It is underlining its commitment to wellness in the workplace as World Mental Health Day on October 10th promotes the need for increased mental health awareness, prevention of mental disorders, as well as support and best practice recovery-focused interventions worldwide.
MetLife has trained 16 mental health first aiders at its Brighton office enabling them to spot signs of mental health issues among colleagues, offer them initial help and guide them towards support. Many of the staff trained are also customer-facing employees and could potentially help benefit customers too.
Other mental health initiatives include launching financial wellness training sessions for staff – MetLife’s research* shows one in three employees across the UK are distracted at work by financial issues.
It has already run mental health awareness courses for managers supported by the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and provides mindfulness courses to staff entitled ‘Training Your Mind’ designed to increase wellbeing, reduce anxiety and reduce the chances of re-occuring depression.
Staff also benefit from subsidised yoga and meditation sessions plus short taster sessions focused on wellbeing and the benefits of meditation.
Dominic Grinstead, Managing Director, MetLife UK said: “Mental wellness is a key focus for MetLife, offering support to customers through early claims intervention.
“It follows that employees must be a key focus too so a lot of effort goes into mental wellbeing initiatives and World Mental Health Day is a good time to underline the commitment to helping staff and customers.”
MetLife UK’s Head of Risk and Compliance, Andy Nibloe, runs the mindfulness sessions which are part of a wider programme spearheaded by MetLife’s Employee Experience Forum, launched last year, which focuses on employee engagement, diversity and inclusion, wellness and corporate social
responsibility.
The six-week mindfulness courses have been running since last year and over 60 members of staff have participated. Employees taking part attend six sessions and explore what mindfulness is and the considerable benefits that it can bring to our lives. These include reducing anxiety and depression, living in the present moment, improved decision making and greater creativity and innovation.
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