Akin Gump’s Kimm Merkel Discusses Firm Wellness Initiatives and Benefits with CCBJ

Corporate Counsel Business Journal has interviewed Akin Gump director of health and well-being Kimm Merkel on the firm’s wellness initiatives. In her position, Merkel focuses not only on traditional health benefits, such as medical and dental, but also on well-being, particularly from a holistic angle that includes physical, mental, financial and social/community health.

Among the topics covered:

• Recent firm wellness and community initiatives: “Earlier this year, we launched a charitable-giving platform that offers all employees seed money. That’s an initial contribution from the firm that individuals can donate to a charity of their choosing through the platform. Additionally, the firm offers a matching program. If individuals make their own contribution, the firm will match those dollars… Last year we also hosted our first global community service day, and we just wrapped up our second annual event last June.”
• Akin Gump’s Be Well program: “[The] program was enhanced and supported by a third-party platform and app, and people have access to it 24/7. It offers them information, resources, one-on-one counseling or coaching, and various challenges. Those resources all focus on the four pillars of well-being…physical, mental, financial and social/community wellness. And it’s self-guided.”
• Akin Gump’s mental health pilot program: “In April 2018 we launched a pilot program in our D.C. office that brought in a Be Well advisor that is typically a licensed social worker into the office once a week – and that individual provided private, confidential, one-on-one counseling sessions to anyone in the firm who wanted them…After we launched the program…very quickly our advisor had appointments scheduled right through June and beyond. It was supposed to be a six-month pilot – but halfway into that pilot, I got the green light to go ahead and continue with the program in the D.C. office and to expand into our other offices…We started in London, which now has an advisor on site once a week – the same model that we piloted in D.C. – and it has been going very well. On the heels of launching in London, we launched in New York. And our L.A. office has identified an advisor who will likely start in September. I’m also working on implementing advisors in our Philadelphia and Texas offices.”

To read the full interview, please click here.