The global pandemic further highlighted the need for dedicated mental health resources for our employees. All around the world, our employees showed great resilience and strength in adapting to the “new normal” of quarantined life. For some employees it meant working full-time from home while balancing family needs, and for others it meant increased safety measures and restrictions while performing essential work in our facilities. Whatever the personal circumstance, the COVID-19 pandemic has required an unprecedented amount of resilience, patience and mental and emotional flexibilities from our global employees.

In February 2021, we enhanced our Employee Assistance Benefit globally to include up to 12 in-person or virtual visits to support short-term counseling for our employees and their immediate family members. This enhancement included an increase in our work-life benefits such as resources for child-care, elder care, legal or financial services.

In addition, in 2021 we launched a global employee resource called Resilience Checkpoint™. This will increase employees' capacity to deal effectively with stress and overcome challenges by assessing an employee’s perceived and actual resilience levels and offering personalized referrals to the appropriate improvement techniques. Resilience Checkpoint evaluates employee resilience across four different dimensions, using monitoring tools to evaluate the impact of intervention strategies and improvement programs.  We are excited to offer this new program, which will roll out in various regions as language capabilities come online.