Taking your employee well-being strategy global is no small feat—it comes with some unique challenges and opportunities. Based on our work with multinational organizations, here are some guiding principles to help you navigate the journey.
Start by listening to the needs of your global colleagues
Mental health lies on a continuum—ranging from healthy to crisis—that each of us moves along over the course of our lives. When someone experiences a mental health challenge, talking about it and knowing where to find support makes all the difference. In the workplace, how those conversations get started, and what resources are most important vary across—and within—regions and cultures. That’s why listening to employees is an essential starting point— providing insights on nuances and uncovering what colleagues value the most in their well-being programs.
For example, in our collaboration with Hyatt Hotels, we conducted a series of focus groups and interviews—both in-person and virtual—with Hyatt leaders and colleagues across their global locations to learn about the cultured nuances and stigmas around mental health. An employee listening program can include a combination of surveys, focus groups, and interviews to get representative insights across regions, offices, functions, and other demographics. This can look like incorporating mental health questions within employee engagement surveys to better understand key issues and monitor impact over time—something we did in our work with a global financial firm.
Understand truths about stereotypes and micro-cultures
Mental health stigma is universal, but each person's experience is unique. From our experience, stereotypes about mental health—for example, that all men struggle to talk about mental health, or that people in Japan won’t address this topic, or that Americans are eager to talk about their feelings—just aren’t accurate.
What is true is that individual experiences, along with micro-cultures (like in teams) have more impact and influence over country or company cultures. This is why employee listening (described earlier) and front-line training for leaders and managers is so important to the success of any mental health strategy. Our day-to-day work lives impact mental health for better or worse. Managers, in particular, have the ability to take a step back with their teams and adjust daily work norms to ensure work is a force for good that supports—and not actively harms—employee well-being.
Don’t replace local resources with AI
The growing availability and capability of AI offers a tempting and convenient way to translate training content. However, we’ve found that many organizations who opt for exclusive AI translations discover the results have cultural and language biases based on the developer’s country of origin. The result is material with sometimes clumsy—and even embarrassing—content. AI can be a starting point, but using local experts is critical.
We’ve found great success by researching and partnering with local experts in mental health to aid the translation of training content and company-wide mental health communications in our work with a fortune 500 retailer. Organizations can also utilize the help of internal employee resource groups who often have local chapters. These groups bring an informed voice and perspective, and can better translate and weigh in on these materials.
Representation within stories matters
Mental health stigma in the workplace remains formidable, and can show up differently, even within the same location. Programs like storytelling can reduce stigma and increase safety around the topic of mental health and well-being in work cultures. At Mind Share Partners, we create and roll-out mental health storytelling programs at companies, making sure that the storytellers represent different regions, job roles, race, and experiences.
While senior leadership stories are incredibly important to creating psychological safety, in global organizations they can sometimes feel far removed from employees in different countries. “Hearing stories from colleagues during the start of the session was powerful and made it more meaningful," said one manager from our partnership with a global nonprofit organization.
Customize your well-being resources
Accessibility to resources will vary across countries and industry. A Fortune 500 global investment organization we work with identified essential criteria they wanted to have available for employees—regardless of where they lived and worked. They then worked with different providers to offer comparable resources, including services in different languages.
Similarly, at a Fortune 500 retailer, on-site mental health resources varied across their factory locations. We conducted outreach to better understand the broader resource ecosystem, and used local guides to connect each factory to the right resources to make benefits access across sites comparable.
Are you ready to expand your well-being program to your global workforce? Connect with us and book a strategy call to get started.
About the Authors
Jen Porter, Managing Director, Mind Share Partners
Jen advises and trains companies around the world to create mentally healthy workplaces. Her clients include leaders in the tech, professional services, and finance industries, such as PGIM (asset management arm of Prudential Financial), Loomis, Sayles, Pinterest, and RetailMeNot. Her work on mental health strategy, especially grass-roots initiatives like ERGs, has been published in Harvard Business Review and Forbes and featured at events such as Culturati and the National Human Resources Association.
Bill Green, Principal, Mind Share Partners
Bill leads impact-focused advising for companies and leaders on how to create a culture of support for mental health in the workplace. He facilitates Mind Share Partners’ workplace training and leads strategic projects, and has worked with companies like Morrison Foerster, BlackRock, Bhate, and more.