Health and Wellbeing

Content 1100 styling change to allow custom header

Our people are what make our firm a success. We recognise the importance of health and wellbeing in enabling our people to be at their best - so we make it a priority. We provide all our colleagues with extensive access to essential services, guidance and support networks, helping them thrive at work and at home.

Modern life comes with a variety of challenges, but we focus our approach on the areas where we feel we can have the biggest positive impact - mental health, preventative health, financial wellbeing and supporting working families. Our strategy has been shaped by listening to our people and developed with specialists in these fields. We regularly monitor the effectiveness of the services on offer and initiatives we lead - measuring colleague wellbeing, service uptake and wider trends - to help develop and improve what we do, and respond to the ever-evolving pressures on peoples mental, physical, social and financial health.

Mental and physical wellbeing

We’re committed to making health and wellbeing support accessible to everyone. We provide our colleagues with fast, convenient access to specialist information, advice and treatment when they need it. Whether that be through our 24/7 remote GP; our BeWell service for confidential wellbeing support; or opting into services like private healthcare, dental care and physiotherapy. These essential services lay the foundation for our health and wellbeing support.

We continually review and evolve our policies to ensure we’re providing the right support for our colleagues. In 2022, we launched a new menopause policy, which sets out the support available for colleagues before, during and after the menopause. We’ve already had over 160 colleagues use our dedicated menopause support service, alongside some really successful initiatives including a menopause café series and the launch of dedicated menopause ambassadors, including our first male ambassador.

Our firm-wide wellbeing initiatives aim to educate our people and encourage healthier lifestyle choices. Colleagues have access to full health assessments with Nuffield Health and discounted gym memberships. They can also take advantage of our cycle to work scheme, which loans bikes and equipment to our people, to help them discover a more active commute.

We empower our people to take good care of their mental health, by equipping them with the tools and information they need to do just that. On top of our BeWell service, colleagues also have access to the UnMind app, which is designed to provide day to day tips and activities to support wellbeing.

We also run masterclasses with experts, organise firm-wide challenges, provide online training and offer our people the opportunity to join employee networks too, all in support of their mental and physical wellbeing.

Our five-year partnership with the University of Cambridge is aimed at better understanding how the world of work is changing, starting with what really works when it comes to supporting employees’ mental wellbeing. We are ‘opening our doors’ to Cambridge researchers, who will assess the effectiveness of the mental wellbeing initiatives we currently offer and explore how new measures can be developed and evaluated to meet our employees’ future needs.

Some of our key mental and physical wellbeing initiatives are:

Viva Insights

We give all colleagues access to Viva Insights, a tool that provides personalised recommendations to help manage and improve productivity and wellbeing. The tool works by providing useful recommendations to help colleagues do their best work, stay connected and protect their time.

Jump Start

Over the summer months we encourage all colleagues to finish at lunch time on Fridays, to support their wellbeing and get a head start on their weekend.

Volunteering Days

Volunteering is known to be rewarding, and in encouraging our colleagues to give back to our communities, we give all colleagues six volunteering days per year to support good causes.

Reconnection

We know how important it is for colleagues to connect in person, so we have made it easier for our teams across different locations to reconnect and recognise success.

UnMind App

We provide our people with access to the UnMind app, which offers learning and development programmes, bitesize tools to help form better habits – from sleep, to mindfulness and yoga – as well as regular wellbeing assessments to track their personal mental health journey.

Employee Networks

Our Workability and Be Mindful Employee Networks help to promote awareness of disability and mental health.

Workability network

The Workability network aims to break down barriers to inclusion and improve the working environment for those with disabilities or long-term health conditions. They focus on neurodiversity, physical disability and sensory impairment, when providing best-practice guidance and advice, via a network of workability facilitators across the UK.

BeMindful network

The BeMindful network creates, nurtures and connects a community of passionate and understanding colleagues and Partners, helping to strengthen the health and happiness of KPMG minds. With over 1000 members, the network leads by example in being open about their own journeys - sharing their stories on our Peer2Peer social community - and hosting events throughout the year, that aim to raise awareness and facilitate education around mental health and wellbeing.

KPMG’s Menopause Policy

At KPMG our aim is to create an open and inclusive environment where our people truly feel the menopause is not an issue that needs to be hidden and can talk about it openly without hesitancy or fear of embarrassment.

“We want our colleagues to feel confident in asking for support and any accommodations so they can continue to be successful in their role, and it’s important that our line managers and colleagues understand what the menopause is and can confidently have positive conversations to support colleagues experiencing menopause” says Charlotte Carter, Director – Culture, Engagement and Wellbeing.

