By Victoria Alvarez, Senior Manager, Global Life Works & Inclusion, Warner Bros. Discovery

Mental health and wellbeing is important as ever. It can affect every aspect of our being from our family, personal and professional relationships, productivity, and even our physical health. For these reasons, at Warner Bros. Discovery we take a holistic approach to mental health. We leverage, connect and collaborate with thought leaders and experts across the different areas of health and wellness, along with our internal talent, to ensure our employees have access to best-in-class resources to support them at work and in their personal lives.

While World Mental Health Day is recognized on October 10 each year and aimed at spreading awareness about mental health issues across the globe, this year Warner Bros. Discovery is recognizing World Mental Health Day throughout October in the form of a global, virtual and in-person, hybrid campaign.

WBD's People & Culture team co-designed the campaign with employees’ ideas and feedback at the forefront. The entire workforce was invited to contribute ideas and weigh in on and share their mental health priorities and what type of programming they would like to see throughout the month. Based on the feedback, we developed a month-long series of events and initiatives, across five pillars of wellbeing:

1. Physical

2. Mental

3. Financial

4. Social

5. Family

Hosted by wellbeing experts, the series features live and recorded virtual workshops, panel discussions and fitness classes, taking place across all time zones. Virtual topics covered include coaching how to bring out the best in your kids, being caught in the Sandwich generation, climate anxiety and what we can do about it, planning a financial wellness day, how to be financially independent if/when life changes, how to talk about mental health and more. We are hosting a conversation with a two-time Olympian on his mental health and resilience journey as well as an intimate conversation with Food Network’s Maneet Chauhan on balancing life and parenting and everything in between. WBD is also hosting in-office events such as massages, acupuncture, aromatherapy, yoga and meditation.

The campaign will be communicated via internal messaging platforms, and everyone will have access to an interactive calendar that allows access to virtual events with just one click. Many of the programs offered throughout October will continue to be part of regular programming offered to employees and their families.

The approach for our World Mental Health Day programming was modeled after last year’s virtual Wellbeing Festival (winner of the 2022 C2HR Workplace Wellness Award) which was designed to create a space and time for employees to focus on their wellbeing given the global pandemic and a majority of our employees working remotely, balancing the demands of work and home life, a widespread social justice movement and so much more. Over the course of two days, we shared content that spanned across the different aspects of wellbeing, different time zones, in local languages. Among the 50+ sessions, we hosted a musical mood journey with UK’s DJ duo, the Dixon Brothers, breathwork with Bryant (Ikar) Wood, we talked fitness and finance with Discovery bootcamp instructor, Elise Young and her wife and finance expert, Carmen, and invited employees to tune into a captivating conversation with Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry around their New York Times best-seller, “What Happened to You?”, which covers the topics of trauma, healing and resilience.

Access to live content was customized and scheduled for each of the company’s global regions. At any time through a schedule of events and employees were also able to join sessions in regions outside of their own allowing them to take part in yoga in Italian or a cooking class in Spanish, for example. We also activated new backgrounds in everyone’s Zoom accounts, encouraging them to practice wellbeing leading up to the festival. We encouraged everyone to participate in what spoke to them and invited them to bring their families along as well.

The feedback from the Wellbeing Festival was overwhelmingly positive and employees shared that they appreciated the variety of programs offered and the fact that the sessions were available on-demand for those unable to attend live.

As we move forward with the programming for World Mental Health Day throughout October, we hope that employees will take advantage of the resources available to them across the newly integrated Warner Bros. Discovery organization and find the programming helpful, inspiring and impactful. We will continue on the journey to support and collaborate with employees through our newly launched Global Wellbeing Workplace page by designing and delivering a range of programs, leveraging vendors, content and partnerships to ensure our employees have the resources they need to excel at home and at work, wherever they may be.

As our Chief People & Culture Officer, Adria Alpert-Romm shared with employees, “With everything that has taken place over the last [two] years, it is important for all of us to give ourselves the space to focus on our wellbeing.”

Warner Bros. Discovery Workplace Wellness Award Acceptance Speech

RELATED RESOURCES For a curated collection of articles on mental health, wellbeing and burnout and 20 more HR topics, please visit the HR Knowledge Center. For on demand wellness webinars visit the HR Learning Series.