Safety Week Day 3 - Checking in On Wellbeing

Day 3 of Safety Week is “Wellbeing Wednesday”, where our staff get together and inspire each other to make healthy choices and give more focus to their mental and physical wellbeing. 

Jacobs actively supports the positive mental health of our people and our communities. People are the heart of our business, and we recognize that we can only be as strong as our employees, business partners, clients, families, and neighbors. We strive to create healthy working environments that promote positive mental wellbeing and support our 77,000 global employees through our peers, management, and our network of trained positive mental health champions.

This commitment is a manifestation of BeyondZero®, our culture of caring.  With sensitivity to our global cultures we develop programs and practices that help keep our people healthy, active, and supported. We believe this is good for our people, our communities, and our business: so we’re excited to see our culture gaining momentum with the recent winning of two industry awards. 

Going for Gold in the U.K. 

In April 2018 we received a Gold Award in U.K. mental health charity Mind’s Workplace Wellbeing Index 2017-18, a benchmark of industry policy and best practice. Our Gold Award shows we are achieving excellence in our workplace, recognizes our success in embedding mental health into company practices and policies, and demonstrates a long-term, in-depth commitment to staff mental health.

Jacobs worked with Mind to develop our “mental health matters” strategy focused on promoting positive mental health and wellbeing across the business, staff and their families. The strategy delivers focused training, tools and techniques to enable our network of employee positive mental health champions to offer early intervention and interim support for staff while directing employees to the appropriate professional options.

Asia Pacific’s Biggest Mental Health Check-In

One of the highlights of the last few months was being the first professional technical services firm in the world to participate in the Biggest Mental Health Check-in following its launch in November 2017 across the Asia Pacific region.

The Biggest Mental Health Check-in is the first of its kind in the world. It creates a private, personalized digital dashboard for employees on their mental health, involving a 12-minute online survey plus a 'Medibio-ID' screening. Medibio has developed an objective measurement of mental health through assessment of autonomic function and circadian patterns. This is achieved by wearing a ‘heart-rate’ like device while sleeping.

Jacobs participants from the Asia Pacific region who completed the Check-in received a 16-page dashboard and a proposed customized mental health program including exercises and tips to improve wellbeing. The report outlined what was measured, why it was measured and where the participant sat in terms of population norms. 

The focus on promoting positive mental health at Jacobs reflects our commitment to put people at the heart of our business – our employees, clients and communities.