At Spin, our People Team is focused on the wellbeing of our employees every day. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the importance of caring for ourselves and each other. With World Mental Health Day on October 10, we are taking time to reflect on our company’s approach to wellness — not only on this day — but throughout the year.
When shelter in place began, the majority of our full-time US workforce moved to working remotely from home. Recognizing the balancing act required to navigate their personal and professional lives, we listened to feedback and established new policies, procedures and programming to support them.
Mental Health Days: Stop Working and Destress
Since July, we are proud to have offered our global full time employees the last Friday of the month off for a company-wide Mental Health Day. This day is intended for employees to take time off to recharge and step away from their work, which can be a challenge when working from home.
Benefits: Refocusing our Perks to Match Needs in a Work at Home Environment
We enhanced our company perks for many of our global full time employees, which included options such as workout classes over Zoom, DoorDash delivery discounts, monthly grocery stipends, home office equipment funds, and reimbursement for internet, massages, acupuncture or other qualifying wellness programs.
Resources: Connecting Employees to Mental Health Resources
We have offered Mindfulness webinars to share best practices on managing anxiety, uncertainty, and stress and access to additional on demand webinars. Through our Employee Assistance Program, we offer access to counseling resources, toolkits to de-stress, meditation services, and other digital tools to support mental health.
The week of October 12 is Mental Health Week at Spin, where we will offer tools and resources to employees throughout the week, including wellness information, a stress management campaign with challenges and prizes, employee conversations, and podcast as well as webinar links.
Virtual Events: Providing Spaces for Parents and Children to Interact
In the absence of gathering for informal office lunches, we set out to recreate experiences online to bring employees together even in a remote environment.
To connect employees with children, we offered Storytime at Spin, a virtual children’s book reading experience where parents and families could gather together to read and discuss favorite books.
In addition, we recognized how much food brings us together and launched Spin Can Cook, a monthly homemade live cooking series where employees can teach a favorite cultural dish and learn to make new foods together. These inclusive culinary adventures also invited family members to participate, including some of our youngest Spin kid chefs!
At Spin, we believe our company has a role to play in connecting our employees with the resources they need to take care of both their mind and body. We hope to continue adding resources and providing spaces to openly talk about how to navigate this New Normal together, today and every day.
Jennie Siu is the Director, Compensation & Benefits for the People Team at Spin where she focuses on employee wellbeing.