In 2022, KPMG launched a new menopause policy, which sets out the support available for colleagues before, during and after the menopause. As part of this policy, all colleagues have access to the Bupa menopause Plan, which provides staff with a 45-minute consultation with a menopause trained GP, personalised care plan and subsequent follow up appointment in addition to 24/7 access to a menopause trained nurse. We have also established a Menopause Ambassador network (including our first male ambassador) and host monthly Menopause Cafes to provide an opportunity for peer support.

Charlotte adds, “We recognise the menopause as a workplace issue and are taking a number of steps to address it and provide the necessary support for our colleagues. As part of World Menopause Day, we held a series of menopause speaker events to highlight the importance of talking about menopause in the workplace, early menopause, shared experiences, the associated challenges and lifestyle changes we can make to have a more positive menopause experience.”

Our internal wellbeing page on women’s health sets out information about the menopause, early menopause, common myths explained and how we can help and we have also set up line manager menopause training to further support out colleagues. This includes a conversation guide to support with conversations both in and outside the workplace, and CIPD guidance for line managers to support performance managers, engagement managers or line managers in their conversations and response.

Embracing flexible working

At KPMG, we operate a flexible hybrid model. Flexible because we put empowerment at the heart of our thinking and hybrid because we work across our UK offices, client sites and university partnership locations. We know that one size certainly doesn’t fit all, so rather than have a set of strict rules, we have guiding principles to support our ‘client-first’ mindset. These principles help leaders and their teams to strike the right balance, based on the needs of our clients, the specific requirements of each engagement and what works for our people.

We’re creating a tech-driven business that empowers and equips our people to be outstanding in delivery, no matter where they work. We’re working to transform our offices into collaborative spaces and investing in new technology for our people. Some of the way we’ve invested include:

Enabling collaboration

Throughout our offices, we’ve upgraded a number of meeting rooms with full video and audio technology and provided a variety of unique workspaces, enabling creative collaboration and ensuring internal and client meetings are effective and inclusive, no matter where you’re joining from.

Modern client working

We’ve invested in two state-of-the-art Ignition Centres in London and Manchester - collaborative hubs designed to spark innovation and support the digital transformation of our clients. We bring insights, people and technology together, using the latest data and analytics and artificial intelligence tools, to accelerate growth. Our plans for hybrid working extend to our partnerships externally too, with programmes such as our strategic university partnerships providing additional insight to help clients deal with hybrid working and access to shared collaboration spaces.

Communities

We use the social networking tool, Viva Engage, to empower our colleagues to connect and engage with each other through collaboration and knowledge sharing, with over 600,000 post views on average every month. And we’ve recently integrated this tool with our new intranet, to further engage colleagues in conversation.

Giving our colleagues the tools they need

To amplify the power of our people to connect and collaborate as never before, we commenced an 18-month device roll-out programme in June 2021, equipping all colleagues with market-leading devices - including 15,000 new phones and nearly 20,000 new laptops - to enhance their experience and suit our new ways of working. We’ve also introduced a ‘one stop shop’ app, Office Concierge, for reserving office workspace, completing a daily entrance pass and checking into desks.

Connecting to the world with new ways of working

Financial wellbeing

We have an important role to play in every aspect of our colleagues’ wellbeing, and this includes their financial wellbeing too. We want our people to feel confident and in control when it comes to their money. We provide advice and tips on managing finances and signpost them to useful resources from experts, such as the Money Advice Service. We also share resources on topical money matters - such as how to make the most of your money during uncertain times - alongside financial benefits and discounts.

Support for working families

Family comes first at our firm. Our tailored support for working families is designed to help colleagues balance successful work and personal lives, whatever stage of family life they’re at. And it’s not just about children – we know that caring for elder generations and other family members can be an equally difficult balancing act.

Our policies and processes aim to provide support and comfort to our working families, parents and carers:

We guide people through their journey to becoming parents with our Empowering Parents programme.
Our personal and parental leave policies enable colleagues to take time off work for childcare and other family responsibilities.
We provide emergency back-up care for dependants if care arrangements fall through.
Colleagues can also stretch their benefits to include family members on services like private medical and dental care.
Over the summer, we give colleagues time off each week to promote wellbeing. Jump Start provides colleagues with the opportunity to start their weekend half a day early, or if their working hours or commitments don’t support this, on another day during the week.
We give all colleagues a day off for their birthday.

Families network

Our Families network aims to support our people as they embark on a new stage of family life, provide resources to colleagues with caring responsibilities, and help managers and peers understand the challenges colleagues with family responsibilities face, so they can better support them at work. The network builds peer networks and generates a greater awareness of the support available through the firm, with links to programmes such as Empowering Parents.

Back to Our People