Puget Sound Energy's (PSE) 3,300 employees serve more than 2 million customers in Washington state, USA. PSE’s workforce and culture are varied, but in 2019 the company set a number of shared goals for their mental health programme, including training for all employees.

PSE uses a visual mental health continuum to help employees recognise their current state of mental health as healthy, reacting, injured or ill. Support services are categorised to corresponding sections of the continuum, so staff can quickly see the most relevant resources for them. For instance, if an employee self-evaluates as ‘reacting’, they can quickly see that PSE’s myWellness at PSE Programme and Employee Assistance Programme are their sources of support, and that the support relevant to them could be mindfulness, building resilience and/or counselling. They then have a named point of contact for further help in identifying and accessing the resources.

Some employees have shared their personal stories of mental health difficulties and how company resources helped them. This has been valuable in normalising the use of support and encouraging others to do so. The results have been striking - during 2020, when mental health was declining due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, PSE’s disability claims for mental health fell by 15%. Instead, they saw increasing visits in their wellness programme, including 71% of staff enrolling in a resilience programme, and 746 hours logged in mindfulness activities. Staff feedback about the mental health programme has been positive and PSE has continued to adapt services and content based on employee responses.