PwC’s Mental Health Pledge and toolkit: give shape and direction to your investment in the well-being of your people

18/03/21

Business leaders have long known that healthy, happy people are more motivated, productive and willing to adapt. COVID-19 has merely emphasised the truth of this and reminded companies of the importance of investing in their employees’ mental and physical well-being. Based on our own experience, we at PwC in Switzerland have some valuable resources to share that will help organisations give shape and direction to this investment.

Perhaps it’s in the DNA of Switzerland, a small country ruled by direct democracy, but Swiss business leaders seem to be acutely aware of the importance of people in their organisation’s performance. This impression is backed up by PwC’s latest Global CEO Survey which finds that Swiss CEOs are much more likely than their counterparts in the rest of the world to view workplace culture, engagement, skills and adaptability as the biggest factors in their company’s competitiveness (1).

One of the big lessons learned from COVID-19 is that you need people who are flexible and motivated enough to master new technologies and adapt rapidly to new ways of working. Another insight has been that this human resilience comes at a cost if companies fail to address their people’s well-being – mental as well as physical – in the midst of this transformation.

Against this backdrop, a shift from predominantly physical fatigue to emotional and cognitive exhaustion observed by many companies in the wake of the pandemic is concerning from both a business and a human perspective. We at PwC Switzerland had been working on measures to support the well-being of our people long before COVID-19, but insights such as this have given our endeavours greater momentum. We’ve stepped up our efforts to raise awareness of mental health. We’d like to share our experience with two things in particular that we believe could be valuable to other organisations keen to promote the well-being – especially the mental well-being – of their workforce.

Mental Health Leadership Pledge

The first thing we’d like to share with you is the mental health Leadership Pledge. It was initiated by the Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health, an organisation dedicated to working for workplace mental health today for a stronger tomorrow. It acknowledges that poor mental health at the workplace has a significant impact on employee productivity, attraction and retention around the world – but that no single business has all the answers.

At PwC, our ambition is to create a health promoting workplace. Part of how we can achieve this is to de-stigmatise mental health by encouraging our people to be open minded and feel comfortable with sharing their personal experiences and challenges with each other. In order to commit towards driving the needed change by making mental health a visible priority in the way the firm operates, our CEO, Andreas Staubli, has signed the pledge for PwC Switzerland to become part of a global community of business leaders – more than 40 have already signed up – committed to accelerating action and progress on workplace mental health. You can read more about the pledge and why the act of signing and committing to it is important for PwC Switzerland here.

Practical tool: mental health action plan

Naturally a pledge is only the start. Then a firm plan of action is needed to put the commitment to workplace mental health into practice. We are well aware that the creation of new habits and routines needs more than just a one-off offering, but more and tailored follow-up actions and sustainable habits building.

At PwC Switzerland our plan of action has included to approach well-being preventatively looking at different dimensions (physical, mental and emotional well-being) as well as from an individual, team and firm level. We are gathering ongoing feedback from our employees and are evaluating all sessions regularly. We also focus on regular internal communications raising awareness on the topic of well-being and mental health and have held a panel discussion where leaders of our business and a medical expert discussed ways of breaking the taboo around talking about our mental health.

One of the main steps has been to launch two mental health training formats, one for team leaders and coaches, and another for other employees. So far 457 people – that’s almost 15% of our Swiss workforce – have attended this training or an awareness session. As you’ll see from some of the feedback from participants, the response has been overwhelming. 

‘Awareness and acceptance: simply having this platform in itself communicates “okayness” about speaking about mental health and demonstrates to colleagues how “we’re all in this together, we all have the same challenges, we’re all human.’

‘Excellent session – should be mandatory!!!’

‘Thank you for this great training. I wish such trainings were mandatory for PwC employees, as I think that there are many currently struggling with mental health and it is such an important topic. Overall, I considered attending this training a really good use of my time.’

Proactive efforts to promote employee mental health are obviously good for people. On the basis of our experience, we’ve created a toolkit which we’re sharing free of charge with clients, business partners, competitors and anyone else keen to give shape and direction to their investment in employee mental health.

The toolkit takes the form of a template mental health action plan and tips and tricks for addressing mental health issues at three levels: the individual, the team, and the organisation. We’ve tested it in our own organisation, and we’re honing it on an ongoing basis.

The template action plan starts out by providing some context with definitions around mental health and its impact – and compelling arguments why a focus on wellbeing isn’t a soft skill but a hard skill needed to sustain high performance in business and elsewhere. Then there are three sections proposing very practical actions individuals, teams and organisations can take, ranging from ways of talking more openly about mental health and adapting routines to providing mental-health promoting resources on a company-wide basis. The plan finishes with a concise definition of the company’s commitment to the mental wellbeing of its people – designed to serve as both a reminder and a framework giving direction to its endeavours.

Be well, work well

Your Mental Health Action Plan

This Mental Health Action Plan aims to support you and your team, as well as our clients, with practical actions to improve the workplace in order to support mental health.

Download here

Be well, work well

Be Well, Work Well

'Be Well, Work Well' is PwC’s effort to create an environment where our people are encouraged to bring their best selves to work and are supported in achieving greater well-being.

Learn more


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Summary

COVID-19 has accelerated PwC Switzerland’s efforts to create a workplace culture more open to discussing and promoting mental health. To encourage and help other businesses to also address this important issue, we would now like to share two concrete results of this commitment: its role as a signatory to the Mental Health Leadership Pledge, and a template Mental Health Action Plan that has already been implemented with considerable success at PwC. PwC firmly believes a healthy workplace culture is good for people, good for business, and good for the competitiveness of Switzerland – and hopes that other organisations will follow suit and take up the initiative.

1) When asked about their priorities in terms of making the greatest impact on their organisation’s competitiveness, CEOs named the following: 1) changes to workplace culture (45% in Switzerland, 32% globally); 2) workforce engagement (41% in Switzerland, 30% globally); 3) focus on skills and adaptability (39% in Switzerland, 31% globally). It’s interesting that the number one priority for the global sample is to focus on productivity through automation and technology (21% in Switzerland, 38% globally).


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