Improving employee retention through mental wellbeing: how Spill supported the Multiverse team during hypergrowth
Paige Rinke is People Director at Multiverse, an $800m ed-tech company creating a better alternative to university
The challenge
Multiverse is a tech company for apprenticeships, and it has a very clear mission: to create a diverse group of future leaders. Naturally, that mission is reflected internally, too. Paige and the People team’s job is to create a truly diverse environment where everyone can thrive.
Like any young and successful tech company, Multiverse found itself growing at shoe-skidding speed. Between setting up whole new teams and making quick internal promotions, people’s roles were changing fast.
Like any young and successful tech company, Multiverse found itself growing at shoe-skidding speed. Between setting up whole new teams and making quick internal promotions, people’s roles were changing fast.
Multiverse more than doubled its headcount during 2021, to over 400 people
For Paige and other team leads, a lot of time was being spent emotionally supporting individual team members as the structure of the company evolved around them.
“Wellbeing isn’t separate to work,” Paige says. “It’s not just about interventions, it’s about having the right structures in place.” Multiverse needed a way of providing reactive mental health support while they grew the company outwards – as well as ongoing, proactive support for the whole team moving forwards.
“Wellbeing isn’t separate to work,” Paige says. “It’s not just about interventions, it’s about having the right structures in place.” Multiverse needed a way of providing reactive mental health support while they grew the company outwards – as well as ongoing, proactive support for the whole team moving forwards.
Multiverse's approach
The People team at Multiverse sees mental wellbeing as a measure of engagement, which itself directly influences employee retention.
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When people aren't feeling their best, they're at risk of leaving
“Performance and wellbeing are inherently linked. We need people to perform, so we give them the resources, the structure and the clarity to do a good job. When people aren’t feeling their best, they’re at risk of leaving.”
Some of the Multiverse team at the opening of their New York office earlier in 2022
Where Spill comes in
As the teams at Multiverse grew quickly, access to therapy from Spill provided a robust support system while new managers were put in place. “We were using Spill as a reactive tool. It was a backstop, so we can say hand-on-heart that we’ve done everything we can to support this person’s mental health.”
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If people came back after a challenging time, they told us that therapy from Spill helped to keep them in work
“You don’t have to be in crisis mode, you don’t have to do a course of 6 sessions. You can ask a single question if you want to. It’s not a service you have to reach out for.”
Getting more people into therapy doesn’t just help to retain talent, but it has the perk of freeing up more of the People team’s time, too. And as more companies begin to measure good mental health as an indicator of employee engagement, Paige says that seeing support as a ‘soft’ benefit is outdated.
“A lot of companies do lip service and chuck a programme at this instead of addressing what’s going on,” she says. “I’d ask them, do you genuinely want to help people access great therapy, or do you want something to write on your wall? The only option is to have something embedded in the way people work. And that’s why we love Spill.”
Getting more people into therapy doesn’t just help to retain talent, but it has the perk of freeing up more of the People team’s time, too. And as more companies begin to measure good mental health as an indicator of employee engagement, Paige says that seeing support as a ‘soft’ benefit is outdated.
“A lot of companies do lip service and chuck a programme at this instead of addressing what’s going on,” she says. “I’d ask them, do you genuinely want to help people access great therapy, or do you want something to write on your wall? The only option is to have something embedded in the way people work. And that’s why we love Spill.”