Livia Martini is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Gympass. Here are five things she focuses on when building Gympass’ health and wellbeing program:
1. Health and wellbeing practices should be holistic and well rounded
At Gympass, we offer expert help from professionals in each sector so that our team can take an informed approach and collect advice to address all types of concerns.
2. Take suggestions from employees
By listening to employees, we can better understand what issues they are facing and what resources they need. When we take employee feedback into account, initiatives are created with a much higher chance of success.
At Gympass, we use an employee engagement tool that allows employees to share opinions and start anonymous conversations with HR. We created our best initiatives based on suggestions from this tool. We also have engagement committees made up of employees. This program allows employees to become champions of culture and take charge of projects. This shows that everyone can have an impact in making Gympass a great place to work.
3. Support individual moments in the lives of employees
Looking at the individual as a whole also implies understanding and supporting employees in aspects beyond their day-to-day work. We are ensuring that we have a way to support them at important moments in their lives. Gympassers are entitled to time off without needing an excuse. These days can be used at any time throughout the year. Flexible time off allows employees time to rest and tend to family or mental health needs.
We’ve also implemented practices to help employees separate work and personal life, which is hard when working from home. Some things we recommend include:
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- Blocking agendas to allow time for breaks
- Avoiding scheduling meetings late in the day
- Giving support to employees to have adequate workspaces and materials
- Monitoring overtime
- Incentivizing time off to compensate for the most demanding days
4. Empower leaders as wellbeing advocates
People leaders have a fundamental role in the wellbeing of employees. Managers serve both as examples for their teams and act as the ‘first point of contact’ when issues arise. We prepare leaders with training and tools to develop safe environments where everyone is comfortable asking for help.
At Gympass, we have a development path focused especially on new managers and improving management skills. In addition, the HR team is very close to the business, advising and guiding managers in day-to-day challenges so employees can have maximum support.
5. Bring wellbeing to the forefront of company culture
It’s important to promote team engagement activities that also involve health and well-being. Our mission is to ‘make wellbeing universal’, so wellness is top of mind in everything we do. Within the last year, we launched multiple new programs to engage our team in unique ways. These include workout challenges, lecture series with wellness experts, and digital communication channels where employees can discuss wellbeing topics.
And, of course, for us, Gympass itself is a tool that provides different paths to health care in an integrated and hybrid way, in which each individual can find solutions for wellbeing.