“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!"
Just launched! Join our Mind Share Partners Institute certificate program.
Just launched! Join our Mind Share Partners Institute certificate program.
Case Study: Managers and Leaders
Vantage
Industry: Financial Services
Size: 201-500 employees
Location: U.S. and Bermuda
Time frame: March 2022 - October 2022
Offerings:
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Discovery Assessment & Report
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Executive strategy session for Leadership Team
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Two manager training sessions
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Facilitation guide for ongoing manager learning
Result highlights:
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100% of managers had a better understanding of mental health.
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100% of managers had a better understanding of their role in supporting mental health.
About Vantage
Vantage Risk is a privately-owned insurance company offering a wide array of specialty re/insurance products covering global risks.
The Context
Vantage is an insurance company that launched—and grew quickly—amidst the coronavirus pandemic with a largely virtual employee base. From its founding, Vantage invested early in:
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Building a sense of community and belonging that encompasses inclusion as a key tenant of their company culture. This includes DEIB initiatives such as an established employee working group that focuses on education and awareness. This group is deliberate about diversity in Vantage’s recruiting efforts.
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Psychological safety through intact team discussions to understand the terminology, key drivers, and learn through a quick assessment on how team members felt about those key dimensions.
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Mental health supports (e.g., EAP services, LinkedIn Learning catalog, access to counselors, stress management resources)
However, with the demands of a startup internally and growing pandemic stress externally, Vantage recognized the pressures on employees and pursued additional support.
Nikki Gonzalez, Chief Talent Officer of Vantage Group Holdings, began searching for a partner to better support employee mental health. Vantage views the overall wellness of their employees as a part of who they are as an organization. So, when Nikki came across how Mind Share Partners considers mental health as fundamentally part of an organization’s work culture, the position resonated with her. She was also intrigued by the opportunity to assess where they were currently at as an organization through Mind Share Partners’ Discovery & Diagnostics Assessment, and create a customized, informed approach. What’s more, Mind Share Partners’ deep commitment to DEIB principles in its workplace mental health work reflected Vantage’s own early investments in this issue area.
The Solution
Starting in March 2022, Mind Share Partners created a customized approach to create lasting support for their employees. To do this, we began with key catalysts within the organization—its executive leadership team and people managers.
Discovery assessment | April 2022
Mind Share Partners started with a discovery assessment to help Vantage understand their employees’ experiences around mental health, stigma, and work within the organization.
This was the first time employees had been systematically measured around mental health. Understandably, Nikki felt uncomfortable at first with a few of the questions included in the assessment given the potentially personal nature and sensitivity around the topic. Fortunately, Vantage’s dedicated Principal, Bernie Wong, clarified the purpose of the discovery assessment questions to measure the broad spectrum of mental health—both the challenges and the bright spots. In understanding the survey’s measures, Nikki trusted that each of the questions were crafted intentionally to explore and measure the most important foundations of employee mental health and surface actionable opportunities for change.
Thereafter, Nikki shared the survey’s purpose to employees, and Mind Share Partners supplemented the quantitative data with ten interviews with Vantage employees. This research culminated into a final report, which Nikki distributed to their leadership team and broader employee population in an all-team call to demonstrate their transparency and commitment to mental health. This final report highlighted key insights, particularly around teams that were facing unique challenges and organizational factors that could lead to burnout (i.e. certain team members were being stretched thin trying to serve customers). From these insights burgeoned important conversations on how to provide meaningful solutions to support everyone.
Learning & Development
Executive Session | May 2022
After the discovery assessment, Mind Share Partners facilitated an executive training session with Vantage’s leadership team. This session equips leaders to create safety, navigate conversations, be proactive allies, and align on a cohesive, strategic approach to support workplace mental health across the organization.
Manager Training | June + July 2022
Following the executive session, Mind Share Partners facilitated two, live manager training sessions—one for U.S.-based managers and the other Bermuda. This session equips managers to create safety within their teams, navigate 1:1 conversations about mental health, and create healthy and sustainable cultures of work within their teams.
Facilitated Discussion Guide | October 2022
With Vantage leadership and managers equipped with the foundations around workplace mental health, Mind Share Partners developed a customized facilitated discussion guide. This guide equipped the Vantage People Team to lead three discussion sessions with their managers, focusing on case scenarios and action-oriented discussion questions.
“Mind Share Partners was a very effective partner in our journey to understand and educate our colleagues on mental health as an important workplace culture topic.
The survey and interviews provided a great baseline to help us think more broadly about mental health and provided insights into how our colleagues assessed their own mental health and our overall culture and environment.
The manager training has already had an impact by equipping our managers with tools and language to have an open discussion about a topic that can feel very intimidating.”
—Nikki Gonzalez, Chief Talent Officer of Vantage
The Impact
Following the executive session, Vantage’s leadership team shared that this session reinforced the importance of mental health in their organizational goals, and that transparency and creating safety were key components that leadership needed to embody. The session reaffirmed to leadership that they were on the right track and simply needed the language and tools to more intentionally and strategically tackle the unique mental health challenges within their organization.
Following manager training, our post-surveys showed that all manager participants reported a better understanding of mental health, and a better understanding of their role in supporting mental health. Using the facilitated discussion guide, managers had the opportunity to continue their learning and practicing the strategies they learned in creating safety, navigating mental health conversations, and building healthy cultures of work for their team members.
Looking forward, Vantage is looking at a strategy to keep mental health conversations top of mind. They are considering peer training as a next step. Peer training provides foundational skills to effectively engage mental health conversations at work, and the key knowledge to point colleagues in the direction of support.
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“As an organization, we now understand the importance of engaging in this topic. It was really beneficial for us to include a knowledgeable partner on this topic to provide guidance, the right language, and tools to keep the conversation going.
The partnership with Mind Share Partners helped us advance the discussion. It can feel really daunting to navigate on your own, but if you are going to support mental health at work effectively, partner with someone who can guide you on the way, and give reassurance as new topics arise.”
—Nikki Gonzalez, Chief Talent Officer of Vantage
