Whether it's down to the emotional impacts of the pandemic, striving for work-life balance in a remote world, or attempts to attract and retain talent in the face of the 'great resignation', companies are now increasingly expected to provide extra support to their employees.
At the start of the pandemic "Juro shifted entirely to remote work", Thomas explains" and it seems this will be the norm for the near and medium term. Remote working opens employees up to the risk of burnout, a lack of community, a sense of isolation, and more."
But "blindly implementing a slate of benefits and hoping the problem disappears doesn’t solve anything — and the People and Talent team at Juro was cautious of this."
Juro wanted to be proactive and prevent the issue from existing in the first place, instead of reacting to the problem after it had manifested. "We set out to take preventative measures; address and resolve the root cause of the problem; and add value to our team’s mental health in the long term", Thomas says.
The second criteria the team at Juro added was that any possible solution had to fit with their four company values.
Keep it simple: can the solution integrate with Juro’s current tech stack, or will it need to use a separate system? If the platform is disruptive to the working day, and requires several training sessions before employees can use it, that's a red flag for Juro.
Love the details: does this solution provide features that are perfect for a company of Juro's size? We thrive off feedback from our employees: does this platform offer anonymised data? Is success easy to measure?
Trust and deliver: does this solution offer the highest quality of service? Does it also offer different levels of mental health support, from self-help resources to recurring therapy sessions to further support and escalation if necessary.
Be more human: is this solution remote-ready? The Juro team are spread out over Europe, so it’s imperative that the solution bridges the cultural and communication gap between employees, meaning it’s easy to use for everyone.
The People and Talent team at Juro ran through several options before deciding on Spill.
Why did Spill fit the bill above and beyond the alternatives? Thomas walks through seven of the most important reasons for Juro:
"(1) It integrated with our existing tech stack: employees could access resources directly through Slack.
(2) It was easy to trial and install: within a few clicks, we were up and running.
(3) Spill felt friendlier and less clinical in tone, which made employees feel at ease.
(4) The quality of therapists met our high standards.
(5) It feeds us anonymised data regularly: feedback, usage summaries, PHQ and GAD scores (standard clinical measures) are valuable for us to correlate with top-level engagement and performance metrics to get actionable insights.
(6) It allowed people to opt-out, instead of having them opt-in: a perfect solution if your people and talent team are too busy to hassle people into using the product!
(7) It was flexible with pricing, offering a 30-day rolling contract and different pricing plans: perfect for a company of our size."
What advice would Thomas give to other companies looking to find and implement a preventative employee wellbeing solution?
"Start small. If implementing a benefit across the whole business sounds daunting, then don’t. Instead, start with a pilot project and monitor closely. At Juro we chose ten people at random, and gave them the opportunity to trial Spill over two weeks. We asked them to submit anonymous feedback, and made a decision to introduce to the wider business, based on their responses."
And finally, what was Thomas's take-out from the process? "Addressing mental health and working to improve it doesn’t have to be challenging — even for a scaling business
."
