In this episode, I am joined by a former colleague of mine: Amy Thompson, executive vice president and chief people officer at Mattel. Together, we discuss employee wellness and the multifaceted approach to that wellness.

Amy delves into Mattel’s employee-centric model and focuses on five areas of well-being: physical wellness, emotional wellness, financial wellness, career wellness, and social wellness and belonging.

Listen in to learn about employee wellness and how we can better address all aspects of wellness in the workplace.

You can also listen/share the episode directly syndicated on any of these channels: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcast | Stitcher | TuneIn

Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste

The last 18 months have been a massive catalyst for transformation in HR. We’ve had the pandemic, we’ve had increased conversations around social justice and inequity, and we’ve had conversations around a shift to remote, hybrid and flexible work. Individually, each of those is a macro-level event affecting our field. Coupled together, it’s transformative.

So, I wanted to ask Amy Thompson, executive vice president and chief people officer for Mattel, about her perspective when looking back at the last year-plus. How has this time reshaped what she thinks about the field?

Amy gets straight to the point. “We certainly took advantage of the last 15 months to completely pivot and create an employee experience with the employee as consumer in mind. And this really provided a catalyst for us to create a more dynamic and modern and collaborative experience for our employees at Mattel. We started with flexibility, and not only is flexibility a key enabler to our business, but [also] to the well-being of our employees.”

Amy expands on that thought. “In addition to providing customizable benefits packages that are designed to fit the lifestyle and budget of each of our employees, we also provide additional benefits and programs throughout the year to support the environment so our employees can truly thrive.”

Pillars of the Employee-Centric Well-Being Model

Amy knows how to break down her approach to wellness and the multifaceted approach to wellness in a way we can all understand. I think that it is so important to look at it holistically and from different angles.

So does Amy. "Our employee-centric model focuses on five areas of well-being":

• Physical wellness: "In addition to struggling with isolation, we knew that many of our employees weren't getting the daily movement and exercise they were accustomed to. So we quickly pivoted to offer fun live workouts from home that employees can do with their family members or themselves."

• Emotional wellness: "We often communicate about our employee assistance program and have complimentary access to Talkspace, which is a really neat app that provides real-time counseling via text or video. … Mattel also offers Headspace subscriptions to our employees, but we took that partnership a step further by diagnosing, through our pulse survey, what were the top issues that employees were really struggling with? And from there, we designed custom meditation and mindfulness experiences."

• Financial wellness: "We offer a broad spectrum of resources, from student loan refinancing to retirement programs and everything in between, so our employees can be healthy financially.

• Career wellness: "We firmly believe that career wellness is also a key driver of employees living a full and purposeful life. So we have a career action planning program that facilitates these conversations. And we've been intentional about incorporating a discussion around flexibility and career development so that employees can continue to balance the demands between work and home."

• Social wellness and belonging: "We've worked hard to provide unique opportunities for our employees to connect virtually over the past year. Our employee resource groups — we have eight of them — have been key drivers of this effort. And these affinity groups are truly designed to foster not only an inclusive workplace but to organize learning opportunities and discussions to encourage and elevate open and honest conversations around the topics that matter most to our employees."

The Future of HR is Not One-Size-Fits All

The idea of having a flexible portfolio of benefits that employees can opt into captured my attention. For me, it is the future of HR. Amy and Mattel prove that you can do it at scale.

“At Mattel, we know that we’re at our best when every member of our team feels respected, included and heard. And when everyone can show up as their best selves and do their best work every day.”

“My advice to peers would be to be courageous and to do the right thing. Set meaningful goals, stick to them, and publish progress updates on a regular basis. At Mattel, we have found that making inclusion a priority and communicating with transparency has been essential to building trust and commitment across the company. And we’ve also integrated those principles of equity and inclusion through the entire end-to-end employee experience. It’s truly embedded. It’s very much integrated into how we lead, how we communicate, how we grow and develop talent.”

People in This Episode

• Amy Thompson: Mattel’s Diversity & Inclusion Goals blog post, LinkedIn, 

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