Award-winner profile: Intel’s comprehensive new commitment to companywide mental wellness

The COVID-19 pandemic has been challenging for most organizations, a low point marked by economic and cultural upheaval. All those things applied at Intel, the $78 billion microprocessor and technology company based in Santa Clara, California.

But Intel pledged to support its people during those difficult months—it would allocate money for employee benefits and build a corporate narrative around mental wellness. From the spring of 2020  to October 2020, the company’s HR and communications teams collaborated on a new mental wellness program, which launched in conjunction with World Mental Health Week. For the program’s architects, it was a defining moment in the company’s 53-year history.

The program’s goals revolved around three A’s: awareness, acceptance and access. To succeed in building awareness and acceptance, it had to be destigmatized. To establish broad access, employees and their families had to be provided with key resources. Intel built a brand-new mental wellness website to compile and house resources from across the company. It consolidated existing wellness programs to create a similar branded look and feel. It featured articles, videos and resources with rotating content based on monthly themes.