Building a Healthier Workplace: Fattal's Journey to Mental Wellness

“What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and more unashamed conversation.” – Glenn Close

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This Mental Health Awareness Month, it is vital to highlight the role that corporations play in supporting their employees’ well-being.

Our company recognizes this responsibility and has consistently prioritized the physical health of our employees through various initiatives, such as an on-premises gym, sports activities, and seasonal hikes. However, the recent tumultuous crises in Lebanon, including the collapse of state institutions, currency devaluation, the coronavirus pandemic, the Beirut port explosion, and more, have underscored the need to also focus on our employees’ mental well-being. Since 2022, we have intensified our efforts to communicate with our employees, assess their psychological needs, and address them as much as possible, recognizing that mental well-being is just as important as physical health.

Often overlooked, mental health holds great importance in individuals’ general well-being. Our brain is an organ just like any other, and taking care of it is as crucial as caring for any other part of our body. Following the mental health initiatives launched in 2022, we ran an internal survey with the NGO “Embrace” and received more than 200 responses from the Fattal community. Results revealed that more than 54% of respondents are facing some sort of mental health challenge.

?Company Therapist Joins Our Premises

Since good health and well-being are at the core of our CSR strategy, the department decided to collaborate with a registered clinical therapist in May 2023, Mrs. Sandra Khalil El Khoury.

This clinical psychologist and private practitioner has experience working in corporate settings, particularly after the Beirut Blast and the economic crisis in Lebanon. Sandra is available at our offices in a private setup every Tuesday and Wednesday to tend to the needs of our employees upon schedule.

The first two sessions with Sandra are free to encourage our employees to seek help. For follow-up sessions, employees are required to pay a small portion of the fee. The remaining cost for these following sessions, as well as the initial two, is fully covered by our company’s CSR department.

By providing immediate access to professional mental health support, having a therapist on-premises is essential for improving employee well-being by fostering a healthier and more productive work environment.

Mental Health Campaign to Encourage Our Employees

After establishing the therapist-on-premises initiative, we noticed some reluctance among employees to sign up for sessions due to various reasons, including societal taboos surrounding mental health.

To address this issue, our CSR department initiated a comprehensive campaign with the slogan "?? ???? ????" to break down the stigma surrounding mental health. The campaign aimed to encourage people to seek help and benefit from our on-site therapy services.

An interview with our in-house therapist was conducted, filmed, and shared on social media and throughout the company. In the interview, Sandra discussed reasons to seek therapy, the significance of therapy, the confidentiality of the therapeutic process, and more.

Heartfelt testimonials were also shared by colleagues who experienced the sessions with the therapist and were inclined to exchange their insights on social media. These testimonials highlighted the importance of opening up and discussing day-to-day struggles on both personal and professional levels.

One colleague shared, "I was feeling a lot of pressure in and outside of work, with the changes that happened in the country, along with the pressure of work. I wanted to express my feelings. Once I went, the first session was amazing, and she uncovered thoughts and feelings that I didn’t know existed within me."

The employees' vulnerability and openness were evident as they shared their firsthand experiences. Another colleague remarked, "I am someone who is very private and keeps my emotions to myself. By the fourth or fifth session, I noticed that I had become calmer, and when faced with a problem, I began to think of solutions first rather than reacting."

After attending sessions with the therapist, many employees reported feeling better equipped to handle their emotions. One testimonial highlighted, "When I started therapy, I felt like I could be myself and realized I wasn't the only one experiencing what I was going through. I hadn't understood the impact of my struggles until I began therapy."

From there on, a significant number of colleagues signed up for therapy sessions, revealing that they were inspired by the courage of their colleagues and their willingness to speak up.

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Siira Workshops

In addition, our CSR department conducted several sessions over 2023 in collaboration with the mental health online platform “Siira”. Throughout these sessions, different topics were covered based on our employees’ requests, evaluated through surveys.

One of these topics was “compassion fatigue,” which involves challenges in prioritizing others in personal lives, managing deadlines, and coping with high-pressure job environments. Participants learned to recognize signs of compassion fatigue and why we sometimes care excessively about others, neglecting our well-being in the process. This session contributed to improving individual mental health and promoted a culture of empathy and support within the organization.

A workshop titled “Self-Discovery” was also delivered by Siira for our employees. This interactive session involved 50 Fattal colleagues from various departments who debated various topics, asked questions and self-reflected on how to improve their overall thought processes.

The environment within these sessions was safe and supportive, encouraging employees to participate in open dialogue about mental health and significantly destigmatizing the topic of mental health within our community.

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Today, around 60 Fattal Group employees in Lebanon are consistently engaging in therapy sessions on our premises. Our goal is to foster and maintain a community where open dialogue is encouraged and everyone has the courage to speak their minds, knowing they will be welcomed and supported and not shunned for expressing their feelings. Together, we continue to build a healthier, more empathetic workplace where every individual feels valued and understood.