Stress and Mental Well-being Awareness

In 2022, our Leadership Team recognized that we need to do a better job of talking about stress and mental health with our employees. Just as physical safety is our priority around the world, so should be the psychological safety of our people.

• To support this belief, Leadership Team members participated in virtual events open to all employees sharing personal stories about how they’ve recognized, accepted, and normalized conversations about their own stress and mental health.
• Another virtual event featured a guest speaker sharing his personal story of attempting suicide and another speaker who talked about the suicide of her brother and how she copes.
• One of our Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month guest speakers, Chinese Canadian poet Anna Yin, challenged employees to take a hike and write a haiku based on the experience as a means of slowing down and being “more mindful of the beauty and the peacefulness of the small things around you.” Employees from around the world submitted their “Take A Haiku Hike” entries. The winning entry was written by employee Joshua Belcher: “A single raindrop/Splashing the back of my hand/Falls from a clear sky.”

Other localized activities supporting stress and mental well-being awareness.

• Our Indianapolis campus shared a video featuring Indianapolis Colts players helping raise awareness about mental health disorders and remove the stigma too often associated with these illnesses.
• Our Romania facility gave employees sunshades for their vehicles’ windshields, a symbolic reminder that we need to take care of mental health just as we protect dashboards during the summer.
• Employees at our World Headquarters spent part of their afternoon walking rescue dogs at a local animal shelter. Not only were the walks good for the dogs, but they also proved to be therapeutic for the volunteers.
• In celebration of International Yoga Week, our India facility offered 15-minute yoga sessions each day focused on meditation, breathing, concentration, achieving better sleep, and muscle relaxation. An employee, Onkar Paldhe, who is a certified yoga instructor, led the sessions.
• During the early months of the Ukraine invasion, our Poland facility offered a source for employees and family members to receive free mental health assistance.
• Through our U.S. employee benefits provider, we offered employees free online sessions with a mental health professional.

“We are all human and sometimes have the same struggles ... sessions like this help us keep that in the forefront of our minds and to always care about others because we never know what they are going through.”

— Krista Drew, Shared Services Employee, following a Stress and Mental Health Awareness virtual event with top leaders

Large Photo: Kathy Thomson, Vice President, Global Business Development and Design Services, shared with employees her personal story about her sister’s suicide and the steps she has taken to cope with her loss.

Small Photo: On World Mental Health Day, employees in Romania received an anti-stress ball to remind them to stop and breathe and be comfortable discussing their stress with family, friends, or even a colleague.