Stella Gavinho, Group Head of Wellbeing at Entain, believes leadership buy-in is crucial to a successful global employee health and wellbeing programme, and will be talking about this on a panel at The Watercooler Event, alongside senior executives from United Airlines and Sky Television.
The Watercooler Event takes place on 7th and 8th May 2025 at ExCeL in London, and is Europe’s leading trade show, with free-to-attend content, dedicated to employee health and wellbeing.
You can find out more and register to attend here.
With more than 11 years experience at Bupa working in wellbeing roles, latterly as Head of Global Workplace Health and Wellbeing, Gavinho is well placed to talk about the challenges of global roll outs, the need for a more personalised EAP experience and moving away from ‘classic’ return on investment measures.
We spoke to her ahead of her appearance at The Watercooler…
What are the main challenges that you face, because your role is global?
Gosh, where do I start?!
There’s the challenge of: how do you scale to over 20 countries? How can you be fair with a proposition that is for 30,000 people? How can this proposition feel personalised, and relatable, no matter where you are in the world?
So, the big question – how do you overcome all those challenges?
I’m lucky because I got a lot of valuable experience from working at Bupa, which is one of the pioneers of workplace health and wellbeing.
It gave me experience of seeing this done on a large scale because they had 85,000 employees in over 100 countries.
What is that approach?
It’s about setting up a network first.
You have to have representatives all around the world, as well as team wellbeing leads in every country; typically the lead is from HR. They are responsible for setting up a community of champions and mental health first aiders to help them.
And presumably you need to make these leads feel part of the global team?
Yes. We get together on a monthly basis and decide on the topics that we will cover, and how we can land these in each country.
As I’ve been in the role 6 years now, the network is mature and we have defined, together, global standards, which everyone should attain consistently. That includes things like free therapy and access to an online gym, etc.
But there’s also a whole agenda that needs to be localised, led by this local community. But I make myself, and my team, available for consultancy if there’s anything they’re not sure about, or never done before.
We’ve been able to create a learning environment where people are learning from each other and sharing assets.
What were the biggest challenges in setting up this network at the start?
Building momentum. At the beginning my team was very much in the centre, managing everything and bringing that momentum. Now the momentum is generated, it’s very different.
What advice would you have for any readers who are starting out trying to set up a network, with a global remit?
First and foremost, get leadership buy-in. Without that, it’s very hard to start from bottom up. It’s much easier to work top down, but sometimes that just has to be done.
To get buy-in in every country, did you have to get a senior sponsor in every country?
Yes. I had to start from scratch in all countries.
I’d advise starting with your biggest communities and identify a leader to sponsor the programme, then take a phased approach to roll out.
What advice would you have on rolling out a global programme like this?
Don’t be too strict on your model. Our company structure is different in different countries so you need to go with the flow a bit, and go where the energy is! If there are countries asking for your programme, go with them first. Then, once you have five countries on board, you have a network. Now, get them working together and slowly add more countries.
What about differences between countries?
That’s why we really rely on the quality of our lead in each country. You need someone who is knowledgeable and has influence in the country.
Champions can be volunteers and can be any department, any level of expertise, any level of seniority… but for your lead, you want someone who really understands the culture and has a degree of influence. You need this to create the appropriate psychological safety with your network.
My other advice would be to meet a country where they are. In Bulgaria, at the beginning, you couldn’t say the words ‘mental health’ or people would leave the room. So, we agreed not to talk about mental health but to talk about stress instead. Then, slowly, we built on that and started to tackle the stigma.
How do you deal with the different levels that countries are at when you roll out a global initiative, in terms of messaging?
We always have some big global campaigns everyone has to do. Even if we think that it might not land in a country, we’ll do anyway.
We also rolled out the EAP, at the beginning, everywhere, because we’re very passionate about ensuring all employees have support. We did a big campaign around that role out using all our channels, shouting about it for the first two years consistently, even though the actual utilisation at that time was tiny.
That’s what we hear a lot from many employers about low utilisation rates….
Sometimes you need to understand that you are on a journey. You’ll start having some success stories in some areas, and others which need more work. You might need to put more time and energy into some areas, and do something more customised, or hold their hands a bit longer. Then you can build confidence, using data and insights to see the real pain points around the globe that need our attention. Then it’s all about prioritising those.
Where do you get your data from?
Different data points. We use engagement data from suppliers, including utilisation.
When selecting suppliers you need to ask them: how can you help me prove your value? That’s one of the reasons we chose to use Unmind, which provides a more personalised service than a ‘traditional’ EAP and, as a result, we’ve seen 5 times more engagement with this service, even across countries that have more stigma around mental health.
We also have global survey. I am a big fan of that old fashioned way to get data because, for me, if you want to know something, you need to ask your people!
Do you have one provider for your global programmes?
We try but it’s not always possible. Each country has their localised wellbeing initiatives and benefits, depending on budget and local regulations. Consistency is not always required or appropriate.
Are you cutting costs on this kind of work in the current economic climate?
My manta is that when we are in crisis, that is when we have to invest in our people because it’s people that are going to get you out of the crisis. I get that companies need to focus on their bread and butter but you can’t cut off the bakers to do that.
Any advice on getting leadership and the senior management buy-in, for things like this comprehensive study?
It was lucky because it got signed off just before industry started making some cuts.
However, I would encourage your leaders and stakeholders, as I have done, to try and move away from just return on investment. It’s very hard to do the classic calculation for ROI. I talk about return of value. For this I ask question likes: how much are our people engaged, as a result of the activity? How much do they feel their managers care about them?
You can hear Stella speak at The Watercooler Event, which takes place on 7th and 8th May 2025 at ExCeL in London, which is Europe’s leading trade show, with free-to-attend content, dedicated to creating workplaces that empower both people and business to thrive.
You can find out more and register to attend here.
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