Psychological support service for FUIB's employees scaled up to 3,000 persons

Since May of this year, FUIB has been providing employees with access to the services of a psychologist, psychotherapist and coach as part of the Psychological Support Service.

The Psychological Support Service is implemented within the Wellbeing project. Its purpose is to teach people to take care of their own health and wellbeing: to help to find balance, to relieve anxiety, to solve problems in relationships with colleagues and close people. The topics of requests that can be addressed are not limited to work and can relate to any question.

The provider of this service is Wellbeing Company, which ensures the operation of the Service and guarantees complete confidentiality of requests.

If an employee has a question that requires the help of a psychologist - they turn to a special call center.

Tetiana Kostiuchenko, FUIB's Deputy Chairman of the Management Board, told how the initiative of psychological support arose: “It all started with the fact that, after the annual eNPS staff satisfaction survey, we saw many comments from employees about fatigue and burnout due to changes in recent years: pandemic, remote work. Work and personal life are mixed, which leads to the accumulation of fatigue and stress. This service was introduced specially in order to support our people and to give them the opportunity to deal with difficult issues."

From May to August 2021, a psychological support service was deployed for a pilot group of 1,025 employees from various divisions of the bank. After each consultation, the employee assessed their satisfaction with its quality on a ten-point scale. The average score in the bank is 9.7 points out of 10.

In September 2021, the service has been scaled to 3,000 people.

"We are scaling up the psychological support service, because our main value is people. It is important that they feel good and stable at all times, at work or at home," says Mariya Martynova, FUIB's HR business partner and project manager. "As a customer of the services, the bank receives only generalized data: this is the percentage of requests from the total number of users, the level of satisfaction with the service and the main directions of requests. These data help to understand whether the service works effectively and to determine further areas of care for employees".

By the end of the year, the bank's employees have the opportunity to receive three free consultations from proven and experienced expert psychologists and coaches, including doctors of science. Starting from the fourth consultation, the participant pays a symbolic payment: less than 10% of the total cost of the consultation, the rest is paid by the bank. These are unique conditions for FUIB employees so that employees can experience the service: usually in the work of such services, free is only the first consultation. The conditions of participation in the payment of the employee were recommended by Wellbeing Company, who emphasize that the personal monetary contribution is very important to maintain a responsible attitude of participants, because, according to psychologists, the value of free services is quickly dropped out of the equation. In addition, it establishes a direct relationship between the employee and the provider as a customer and service provider. The latter guarantees complete confidentiality for each participant both in the documentary form and within the professional ethics of psychologists: no one can find out who addressed a specialist and with what question. FUIB receives only generalized statistics. Thus, the most popular topics of requests among FUIB employees during the project were the following: child-parent relations (17%), professional development and professional relationships (10%), life balance (10%), work with emotions (8%).

"Such statistics are another proof that people are not used to take care of their mental health. We need to develop a culture of self-care - and we see this as our role as an employer,” said Tetiana Kostiuchenko, FUIB's Deputy Chairman of the Management Board.

According to a study of the level of wellbeing in Ukrainian companies conducted by Deloitte Ukraine and Wellbeing Company, the wellbeing of employees is not just a whim of the employees, but a guarantee of business efficiency. Workers with mental health problems who do not receive proper care are 50% less engaged in work. This affects various performance indicators of companies, including financial results.

According to Anna Sukhar, senior specialist in FUIB's acquiring support department and a user of the service, working with a psychologist exceeded her expectations, helped to look at familiar things in a new way and to reflect correctly on internal needs. “Most employers offer coffee and cookies in the office, while people need something else. It is a pleasure to work in a company that cares about the wellbeing of employees. This is exactly what FUIB became for me,” says Anna Sukhar.

The next step after scaling up the Service to 3,000 employees, FUIB plans to make the psychological support service available to all bank's employees.

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The Mental Health & Wellbeing program at FUIB is implemented in several directions: psychological support platform, training programs, health care. The latter includes changes in the approach to health insurance programs.