As a financial institution with 173 branches in 243 communities, with more than 5,000 team members, we knew right from the get-go that our support would require a virtual response. A new President known for being a strong mental health advocate, knew he wanted to scale up their response but wasn’t sure where to start.

Together, we developed a strategy and a bespoke organisation-wide campaign focusing on connection, kickstarting their goal to create a culture of wellness in the organisation and become a sector leader in mental health and employee wellbeing.

Challenges

ATB had already recognised that employee mental health and wellbeing was important to them and appointed a dedicated Corporate Wellness Manager to oversee this work. Their desire was to create positive messages and experiences for all team members, hoping this would translate back to their customers.

The geographical spread of their organisation posed challenges to meaningfully engage employees. They were doing exceptionally well with using technology to help bridge this gap to support their day-to-day work and had a dedicated quarterly wellness blog and online wellbeing Workplace for employees to connect and share.

Despite all of this, they were struggling with increasing engagement beyond those who also had an existing interest or passion for wellbeing and mental health and hadn’t thought about how they could use their technology to aid them with this.

How we made a difference

We first developed a strategy with the President and Corporate Wellness Manager to think differently about how they used the technology at their fingertips that they were already paying for and using. We developed a proactive offer based on the evidence that connection to others, and building deeper relationships with those around us, greatly improves our mental wellbeing and resilience.

Knowing that early intervention equals prevention, a month-long campaign was created to proactively engage all employees in ways that improved their wellbeing and wellness without it feeling like mental health support.

Through gamification and encouraging employees to dedicate just 15 minutes per day for a month we created daily content, experiences, and challenges for employees to participate in. The experiences ranged from activities they could do by themselves and discuss with their colleagues later, to experiences that forced connections to employees hundreds of miles away working in completely different roles.

Results

• 67% engagement in the campaign from all levels during the campaign.

• Pre-campaign, 62% of employees reported feeling a ‘somewhat’ sense of belonging in the organisation. This increased to 73% reporting they either ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’.

• Significant increase in the number of cross-team connections developed, with an average of 2.7 new connections made and retained post-campaign.

• Managers reported increased productivity and staff engagement.

• Unintended consequences included improved business processes.

Overall, the campaign was a success with a total of 67% engagement from all levels during the campaign. Our approach of moving away from more generic wellbeing blogs, hero stories, clinical interventions, and clean eating campaigns, towards ones that made looking after your wellbeing and connecting with others fun, resonated with employees across the organisation.

Employees reported that they were learning useful new strategies without it feeling like a learning experience and forming friendships and connections with some fantastic people they never would have otherwise spoken to let alone met. Pre-campaign, 62% of employees reported feeling a ‘somewhat’ sense of belonging in the organisation. This increased to 73% reporting they either ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that they felt a sense of belonging in a follow-up survey.  

Employees and managers both reported a significant increase in the number of cross-team connections developed as a result of the campaign, with an average of 2.7 new connections retained one year later. Managers also generally reported higher levels of productivity and staff engagement, this was supported by the annual employee survey which showed an increase in employees who would recommend ATB as a great place to work. This resulted in a few positive unintended consequences including improved working processes due to deeper relationships with colleagues outside of their immediate team.

Habitus specialises in providing practical, engaging and lasting solutions to health. For more information on how Habitus can help your organisation increase a sense of belonging for employees, creating happier teams and increasing productivity, click here.
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