health champions who have completed a two-day training certificate in Mental Health First Aid. The champions are there to sign post people to mental health supports available. Those supports include referral to professional support, a free 24/7 employee assistance programme, on-site health assessments and an in-house clinical psychologist who provides a 1:1 wellness clinic. We also offer a wellbeing app, POWR, which includes a weekly survey on how users are feeling, breathing exercises and sleep meditations. We’ve seen over 1,500 completed wellbeing surveys, and over 350 people have developed wellbeing plans on the app to-date. In addition, we recently launched an online portal “Wellness cloud” which gives people free access to blogs, advice, webinars, and discounted therapy on topics of their choice. Our Inclusion Passport further enables people to have quality conversations about additional support they might need, both personally and professionally.
“For me, the biggest learning from the Mental Health First Aid training I participated in was how we can recognise potential crisis and then listen and guide others towards available supports. I also feel that I have gained a new set of skills, in how mental health first aid is not about fixing a problem, it is about guiding someone towards a solution. Since completing the course, I have actually utilised my training to support colleagues in accessing wellness support available through Deloitte.”
One of our mental health champions, Laura
To reduce the stigma around mental health, conversations are a key part of our recently launched wellbeing strategy. To support our ambition, we launched a mental health e-learning module in 2022, to upskill our leaders and team members to have difficult conversations. We also hosted a number of events where our leaders shared their personal stories of overcoming and working through challenging situations. This openness has supported people across our business be more open when talking about mental health.
We have six employee-led inclusion networks who support us in driving a culture of inclusion, belonging and wellbeing. The Mental Health Network was established in 2022 to promote awareness around difficult topics and key milestones throughout the year. The Mental Health Network provides a space for people to connect and share knowledge. A key initiative by our Mental Health Network in 2023 was Mental Health Week. We ran events on topics such as “Burnout”, “Managing your Emotions” and a “Partner Fireside Chat” on the importance of wellbeing. Feedback on Mental Health Week showed us that 95% of participants felt they had a good understanding of how their mental health was supported in Deloitte. Participants said they felt “empowered to do more for my mental health” and “it was nice to take an hour to concentrate on something other than my day-to-day work and remind myself of wellbeing. It brought me back to earth”.
Our purpose to make an impact that matters is at the heart of everything we do to empower our people. By raising awareness of mental health, providing supports and destigmatising mental health challenges we are creating a more open and supportive culture for our people.
