Spotlight on Finastra’s 2020 Global Employee Wellness Program
During our focus on employee wellness, we continue to highlight customers that changed the look of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) landscape in 2020 with the use of unique mental, mindful, and healthy employee engagement opportunities to foster participation while remote.
Finastra’s CSR programs started the year with an incredible participation rate, but with the impact of the pandemic and beginning to work remotely, involvement quickly decreased to nearly a third in April. Virtual volunteering and donations became the early option for employees who wanted to stay involved in programs during the difficult time, raising a total of $132,871 from employee giving.
As the summer continued on, the Finastra CSR team began looking for ways to motivate and engage employees in other ways, feeling that employees were a bit spent from charitable engagement opportunities. The corporation wanted to make sure that all employees knew that during a very difficult time, Finastra was there to support them, and that their overall well-being was important to leadership and the success of the company.
Finastra’s CSR Director, Jay Mukhey, worked with a few employees to test out mindfulness classes, which help employees get out of their headspace and have a positive mindset during a difficult time. Following the mindfulness sessions, there was an immediate increase in engagement and a 25% increase in employee adoption of their employee engagement platform, Blackbaud’s YourCause CSRconnect™. It was evident that employees were still wanting to engage at work, they were just seeking a different kind of opportunity.
Finastra’s CSR team quickly pulled together employee resource group leaders, ambassadors, and regional leaders to help launch a series of health and wellness events while remaining aware of the different interests, cause-areas, and global content their regional employees desired. To ensure this, the team works to create a weekly newsletter featuring new events and sends it to CSR ambassadors to tailor and communicate the opportunities through locally.
Since the summer, exercise classes during lunch have been held virtually in the comfort of the employees’ homes. These provide employees a fun space to take a break from work and step away from the computer. Participation has been so good that they now provide daily fitness sessions through a variety of classes like Zumba, party-robics, and yogalates.
Weekly mindfulness sessions are held, including workshops on mental health, working from home, body image and suicide prevention. Even nutrition is being addressed with fun evening happy hours and cooking classes that provide employees with a healthy and tasty meal option to make with co-workers.
Introducing current and consistent employee wellness opportunities within Finastra’s CSR programs dramatically re-engaged the workforce during an extremely difficult time, creating efficiency and productivity. Overall, 1,345 unique volunteers participated in the wellness opportunities, giving over 10,200 volunteer hours.
