In sickness and in health: How operators are working harder than ever to improve employee wellbeing

“It’s about getting the best people, retaining them, nurturing a creative environment and helping to find a way to innovate,” Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo and employee number 20 of Google, once said. Or to quote another famous entrepreneur Richard Branson: “Take care of your employees, and they will take care of your business. As simple as that.”

For most businesses, however, this is far easier said than done. Whereas up until recently employee luxuries such as an office ping pong table, free breakfast and yoga classes were a prerequisite for a modern, forward-thinking business, those benefits are now commonplace and no longer enough for creating an engaged and productive workforce.

Today, companies are now having to dig much deeper into ways to improve employee wellbeing and work even harder to foster a culture which, for many businesses, can span numerous countries and continents. Get this right and companies can not only vastly improve the day-to-day lives and overall happiness of their employees, they can also accrue long-term financial benefits through the work of a labour pool which is far more motivated and productive.

One area of growing importance for businesses now is that of employee mental health. This is an emotive issue which is gaining widespread traction in the UK in particular as the debate between the main parties on NHS funding and whether it should be given the same priority as physical health rages on. Indeed, according to the Centre for Mental Health, mental health issues cost UK employers alone an estimated £34.9bn a year through reduced productivity, sickness absence and staff turnover.

That is an eyewatering figure, but the financial cost is just scratching the surface and is an issue the online gambling industry must deal with. So, while the sector is rightly increasingly focused on ensuring operators refrain from targeting or treating customers suffering from stress, anxiety and depression, gambling companies are now increasingly looking internally at their own employees’ wellbeing too.

Former Global Gaming CEO Joacim Möller believes a lot has been done to raise awareness and reduce the stigma around mental health, both inside and outside of egaming, but says there is still much more work for companies to do. “People are now more open to discussing their own mental health, even in a professional context where it was previously considered a taboo. If we consider that, statistically, more absent days are lost due to mental health than to other illness or injury, it becomes apparent that employers can no longer look the other way.”

Removing the stigma

With Mental Health Awareness Week taking place from 13 to 19 May, this issue will once again find itself back in the news with a plethora of events and marketing campaigns scheduled to take place over the seven-day period. And if the latest stats are to be believed, it would appear the campaign’s publicity is much needed. According to mental health charity Mind, one in four people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year, while one in six will experience a common mental health problem in any given week.

William Hill is one company taking this issue as seriously as anyone. The London-listed operator recently announced a partnership with corporate health provider Let’s Get Healthy to launch a new campaign entitled ‘Be Your Best Self’, featuring a number of three-hour workshops for senior leaders in Leeds, London and Gibraltar. Let’s Get Healthy has vast experience in this area after working with familiar brands like Co-op, Asda and G’s Fresh and as part of its work with Hills has designed sessions to help staff improve rest, control their emotions when under pressure and stay physically and mentally energised.

William Hill has made mental health app Unmind available to employees

As part of the campaign, William Hill is also providing employees with access to corporate mental health app Unmind, which provides a range of mindfulness, breathing and stretching exercises as well as access to critical care providers for immediate support. In addition, employees will also soon obtain access to another app which will help them to keep track of their finances – one of the biggest contributing factors to high levels of stress and anxiety.

“Mental health is a huge issue for everyone in this country but also worldwide as well,” William Hill’s group reward director Ed Airey tells EGR Intel. “There are an awful lot of things that create positive and negative mental health, and what we’re trying to do is not look at mental health as its own topic and try and come up with diagnostic tools to help people specifically deal with mental health.

“Historically organisations tended to look at this reactively. The solution is well intended but it’s all about doing something once something is going wrong. We are much more about being proactive and trying to ensure that we are in a good place wellbeing wise and then all of the reactive tools aren’t quite as important. We looked at it much more holistically and try as part of our ongoing approach and our culture to look at all the different things that are contributors to positive and negative mental health and analyse where we can make improvements in the way we do things.”

Taking the lead

There has been little to no research conducted specifically on employee wellbeing in the online gambling sector. However, it is well known how difficult men find it to discuss mental health issues given the apparent historic stigma attached to this. Given how male-dominated this sector is and how highly pressurised it can be, it’s likely to be an unhidden dilemma for many companies. According to the Mental Health Foundation, more than a third of men (35%) wait over two years or have never disclosed a mental health problem to a friend or family member compared to 25% of women.

However, what is arguably an even bigger problem for this sector, given its global reach, is the disparity between how mental health problems are dealt with and perceived across different countries. In the UK, for example, the conversation is much more mature than it is in other parts of the world, which is why William Hill is using the UK’s Mental Health Awareness Week to expand the discussion into different locations.

