Exclusive Interview with Megan Kille, Head of People, Unmind

"We Empower Employees to Measure, Understand, and Improve Their Mental Wellbeing"

 

Megan Kille is the Head of People at Unmind. Connect Megan Kille Follow @unmindhq

“If there’s a silver lining to the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, it’s that employers – and societies, more generally – are realizing the importance of proactively nurturing mental health. This will be reflected in the benefits organizations offer employees”, says Megan Kille, Head of People, Unmind.

In an interview with HR.com, Megan shares how her organization helped their employees improve their remote working experience with the right set of employee benefits and wellness programs, and more.

Experts from the interview:

Q: With remote work being the current trend, what new benefits are your organization offering to ensure the well-being and safety of your employees?

Megan: We’ve offered our team a WFH contribution which they can put towards improving their remote working experience. People have bought things like comfortable chairs, stand-up desks, and noise-canceling headphones. The contribution can also be used on household bills that might have increased while spending more time at home. 

We’re also giving everybody an extra day of annual leave on December 31 to encourage our employees to rest, recuperate, and hopefully spend some time with loved ones. 
 

Our efforts have been guided by the seven core areas of wellbeing outlined by the Unmind Index, a psychologist-designed measure of mental health and wellbeing. It covers sleep, calmness, coping, health, connection, fulfillment, and happiness. This month, for instance, we’ve focused on health. We’re running the “Unmind globetrotters step challenge” to get us from our UK office through the USA with the aim of arriving with our colleagues in Australia by adding up the kilometers clocked by team members through walks, runs, cycling, swimming, and even climbing. The team also organized virtual fitness classes, and a mini-series of WFF (Working From Floor) which involved yoga and stretches videos.

Throughout the pandemic, we’ve also run a series of team socials including virtual concerts and pizza-making sessions.

Q: What resources do you have in place to support employee mental health during and after the crisis?

Megan: Unmind is a workplace mental health platform, so that’s kind of our table stakes. We empower employees to measure, understand, and improve their mental wellbeing. In addition to offering our core platform, we’ve also rolled out a range of initiatives.  In this remote working world, our focus has been on nurturing social connections. We run morning mindfulness sessions three times a week with Choden (a friend of unmind, ex-monk, and author of ‘Mindful Compassion’), we’ve created a bunch of cultural Slack channels to build relationships around common passion around everything from food to pets. We run a weekly company-wide “Walk & Talk” Zoom session to encourage people to stretch their legs and talk about anything unrelated to work. As well as welcoming the many new joiners, during our Friday wrap session, we block out some time for breakout rooms where people can meet coworkers who they wouldn’t ordinarily work with.

Another ongoing social initiative is “Coffee and Doughnut”, a random pairing of two people to virtually meet and chat once every couple of weeks. 

Q: Is your organization offering telemedicine as a benefit? If yes, can you share the experience?

Megan: This isn’t something we’re currently offering, but in the ‘Help’ section of our digital mental platform employees are directed to further support and resources including a 24-hour helpline that can be used in times of crisis, or if direct support is needed.

Q: Have you recently or do you plan to change your PTO policies?

Megan: Unmind was founded in the UK, so we benefit from having the same PTO allowance as our colleagues in London, which is a generous 25 days, plus our birthday day-off.

Q: What new trends do you expect to emerge in the employee benefits arena?

Megan: If we’ve learned anything this year, it’s that our teams enjoy flexibility, and being empowered to make decisions around their own working conditions. Part of that means being able to choose where or when they work. 

I think this will influence benefits by encouraging employers to allow employees to choose what is meaningful to them. Do we need a prescribed number of PTO? Can we be more creative about how our benefits budget is spent? If there’s a silver lining to the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, it’s that employers – and societies more generally – are realizing the importance of proactively nurturing mental health. This will be reflected in the benefits organizations offer employees.  
 

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