How BearingPoint Built a Successful Workplace Mental Health Prevention Program

BearingPoint is an independent management and technology consulting firm that supports clients in more than 75 countries and employs nearly 10,000 people worldwide. As part of a proactive, preventive approach, BearingPoint France’s HR team has offered teale’s mental health solution to its teams for more than a year. Following a successful pilot, 1,500 employees now have access to it to take care of their mental health every day. Katy Naujoks, HR Director for BearingPoint France-Benelux-Africa, tells us how the program was implemented.

A pioneer in workplace well-being initiatives

In a demanding sector such as consulting, BearingPoint has always stood out through numerous initiatives supporting quality of working life.

‍“Since the beginning, overall well-being has been a key concern for us. In terms of flexibility, for example, we allow employees to work remotely from abroad during certain periods, or to take a ‘workation’, meaning working remotely from their holiday destination. When it comes to parenthood, we offer many childcare places and have also extended maternity and second-parent leave. At the same time, we have developed a support program to make it easier for employees to access housing. All of this is part of our employer promise,” explains Katy Naujoks about BearingPoint’s context.

Teale: an additional building block supporting their employer promise

‍“We want to offer employees solutions for every aspect of well-being, so that we can anticipate needs before they become problems. Since teale addresses the mental health dimension, it felt natural to add it to our range of tools,” the HR Director explains.

According to her, what made teale stand out from other mental health solutions?

• The teale team adapts to the challenges of the consulting sector. Katy explains: “From our first conversations, I understood that they knew the consulting environment, including the level of commitment and availability it can require from employees. That made me realize this would not be just another tool, but genuine support in implementing a tailored solution.”
• The support is both individual, to help each employee, and collective, to identify and address issues in depth across the organization. “For every HR initiative we promote, we aim to combine individual and collective approaches. It is part of BearingPoint’s DNA, and teale perfectly met this dual objective,” she adds.

The keys to deployment: a pilot and CSR representatives

To get started, the HR team decided to begin with a proof of concept, testing the solution with two teams that were particularly interested in the topic.

Katy says:

‍“The feedback was very positive, both qualitatively and through the statistics teale provided each month during the pilot. Based on this feedback, we decided to scale the project up to 1,500 people. The CSR representatives, who connect BearingPoint’s leadership initiatives with the teams, played an essential role in sharing the information with as many people as possible. Similarly, the teale team members who worked directly with employees to explain the approach and the solution were instrumental in helping people adopt the tool.”

Usage figures reveal regular use of the solution

Three times a month: this is the average monthly number of times each teale user accesses the solution. This encouraging figure shows that taking care of oneself is becoming a habit. Anonymous qualitative feedback points in the same direction: “I do not work directly on mental health, but it affects my professional career. I therefore try to find every resource that can support and help me, particularly when it comes to opening these conversations with my colleagues and management,” one employee explains. Another shares the same view: “This is exactly what I needed: step-by-step support that is caring and encouraging. I am discovering new concepts and techniques that help me approach my daily life more calmly.”

Another telling figure is the 4.9/5 satisfaction score for the group webinars already organized, each of which brought together nearly 150 employees. “When you know that time is extremely valuable in consulting firms and that these webinars are not mandatory, it is a good sign that employees were able to set aside an hour for themselves,” Katy adds.

What are the HR team’s next goals? First, to offer regular group sessions three to four times a year on topics highlighted in teale’s monthly reports. Second, to reach engagement rates of 50% by next summer!