“Working in a highly-demanding environment, our young consultants are under huge pressure”, says Ricco Groeneveld, Workplace Lead BENELUX at Accenture. “From experience and research, we know that being connected to work 24/7 has negative impacts on productivity, employee work-life balance and health. Together with our Vested Outsourcing partners at ISS, we asked ourselves: How can we prevent this from happening to any of our employees?
“How can we make sure our employees work smarter, but not harder? And how can we create an organizational culture that helps our employees manage their energy levels and health – not only during a workday but throughout their whole career? These questions established a baseline for what we today call ‘Accenture: Be at your best’.”
The initiative included experimentation with how catering could promote a healthier lifestyle by making fresh, low-fat foods more accessible to Accenture’s employees. Accenture and ISS also created special programs for new parents to help them create a healthy work-life balance and offered employees frequent health checks, health advice from dedicated consultants, and workshops on nutrition, sleep and relaxation.
Since initiating the close, collaborative partnership with ISS, Accenture has attained concrete results. Costs have decreased due to lower staff turnover rates and associated recruitment expenditure. Absenteeism has been reduced by 9,000 hours, employee productivity is up by 3%, employee engagement has improved by 8% and total vitality has increased by more than 9.5%. Due to the long-term nature of the Vested partnership, this mutual success is only the beginning.
