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Customer Stories

Kearney and Unmind: A Whole-Organization Approach to Employee Mental Health

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Content

  • About
  • The problem
  • The solution
  • The outcome

Stats

  • HQ: Chicago, Illinois
  • Industry: Consulting
  • Company size: 5,500 employees

About

Kearney is a global management consulting firm with approximately 5,700 colleagues across more than 40 offices worldwide. 

With a high-performance culture amidst the industry’s demanding work environment, the Kearney team recognized the critical need to prioritize employee mental health and wellbeing.

The problem

A high-performance culture and an underperforming EAP

The consulting industry is known for an intense work culture which can impact employee mental health. The COVID-19 pandemic amplified these challenges, introducing widespread uncertainty. So in 2020, the Kearney team decided to renew their focus on employee mental health and wellbeing.

At the time, Kearney’s main support offering for employees was an international Employee Assistance Program (EAP) covering 65% of their offices. This service wasn’t meeting their employees’ needs, with poor quality of service, slow response times and limited availability of support in different languages. 

As a result, the utilization of their EAP was as low as 1% in some regions, and never higher than 3%. They were paying for a service that was barely used and wasn't providing the quality support their colleagues needed when they needed it.

Existing support mechanisms were disconnected, inconsistent across their global offices, and failed to provide meaningful, accessible mental health resources for their diverse, globally distributed workforce.

The solution

Global support for the full spectrum of mental health

Kearney knew they needed to take a strategic, centralized approach to employee mental health and wellbeing. 

To really understand their employee needs, they launched the "People Care Jam" – a week-long innovation event where over 2000 global colleagues came together and generated more than 300 ideas for building a culture that supports mental health.  

Kearney realized that ideas for action and impact were too important to be the remit of a small group of people. Their Jam approach allowed input from everyone; ideas were created and developed by employees themselves.

Kearney uncovered several key employee needs through their People Care Jam, including globally accessible support, comprehensive mental health and wellbeing resources, and tools that could be accessed anywhere. 

After an intentional evaluation process, Kearney chose to partner with Unmind. It was the perfect match: one, single platform that provided localized support for their global workforce and an extensive library of proactive and preventative wellbeing tools.

We wanted something that focused on both awareness and prevention... Unmind wasn't just a meditation app or a therapy app, it also had learning courses, desk yoga, sleep stories – a variety of tools because one size does not fit all.

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Misty Rallis
Global Director of People Care

In 2023, Kearney decided to replace their international EAP and expand their Unmind partnership to include therapy and crisis support services through Unmind Talk and Unmind Help.

The outcome

The Kearney team have transformed their approach to employee mental health.

By replacing their underperforming international EAP, Kearney has streamlined their support services, improved access to support, and given employees around the globe access to local therapists and coaches who speak their language and understand the cultural context.

Rather than colleagues needing to go here for this support and there for another kind of support, it is all in one place... it puts the power in our colleagues' hands.

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Zoe Hazelton
Senior Global Specialist of People Care

By truly listening to their employees and putting their needs first, the Kearney team have taken significant steps towards their goal of creating a culture of wellbeing where all employees can thrive.