“When we speak to our colleagues in other countries, yes it’s an issue but it isn’t getting the same level of media attention and it isn’t a topic of conversation,” Anne McCormack, William Hill’s group head of internal communications, explains. “So, in a way we are driving the agenda in those countries through the work we’re doing here, making it more of a topic than it would otherwise had been had we not had debates here in the UK. I think we’re definitely more mature as a country which means that will have a knock-on positive impact in the countries that we’re working in.”

Creating a company culture that enables employees to thrive and be both healthy and productive is no easy feat. Indeed, the demands of employers are far greater today than they were only a few years ago, with Millennials and Generation Z now making up a higher percentage of the workforce and few companies in this sector can really claim to be at the forefront in this regard. Companies undergoing major restructuring as a result of mergers and acquisitions may find this task particularly difficult given the stress and anxiety that can be created around job security.

And Maria Bourke, managing director of corporate health and wellbeing provider Let’s Get Healthy, admits it is understandable that during periods such as this it can be difficult for companies to focus and invest so much in their employees. However, she still believes it is worth it for the long-term benefits. “Times are hard for many businesses with lots of change and uncertainty,” she says. “Health and wellbeing is not usually at the top of the list for investment but as more businesses share their success, more companies are investing.”

Winning formula

Instilling a company-wide culture that is value-based and takes employee health seriously must emanate from a firm’s wider leadership team if it is to become an integral part of a company’s DNA and identity. One company that has done this better than most is Sky Betting & Gaming (SBG) – currently undergoing its own integration process with The Stars Group – which has long won plaudits internally and externally for being a great place to work. Its executive chairman Richard Flint was also last year named as the UK’s number one CEO by employee review firm Glassdoor.

So how did SBG achieve this? A key part of its success has been the flat structure the Leeds-based firm implemented early on in its history – something SBG claims has had an important role in creating an entrepreneurial spirit within the business and an engaged workforce. Popular initiatives have included SBG’s mini festival ‘The Gathering’ and the ‘SBG Way’, which is a scheme that succinctly explains the company’s key values and ways to grow.

On employee mental health specifically, SBG also has what it calls Mental Health First Aiders working across the business. These are volunteers who have been trained by Leeds Mind to be a point of contact should an employee need someone to talk to.

SBG has received numerous accolades for its efforts too. Last year, the operator took home the inaugural Employer of the Year Award at the EGR Operator Awards in October, while the company regularly features in The Sunday Times’ Best Companies to Work For list and was ranked the 17th best company to work for in the UK by Glassdoor. More importantly though, the company’s investment in its approximately 1,500 employees has had a positive impact on the fortunes of the business, highlighted by the impressive growth of SBG in the last few years and a staff turnover of around 11%.

Bourke from Let’s Get Healthy emphasises this point further and says there is a strong financial case for a business to invest in the wellbeing of its staff. “Our campaigns deliver great results. Businesses measure improvement in recruitment and retention of employees, improved safety, engagement, absence and performance.

“The benefits for employees include stronger physical health, happiness at home and vastly improved mental health,” she adds. “Many employees share personal stories with us of finding more friends at work, feeling cared for and having a supportive network to help them with challenges at home.”

Cultural revolution

For a company like SBG, headquartered in the Northern England town of Leeds, the fight for high-quality talent is perhaps not quite as it is in other locations, particularly some of egaming’s prime jurisdictions. Malta, for example, has now become the unofficial home of the online gaming industry with numerous operators in EGR’s Power 50 list based on the small island in the Mediterranean Sea. This influx of new companies means it is becoming increasingly difficult for businesses to both attract and retain talent in the face of such fierce competition.

“Increased competition for talent in the industry in recent years has made it possible for employees and jobseekers to be pickier, so employers need to constantly up their game and create attractive employee value propositions in order to acquire and retain the right people,” Möller of Global Gaming, which is located in Malta, states. “Employee wellbeing, including mental health, has become one of the key elements of a modern value proposition.

“It’s a case of Darwin’s ‘Adapt or Die’ for employers and most companies are, of course, adapting. That said, there’s lots more that can be done.” In fact, Global Gaming itself took this emphasis on employee wellbeing one step further last year by announcing that its new affiliate programme would begin offering its affiliate partners sick pay compensation. This new scheme, which was designed to give “peace of mind” to smaller affiliates unable to work due to serious illness, was well received across the industry and was part of Global Gaming’s aim to “treat every affiliate partner as an extended member of the team”.

Luckily, there has yet to be a serious illness, which means the company is unable to assess its impact. However, using internal and external employee benchmarking is one of the most effective ways for measuring just how effective certain employee engagement schemes are. Initiatives such as Mental Health Awareness Week give all companies the opportunity to look in the mirror at how they are dealing with issues as critical as this.