Orange: three years of talking openly about mental health

Orange Polska is one of the largest telecoms companies in Poland. It has well over ten thousand employees and contractors, from retail stores and customer service, through field technicians, to office and technology teams. It has worked with Mindgram for three years.

The situation

Orange wanted to give employees tools to actively look after their wellbeing, build their skills and cope with stress at work. This wasn't meant to be a one-off campaign or a benefit only HR knows about. The aim was a programme that runs all year and that people actually use. In large organisations that's rare: after a big launch, what usually remains is a link on the intranet and the question of whether anyone ever clicks it. One condition: mental health had to stop being taboo. Otherwise the people who need support won't reach for it.

What they did

• Open communication about mental health. The company talks about it directly, without euphemisms. That takes the stigma out of the subject and encourages people in a difficult situation to speak up about it, or to use support quietly.
• Active promotion of the platform and accounts for family members. Orange encourages employees not only to sign up but also to invite their loved ones. Support covers home, not just the office.
• Materials every month. Each month a new piece about the platform goes out across the company: a reminder of what's available and how to use it. The programme doesn't disappear after the first week.
• Workshops matched to needs. Three tracks drew the most interest: “Master stress” (tools for coping with pressure), “Live healthily” (sleep, diet, exercise) and “Career” (discovering and developing your own potential).
• A wellbeing check. Orange added a wellbeing check based on clinically validated tests. Every employee sees their own result and decides what to do with it. The company gets an aggregate picture, with no individual data.

What changed

Employees who need to talk to a person use consultations with specialists and therapy sessions. They most often choose a psychologist, a legal advisor or a relationship therapist. They don't have to find a specialist on their own or wait in a queue. The problems people bring are rarely “just about work”. Debt, a break-up or conflict at home affects their work just as much as the pressure to hit targets.

The wellbeing check gives employees their own result and a suggestion of where to start: a workshop, habit training or a conversation with a specialist. Nobody else sees that result. The company gets an aggregate picture and knows which topics to push in the coming months.

Workshops and podcasts have become a regular part of everyday life, not a special occasion. HR doesn't have to invent the programme from scratch every month: it gets ready-made materials, and conversations with its account manager at Mindgram are based on aggregate, anonymous data, not impressions.

The recommendation from Orange also opened doors to other companies in the group and to firms in other industries, which asked “how does it work for you?”.

With a wide range of specialists and development workshops, our employees have support with their everyday challenges.

Izabela Chocianowska, Wellbeing Manager, Orange

What this means for you

• Talk about mental health directly. Open communication from the company lowers the barrier more than any poster.
• Plan a rhythm, not a campaign. One piece of material a month, all year round, works better than a big launch followed by silence.
• Give people their own data. A fully confidential wellbeing check gives employees control over their result and gives the company an aggregate picture to base decisions on.