“Not acknowledging that millions are dealing with mental health conditions is costing an enormous amount both in terms of dollars and cents and, more importantly, people's lives."
Arianna Huffington
Mental Health at Work Mini-Conference, May 2018
"I personally would like to thank Mind Share Partners for all of your support of this ERG and community from the very beginning when we were unsure, driven, and quite a bit scared on launching something that would make us so vulnerable. You provided resources and insight that gave us direction, hope, and reminded us that what we were creating would matter to our peers. To which, you were right. I'm thankful for Mind Share Partners, what you stand for and all that you're creating in this new area of diversity, inclusion, and belonging."
"After the Mind Share Partners conference, we created our own Mental Health Fund, since our health insurance excludes it, and talked about it so our team knew we had their back and they'd be covered for emergency care for suicidal thoughts, etc.
It's a start. Stigma runs deep. It's good that [Mind Share Partners] is helping workplaces talk about it!"
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Case Study
PGIM
Industry: Financial Services
Size: 3,600+ employees
Location: Global
Time frame: September 2020 - March 2021
Offerings:
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Three-part All-Staff Workplace Mental Health Training Series:
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Mental Health at Work
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Mental Health for Your Teams
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Mental Health in Work Relationships
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Two-part Mental Health Champions Training
Result highlights:
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93% of all-staff training participants reported a better understanding of mental health and stigma, and how both show up at work.
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100% of Mental Health Champion training participants felt better-equipped to support a colleague with their mental health if they needed support.
About PGIM
At PGIM, we believe that doing the right thing for our clients, our people and our communities leads to greater results for all stakeholders. As a top global asset manager, we’re committed to driving positive outcomes for investors around the world, while also leading by example to create a more equitable and inclusive workforce across the asset management industry. With 38 offices, located in 16 countries, each of our seven autonomous asset management businesses specialize in a particular asset class, and have a distinct workplace culture.
The Context
Barbara Fuchs, Vice President of Talent Management at PGIM, launched Inclusion Month in October 2019—a company-wide, month-long initiative with events, campaigns, and resources focused on a specific topic. In 2019, PGIM put a spotlight on the topic of inclusion, including bias, valuing uniqueness and micro-messages.
In 2020, PGIM chose to focus on mental health given the ongoing effects of the global pandemic. While mental health was impacting many employees in different ways, Barbara saw that it was still hardly spoken about in the workplace setting. She wanted PGIM to be a brave and supportive space where employees could have open conversations about mental health without fear, feel empowered to use the resources available at PGIM, and be supported year-round.
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The Solution
For PGIM’s Inclusion Month 2020, Mind Share Partners offered a custom three-module All-Staff Workplace Mental Health Training Series for all PGIM employees focused on three topics (below). Mind Share Partners also provided general advising on company-wide communications around workplace mental health and creating a virtual portal for mental health resources.
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Mental Health at Work (3 live sessions, 1 recorded, 60-minutes each). Topics included:
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Recorded video stories from PGIM executives sharing their own experiences with mental health.
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Spectrum of mental health, impact on the workplace, and stigma.
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Impact of mental health in the workplace across different communities.
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Strategies for maintaining individual self-care.
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Mental Health for Your Teams (2 live sessions, 1 recorded, 60-minutes each)
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How to build healthy team cultures to prevent mental health distress.
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Using positive mental health language and practices.
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Mental Health in Work Relationships (3 live sessions, 1 recorded, 60-minutes each)
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Signs and symptoms of mental health in the workplace.
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How to have healthy, productive conversations about mental health with team members and colleagues.
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To complement the programming from Mind Share, PGIM also hosted a series of external subject matter experts who offered a deep dive on the topics of children’s mental health, racial trauma, and the benefits of mindfulness.
PGIM’s Mental Health Champions Program
Barbara didn’t want the burgeoning conversations about workplace mental health to end after Inclusion Month and wanted to create an ongoing program to support mental health year-round.
In response, Mind Share Partners helped PGIM create PGIM’s Mental Health Champions program—employees at PGIM who could be allies for mental health and trusted peer listeners that can listen, validate and refer colleagues to PGIM’s mental health resources—and held an information session for the Champions Program to gauge interest from PGIM employees. Mind Share Partners also provided advice on how to share mental health experiences to three PGIM employees who volunteered to tell their personal stories around mental health at the session.
The information session was a success. Leading up to its formal launch, Mind Share Partners provided a two-session series to equip Champions with core skills to be safe, supportive, and effective champions. These sessions were made available for all PGIM offices, including the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions.
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Mental Health Champion Training Series
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Info Session (1 live session, 1 recorded, 60-minutes each)
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Champions Training (2 live sessions, 90-minutes each)
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Advising for October’s Inclusion Month
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Advising on creating an internal mental health resources page
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Coaching for PGIM leaders to tell their personal stories around mental health
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The Impact
After the All-Staff Workplace Mental Health Training Series, with almost 600 registrations:
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88-93%* of training post-survey respondents reported a better understanding of mental health and stigma.
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74-77% felt more comfortable using mental health benefits and other resources.
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74-100% felt better-equipped to support a colleague with their mental health if they need support.
* Percents reflect outcome metrics across the three modules (“Mental Health at Work,” “… For Teams,” and “... In Work Relationships”).
After the Mental Health Champion Training Series:
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100% felt better-equipped to support a colleague with their mental health if they need support.
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100% had a better understanding of their role as Champions.
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98% felt more comfortable talking about mental health at work.
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98% had a better understanding of mental health and stigma, and how they show up at work.
“[PGIM employees] have a common language now to talk about mental health and feel more comfortable talking about it. Through our efforts, we've empowered people [to talk about mental health] similar to how we speak about physical health… no longer in hushed tones or only in private. That’s what I'm most proud about. We are helping to bring conversations about mental health out into the open.”
“I’m also proud to work at a company that sees the need and value in supporting employees holistically and care about their overall wellbeing, including their mental health. The pandemic has only increased the need for mental health support, and PGIM has an abundance of resources available to support our employees and their families.”
- Barbara Fuchs, Vice President of Talent Management at PGIM
Looking Forward
Barbara hopes to build and iterate on the PGIM Mental Health Champions program and explore effective ways to support employee mental health ongoing. “We’re looking at this as a journey,” Barbara shared in a debrief with Mind Share Partners, “where we’re chipping away at the stigma and talking about mental health openly.”
To other leaders embarking on a similar journey, Barbara said, “I remember in the beginning, we wondered, ‘What if nobody comes?’ or ‘We’re not going to find any leaders to talk about this.’ And you take one step and find there are leaders who are willing to share their personal experiences with mental health and to tell their story which opens the door for others to tell their story... Take the first step and the rest will come.”
“Mind Share Partners have been wonderful partners. I’ve felt through this whole process that we’re in this together, that it wasn’t just Mind Share Partners [providing a service]—that we really partnered hand-in-hand, with a similar mission, united, flexible, listening to each other’s feedback. So that has been truly wonderful to work together on. I don’t often miss a vendor but I did find that happening [during breaks in our work together].”
- Barbara Fuchs, Vice President of Talent Management at PGIM