Vail Resorts expands Epic Wellness program

Vail Resorts expanded psychological well being assets for workers this month, constructing on the free remedy periods supplied by way of 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 assets.

Dr. Corey Levy, the Wellness Supervisor at Vail Resorts, stated that earlier than Epic Wellness, utilization of company-sponsored wellness applications was lower than 1%. As we speak, round 9% of workers benefit from these psychological well being assets every year, and that may be a quantity he expects to proceed to develop.

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

“We can’t 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 saying the Epic Wellness enlargement.

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

Levy stated that embracing a extra holistic strategy to wellness will give workers the instruments they have to 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 will meet them the place they’re at,” Levy stated. “Some of us would possibly simply want some help round enhancing 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 helpful for individuals who may not wish to have conventional help.”

All of those assets are additionally accessible to the roommates and dependents of the worker, which is a part of the neighborhood psychology mannequin that Levy champions.

“If a member of the family is managing some psychological well being stuff or struggling in a roundabout way, or a roommate — and we all know lots of people dwell with a variety of roommates — that’s going to have an effect on the worker as properly, so we wish to make these assets accessible to as many individuals as we will with the intention of attempting to assist out the neighborhood as a lot as potential,” Levy stated.

Digital counseling turned mainstream through the pandemic, and the standard and amount of digital assets is best than ever earlier than. The Epic Wellness program now gives a number of avenues for counseling, together with a most popular 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 permits workers to get extra granular when it comes to their counseling wants, searching for suppliers who focus on sure disciplines similar to LGBTQ points, post-traumatic stress for first responders, or household counseling, amongst others.

Nadia Guerriero is the vp 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 12 months. 

Having seen the necessity amongst her workers, and realizing the rising variety of assets accessible within the valley, she stated that she joined the board to assist break down the stigma and limitations to accessibility and ensure that everybody who wants help is aware of the place to search out it. Increasing the Epic Wellness program and the communication round it is going to allow native organizations to have a better influence. 

“I raised my hand as a result of it’s one thing I care about,” Guerriero stated. “You’d be shocked what number of of us do not know what’s happening on the market and what the efforts are. My imaginative and prescient is to ensure that I’m doing every thing I can in order that our crew and our folks, even our stakeholders and our householders and our membership members, that all of them know what is out there, what the work is, and the way they’ll 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 stated that this system will proceed to develop in upcoming years. He stated that the final word objective is for workers to help one another, to attach each other with assets after they need assistance, and to normalize the usage of Epic Wellness assets so that everybody can entry the extent of help that they want.

“We wish to empower folks to understand that they could be a major and important useful resource for somebody that they love,” Levy stated. “The extra we will empower that and create what I might name ‘wellness environments’ by way of the resorts, the higher it’s going to be for the neighborhood, the higher it’s going to be for the worker and the person, and the higher it’s going to be for the resort.”