Mental Health Matters @ Cohesity

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a month dedicated to spreading awareness of the importance of caring for your mental health and wellbeing. After the past two years of dealing with new challenges brought on by a global pandemic, stress levels are at an all-time high.

This month’s focus on mental health reminds us to prioritize mental health and wellbeing year-round and encourage the ongoing conversation around mental health. At Cohesity, we work hard to ensure that our employees have the support they need and meet them where they are in all of life’s uncertainties. We understand that life happens while we’re working, such as celebrating a new chapter in life, grieving a loss, managing burnout, or dealing with unexpected life-altering events. Caring for our employees, their families, and their mental well-being are crucial components to creating a successful and healthy environment here at Cohesity.

In this article, learn what we’re doing to support the mental wellbeing of our global Cohesians and their families through a variety of different programs, benefits, and initiatives in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month.

Caring for your mind.

Caring for our employees’ mental health and their family’s mental health is our priority. At Cohesity, we provide an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for all Cohesians and their dependents at no charge. This benefit includes confidential support, resources, and information for personal and work-life situations with unlimited phone access to legal, financial, and work-life services. Cohesians and their families can receive immediate support and guidance via assessments and referrals to further services through this program.

Supporting wellbeing.

Improved mental health also comes from caring for the well-being of our employees and their families, which is why we offer the following benefits to make it easy for employees to care for the well-being of both their minds and bodies. 

• Partnering with MindGym for a calmer mind, better focus and attention span, and improved sleep quality.
  • At Cohesity, we offer twice a week 25-minute zoom sessions to employees and their families focused on simple movement and breathing techniques. These sessions with MindGym help increase circulation to the brain, calm nerves, and provide a relaxed-yet-aware state of mind.
• Unlimited reading for continuous learning through Scribd.
  • Scribd is an audiobook and ebook service, like Netflix for books. With Scribd, all employees at Cohesity have unlimited access to more than 2M books, plus audiobooks, ebooks, magazines, podcasts, and sheet music.
• Fitness that fits with employees’ schedules. 
  • We offer employees and their families on-demand access to a variety of at-home fitness and wellbeing programs.

Respect for your time. 

At Cohesity, we’re encouraged to think big, and we take on dynamic goals that require innovative thinking. To do that, we know employees need time to themselves to recharge away from work. This is why we put some serious thought into how we can support our global Cohesians in taking the time they need away from work in all stages of life. Whether it’s time off to be with family for special life moments or when a family $member is ill, Cohesians have a variety of time off and leave programs available to take care of what is most important.

Cohesity offers the following paid leaves and time off:

• Flexible Time Off for full-time employees to relax and recharge. 
• Generous Sick Time to fully recover from an illness
• Bereavement leave for the loss of a loved one (fur friends included.)
• Paid parental leave to care for and bond with a newborn, newly adopted child, or newly placed foster child. 
• Maternity/pregnancy time off work during pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.  
• Family Care leave to care for an elder parent or family member who is sick. 
• Witness and Jury Duty time off allows employees to fulfill their civic responsibilities by serving as jurors and subpoenaed witnesses. 

Pause & refresh. 

RADIO Silence

When it’s time to get things done, we recognize that back-to-back meetings can hinder the ability to do just that. In response to employee feedback, we created RADIO Silence, an entire afternoon free from recurring internal meetings. 

• Each Wednesday after 1 pm local time, we allocate a large block of deep-think time for Cohesians to focus on deep work without internal meetings.
• RADIO Silence time is an excellent opportunity for our Cohesians to strategize, plan, code, learn, and be productive.

Refresh Days 

While personal time off is needed and encouraged, coming back to a full inbox can be a stressor in itself. At Cohesity, we offer a few special days a year when the entire company shuts down, together as a whole. 

• During these Refresh Days, we encourage all employees to shut their laptops, say goodbye to Zoom meetings, and spend time doing things they enjoy most with people they care about most. 

Continuous Evolution.

Employee feedback and pandemic challenges led to the introduction of several of the benefits and practices above.  Cohesity is committed to listening to employee feedback and evolving to care for the physical, financial, and mental well-being of all Cohesians.