Overview

Mott MacDonald is a leading engineering, management and development consultancy, with 16,000 staff in 150 countries. They have been in a partnership with International SOS since 2008 to help protect the health and security of their 3,000 business travellers and international assignees.

Problem

In January 2019, Mott Macdonald begun an innovative new journey with International SOS: to deliver their new wellbeing vision – Laura Hague, Group Safety Manager, stated: “We want to create an environment where our people are happy, healthy and safe; enabling everyone to achieve their full potential, thrive and feel empowered to take responsibility for and focus on their own health and wellbeing.”

Mott MacDonald’s goal was to mirror the Duty of Care approach they already had in place for employees with access to travel risk management services; offering a new one-stop solution for wellness. An organisation that has a happier and healthier workforce is better able to drive innovation and create a sustainable business and society.

Solution

It was critical from the outset to determine both the needs of Mott MacDonald and the needs of the employee; and in turn, create a framework that embodied the problems and challenges of both parties. Mott MacDonald’s ‘My wellbeing’ programme launched in January 2019, and was rolled out within three pilot locations: United Kingdom, Singapore and UAE. It consisted of a ‘Digital Wellness Portal’ where employees can: complete lifestyle assessments, take part in fitness challenges, link their fitness devices, socialise with colleagues, access a learning library, and schedule travel vaccines and health assessments.

The entire programme is ‘gamified’, meaning employees can gain points for everything they do as a form of incentive, leading to rewards and recognition from Mott MacDonald. The concept of ‘rewarding’ employees initiates the needed motivation to shift employee behaviour and culture for longer term engagement.

Impact

Within three months we were able to present data to show health trends and key wellness metrics for the pilot locations, such as engagement with the portal, health trends, and physical activity being logged in the form of steps. As we progress into the programme this pool of data continues to increase, allowing us to give Mott MacDonald a complete understanding of their global Wellness profile, enabling them to benchmark against the industry while at the same time identifying areas to prioritise.

The success of the programme in the pilot locations meant we were able to roll it out to the remainder of the global population: 10,000 people around the world. International SOS has enabled Mott MacDonald to deliver services on a global scale, including fragile locations; providing a seamless level of consistency to the Wellbeing offering.

International SOS Medical Director, Dr Rodrigo Rodriguez-Fernandez, said: “The early results of this programme are encouraging and show an important uptake that has maintained engagement throughout the programme. The programme is designed to show us in the early phases where their employees’ needs lie. We are continuously refining the offering based on a combination of these explicit needs together with the medical needs we pick up through online health risk assessments and in-person health checks."

Laura Hague said: “Health and wellbeing should be accessible to everyone. Every business should learn that helping employees stay active, helps them; not only increase productivity but improve employees’ attitude towards work.”