Marqeta embraces Mental Health Awareness Month

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. At Marqeta, we are taking this time to pause and recognize the impact that mental health has on our emotional, physical, and social well-being. While prioritizing mental health is important all year round, throughout May we’ve invited our teammates to join us in learning about and celebrating its importance.

Each week throughout May, we’ve kicked off Mondays with a Mental Health focused message highlighting self-guided activities, virtual events, employee stories, as well as employee benefits that support mental well-being. Here are just a few ways we’re encouraging Marqetans to explore and learn this month to help #breakthestigma and put our mental health first:

We’re taking a Flexible First approach to work

We’ve learned that we all work better when we have the ability to choose how to balance our work and life priorities. With the launch of our new Flexible First approach to work, impact and contribution are most important, not the number of hours we sit at a desk. We are encouraging employees to work from wherever they work best, to block time in their day for family needs, prioritize workouts, take advantage of focus time, and add in time off for both vacation and mental health days.

We’re adopting Summer Fridays

Just like the kids get a break from school, we see summer as the perfect time to recharge our batteries. Since the onset of the pandemic two years ago, we’ve designated every other Friday as “Marqeta Cares Days.” This summer, we’re doing the same with “Flexible Summer Fridays.” Throughout July and August, every other Friday will be a mental health day to encourage time to unplug from work, take care of our personal lives, and spend time with family and friends. As for the Fridays in between, we have “Focus Fridays” scheduled. Focus Fridays are company-wide no-meeting days that allow us to focus our time on catchup, planning, innovation, and learning. With the addition of “Flexible Summer Fridays,” nearly 37% of our year consists of a 4 day work week!

We’re promoting Modern Health, our therapy and coaching benefit

When you join Marqeta, you and your dependents gain access to Modern Health, a mental well-being platform, offering a variety of resources and services that are absolutely free including therapy and life coaching sessions. This month we partnered closely with Modern Health to demo their services, host community circles, and offer training for our people managers on how to facilitate conversations about mental health with their teams.

We’re taking time off!

We encourage time off and practice what we preach from the top-down. In a recent company Town Hall, our CEO Jason Gardner shared about the importance of unplugging from work and how it has been critical to his own mental well-being. With our generous Flexible Time Off and Paid Time Off programs, we’re asking all Marqetans to do the same. Whether you’re taking a staycation or planning a major getaway, taking the time to rest, recharge, and connect is important for maintaining and improving our mental health.

Finally, we’re helping #breakthestigma about mental health – thank you to the Marqetans who joined our campaign to raise awareness for mental health by wearing green throughout the month. We hope everyone takes the opportunity to find a moment to reflect and refocus on their own mental wellness this month and all year.