Vail Resorts expands Epic Wellness program, will increase psychological well being sources for workers, their roommates and their dependents

Vail Resorts expanded psychological well being sources for workers this month, constructing on the free remedy periods provided by the corporate’s Epic Wellness program to cowl a broader spectrum of bodily and psychological well being wants.

Epic Wellness launched in 2018, making a centralized place for workers to entry six free counseling periods from the worker help program in addition to a wide range of well being screening and ache remediation sources.

Dr. Corey Levy, the wellness director at Vail Resorts, mentioned that earlier than Epic Wellness, utilization of company-sponsored wellness packages was lower than 1%. At this time, round 9% of workers make the most of these psychological well being sources every year, and that could be a quantity he expects to proceed to develop.

Vail Resorts is funding the growth utilizing a part of its latest $175 million funding in worker help and sources. The funding adopted a 2021-22 season that was marred with complaints about worker compensation and remedy, and Vail Resorts CEO Kirstin Lynch described the funding as indicative of the corporate’s new course.

“We can not create an ‘Expertise of a Lifetime’ for our company with out first creating an ‘Expertise of a Lifetime’ for you,” Lynch wrote in a letter to workers asserting the Epic Wellness growth.

The brand new and improved Epic Wellness program, which launched on Aug. 1, contains an growth of this system’s scientific community, new digital and extra personalised remedy choices, and a free mindfulness software. It additionally contains free wellness teaching, which is a digital useful resource that gives steering round private wellness objectives, together with health, vitamin, stress, damage restoration, relationships, and extra.

Levy mentioned that embracing a extra holistic method to wellness will give workers the instruments they must be proactive, not reactive, about caring for his or her psychological well being.

“The impetus was actually that: How can we glance to push out the spectrum of care that we offer to folks so we are able to meet them the place they’re at,” Levy mentioned. “Some of us would possibly simply want some help round bettering their sleep, or consuming extra water, or serving to them handle life points round having a household. We’re additionally recognizing that chat and text-based remedy could possibly be actually useful for individuals who won’t need to have conventional help.”

All of those sources are additionally out there to the roommates and dependents of the worker, which is a part of the group psychology mannequin that Levy champions.

“If a member of the family is managing some psychological well being stuff or struggling indirectly, or a roommate — and we all know lots of people reside with quite a lot of roommates — that’s going to have an effect on the worker as effectively, so we need to make these sources out there to as many individuals as we are able to with the intention of making an attempt to assist out the group as a lot as potential,” Levy mentioned.

Digital counseling grew to become mainstream through the pandemic, and the standard and amount of digital sources is healthier than ever earlier than. The Epic Wellness program now presents a number of avenues for counseling, together with a most well-liked supplier program that connects workers on to native counselors — if they like in-person visits — and a large breadth of digital counselors to extend accessibility and variety of suppliers.

This additionally allows workers to get extra granular when it comes to their counseling wants, searching for suppliers who concentrate on sure disciplines similar to LGBTQ points, post-traumatic stress for first responders, or household counseling, amongst others.

Nadia Guerriero is the vice chairman and chief operations officer of Beaver Creek Resort. She has simply accomplished her first three-year time period as a board member at Eagle Valley Behavioral Well being and is beginning on her second time period this yr. 

Having seen the necessity amongst her workers, and understanding the rising variety of sources out there within the valley, she mentioned that she joined the board to assist break down the stigma and limitations to accessibility and make it possible for everybody who wants help is aware of the place to seek out it. Increasing the Epic Wellness program and the communication round it is going to allow native organizations to have a higher impression. 

“I raised my hand as a result of it’s one thing I care about,” Guerriero mentioned. “You’d be stunned what number of of us do not know what’s occurring on the market and what the efforts are. My imaginative and prescient is to make it possible for I’m doing all the things I can in order that our workforce and our folks, even our stakeholders and our householders and our membership members, that all of them know what is accessible, what the work is, and the way they will take part.”

Psychological Well being Colorado acknowledged Vail Resorts with the Office Wellness Award in 2019 after the implementation of the Epic Wellness program, and Levy mentioned that this system will proceed to develop in upcoming years. He mentioned that the last word aim is for workers to help one another, to attach each other with sources after they need assistance, and to normalize the usage of Epic Wellness sources so that everybody can entry the extent of help that they want.

“We need to empower folks to appreciate that they could be a main and vital useful resource for somebody that they love,” Levy mentioned. “The extra we are able to empower that and create what I might name ‘wellness environments’ by the resorts, the higher it’s going to be for the group, the higher it’s going to be for the worker and the person, and the higher it’s going to be for the resort.”