“When employees reach out to you with mental health problems you want to help them. Sending them to their general practitioner to be forwarded to a psychologist doesn’t feel like you’re actually helping them out, especially knowing the long wait it could take.”
“Our collaboration with OpenUp closed the gap in terms of real help we were able to offer employees regarding their mental health.“
At OpenUp, we strongly believe that a key component in the workplace is to create an environment where employees feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings. We are proud to say that we are not the only ones working based on this philosophy.
Companies such as Picnic, are on the same mission to make mental health accessible for their employees. Elise Baeriswyl, People Partner at Picnic, shared with us her experience with OpenUp and the outcomes of this strategic partnership.
We feel that our employees’ mental health is not something that happens outside of the workplace, rather it is very connected to us as an employer. When hearing about OpenUp, it immediately caught our attention and interest. It seemed like the perfect addition to what we already had in place with regard to (mental) health.
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Before turning to OpenUp, we used to take care of our employees’ mental well-being by offering appointments with company doctors or confidential advisors and of course support from the People team. We also provided coaching sessions, that is very different from talking to a psychologist. And sending someone to a company doctor isn’t always fitting. When we got in touch with OpenUp we had an initial conversation with Gijs, and we did a 3-months pilot. We then realized how much of an impact this service made and how this type of support could be a game changer for our employees’ mental health.
“Eventually, what makes the difference is not only to have people with skills but also people who feel energized, engaged and who are motivated. OpenUp is really bringing out this mentality.“
When employees reach out to you with mental health problems you want to help them. Sending them to their general practitioner to be forwarded to a psychologist doesn’t feel like you’re actually helping them out, especially knowing the long wait it could take. Our collaboration with OpenUp closed the gap in terms of real help we were able to offer employees regarding their mental health. And significantly reduced the hurdle for employees to talk to a psychologist, which made it a lot more accessible.
Having something as visible and clear as the collaboration with OpenUp made it easier to explain sensitive topics and talk about things related to mental health. When we introduced it, we had to be careful that it didn’t feel to employees as if we were passing the buck to OpenUp, while disregarding the topic within Picnic. So, it was very important to open the conversation transparently and I think that the dynamic went well. We kept emphasizing that every consultation with OpenUp was voluntary and confidential and, at the same time, we did really encourage people to reach out to somebody within the Picnic team if they felt comfortable with that.
What helped the most, aside from the consults per se, was the fact that that mental health became more of a conversation topic: if I explain something about OpenUp I am also inevitably making statements about mental health.
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“Without OpenUp, mental health would have been a much harder topic to talk about. The realization that OpenUp has now become part of the professional environment for our colleagues is really impressive. Now, I couldn’t even imagine Picnic not offering this service.“
It has been a very open collaboration from the start. We were very honest about what was important to us as employers and the flexibility OpenUp showed was refreshing. When we did the pilot, we wanted to make sure that the quality of the conversations was good, so everyone who has a consultation also can answer a few questions to rate the talk. The People team also cared very much about having multiple languages and short waiting times not to lose the moment when an employee sought help and that is something that OpenUp delivered well from the start.
We have different People teams, and we also use Slack as the main communication system. We made the first announcement during a Monday standup, but we also made sure to target all the different groups in the company with different digital and non-digital means.
Overall, everyone is genuinely happy with the service being offered. Many employees also mentioned that they used OpenUp personally and it was very helpful. In addition, our engagement rates are also high when it comes to OpenUp masterclasses and courses. We believe that all the content OpenUp offers on the website is very valuable as it can be the first step to exploring topics about mental health and recognising something that people might not be yet aware of. For example, we work with a very young group of employees, and many of them seem to really benefit from the webinars provided about self-confidence and self-help techniques. The fact that people can browse through this content as well is very powerful.
