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A near-catastrophic plane crash a few years ago prompted Bank of America to create an unusual employee benefit: an emergency response team.
Several employees were involved in the “Miracle on the Hudson,” in which a plane’s engines went down over New York City. The pilot was forced to land in the Hudson River but avoided any fatalities. The organization helped connect those employees with hotel rooms and clean clothes, and the experience prompted the company to create an entire employee emergency services team just a few years later.
“The Miracle on the Hudson was one of the impetuses of, ‘Wow, this has been really helpful for teammates. How can we continue to provide the support?’” Ava Mehta, head of the Life Event Services team for Bank of America, tells Fortune. “That was a really big event that garnered a lot of attention. But there are so many small events that happen every single day that our teammates need help with as well.”
Bank of America created the Life Event Services (LES) team in 2014, hiring 50 full-time staffers—professionals with backgrounds in 911 assistance, social work, medical care, and law enforcement—to assist workers going through life-altering experiences. They help with all kinds of different matters including natural disasters, domestic violence, shootings, mental health, and the loss of loved ones. LES workers are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and guide employees through all the necessary internal and external processes to handle their crises. The LES team now employs 150 workers across 10 locations and has handled more than 600,000 unique cases.
“Our job is really to support our employees in the moments that matter and really think about their true life events,” Mehta says. “It could be at mass scale with unfortunate acts like shootings or hurricanes. Or it could be smaller events that are very impactful, like house fires.”
More often than not, Mehta says the Life Event Services team tackles the surging mental health epidemic among workers and their families.
“Coming out of the pandemic we’ve seen mental health [issues], whether it be our own employees or their family members, ramp up. We connect in our benefits partners and think about what services we as a company can provide,” she says.
You can read more about Bank of America’s emergency response team here.
Emma Burleigh
emma.burleigh@fortune.com
