Global HR — 7 min
Partnerships — 5 min
At Remote, we believe honest conversations about mental health in our workplaces are a good thing. This has always been true, but now more than ever in light of the hardships in the workforce and our personal lives due to Covid-19. This is a crucial time for companies everywhere to ensure that their employees feel supported and have access to the care they need.
View original tweet at twitter.com
To this end, we are thrilled to announce our recent partnership with Modern Health! This post will share many of the ways Remote supports mental health and wellness for our 400+ team members globally.
Modern Health is a leading workplace mental health platform providing everything from digital content to a global network of certified coaches and licensed therapists, all in a single app.
Since September 2021, our people team at Remote has been rolling out new offerings to our employees in dozens of countries across the globe. We selected Modern Health as a partner due to the breadth of their offerings and coverage as well as their ability to provide culturally-centered care.
Nadia Vatalidis, Remote’s VP of people, was a driving force behind this program. “We evaluated 15 amazing vendors before deciding on Modern Health. We really wanted to explore what was out there, since we had this unique opportunity to prioritize wellness and mental health while the company is still relatively young,” she shared. “Ultimately, there wasn’t another offering that could serve employees in 50+ countries and in different time zones with therapy, coaching, and extras like meditation. Modern Health checked every box for us.”
Since launching Modern Health, more than 74% of Remote employees have registered. “I'm absolutely blown away by the amount of registrations, I have never seen a signup this large,” says Vatalidis. “The metrics around session attendance have also been insirpring.”
Amanda Rock, an employee on the growth team, says that the therapy sessions have already been transformative for her. “For years I was looking for a therapist specializing in the type of support I need, but I was never able to find one until now. I had actually given up on looking until I signed up for Modern Health. I’m so happy that I’m finally getting the exact kind of help I’ve been looking for my entire life!”
For Keah Nguyen, a people specialist at Remote, it’s reassuring to know that resources are available to her whenever she needs them. “I feel supported just knowing that Modern Health is there,” she says. “So that if something does come up for me, access to a one-on-one session to talk to a professional is just a few clicks away.”
Beyond offering Modern Health to our internal employees, Remote’s benefits team is exploring future opportunities to offer mental health care and wellness to all employees hired by Remote. As an employer of record helping companies hire employees and contractors globally, our team is constantly expanding the benefits we can offer to create trusting workplaces for all of our customers and their team members around the world.
“We are thrilled to see companies such as Remote paving the way when it comes to employee wellbeing,” says Lorna Henri, VP of Client Success at Modern Health. “We believe that every employee, wherever they may be working across the globe, should have access to evidence-led mental health support that meets their specific needs.”
Remote and Modern Health share values beyond the belief that employees should have access to mental health and wellness support. Modern Health also believes in the importance of remote and flexible work. In fact, Remote and Modern Health have both been named as best medium-sized companies for remote employees by Quartz.
As we know, remote work offers numerous benefits to employees, but those benefits also bring unique challenges. According to Nadia Vatalidis, “In a remote environment, it’s so easy to just work around the clock when you’re at home. That’s not going to create wellness for employees or a good employee experience. In fact, it's going to turn into burnout, attrition, and toxicity in the workplace. Remote workers need support to understand boundaries and build a healthy work-life balance.”
In addition to offering Modern Health’s therapy, coaching, and other services to our employees, Remote has a variety of initiatives to help employees prioritize their mental health and wellness.
One is quarterly self-care days. Each quarter, the whole company takes a day off to recharge and refresh. This is in addition to Remote’s unlimited PTO policy, with 20 days minimum each year, and parental leave policies.
Our people team is also working on new leadership training. “We are adding more components to our leadership onboarding experience focused on mental health, because it's important that we all speak the same language,” says Vatalidis. “From our executive team to middle managers and people leaders, we all need to work together to make this a people-first and health-first environment. It can be hard to do this in a hyper-growth startup environment, but it just takes a lot of communication and reminders to really get the message across about why everyone needs to take care of themselves first and foremost.”
And of course, our asynchronous work policy at Remote empowers employees to manage their work responsibilities around their personal lives and wellness — not the other way around.
Does your organization also offer unique benefits related to mental health and wellness? Share with us on Twitter @Remote to join the conversation!
Subscribe to receive the latest
Remote blog posts and updates in your inbox.
Global HR — 7 min
Global Employment & Expansion — 5 min
Global HR — 7 min
Contractor Management — 4 min