ESG Topics A-Z
Employee well-being

To PepsiCo:
Promoting the well-being of our employees helps them to lead healthy and balanced lives, or otherwise equips them with the skills or structure they need to be more successful at work and at home. A strong support program for employees improves our ability to retain and recruit talented employees.
To the World:
People need support — from each other, and from the companies they work for. We believe encouraging healthy practices and providing employees with well-being programs will have benefits for them and their loved ones, like improved health, reduced stress and connected communities.
Approach
We offer a suite of programs and benefits intended to support employees in both their personal and professional lives, to help enable them and their family members to safeguard their physical, financial and emotional health and bring their best selves to work. PepsiCo’s employee well-being program is based on three strategic pillars:
- Be Well: Programs to promote physical health to help participants get moving, eat healthy and be safe.
- Find Balance: Programs to support mental and emotional health to help participants manage stress, build resilience, improve financial well-being and work/life quality.
- Get Involved: Programs to foster community involvement and family and social connections, a critical component to well-being.
Employee well-being programs are available in all countries where PepsiCo operates.
PepsiCo’s Total Rewards team manages these programs and continually explores new ways to meet employee needs, drive cost efficiencies and improve outcomes for all members of the PepsiCo community. We offer well-being programs designed to meet the needs of local markets, recognizing our employees in different areas can face different challenges. Our Total Rewards teams across the globe run local events and programs to address their employees’ needs, like biometric screenings, nutrition support, fitness platforms, mindfulness sessions, financial well-being programs, awareness campaigns and many more.
Being well
Fitness and nutrition programs are among our most popular offerings and support the Be Well pillar:
Fitness programs
A number of locations with a large employee base provide onsite fitness centers. In many markets, we provide a fitness allowance, through discounted gym memberships, vouchers and/or incentives for employees who join a gym.
Nutrition programs
All locations provide employees with nutrition education and seminars or online educational platforms. In many of our larger markets, worksites provide healthy food options in cafeterias.
Well-being education
We offer webinars featuring health and well-being topics designed to provide education and support. Webinars are hosted by expert partners, and topics are tied to the three Healthy Living pillars and promote our programs where available. Recordings of webinars are also available, extending access to a broader range of employees.
Finding balance
Supporting the mental health and emotional well-being of our employees during times of stress, both personal and professional, is a key business issue. We offer a number of programs to support the Find Balance pillar:
Building resilience program
All PepsiCo employees have access to a stress management app designed to help them and their family members discover simple techniques to build their resilience and shift their response to stressful thoughts and situations. This programming is intended to provide resources to help employees build empathy, ignite purpose and positivity and manage burnout.
Mental health support
In the U.S., all employees have access to free real-time virtual mental and behavioral health services, in addition to the in-person mental health care services available through our U.S. medical plans. Outside the U.S., all employees as well as their family members have access to high quality therapists and mental health support through our global employee assistance program.
We run promotional campaigns throughout the year to educate employees on the programs and resources available to support their mental health and emotional well-being. We dedicate a week of global and local programming each year to mark World Mental Health Day in October, including webinars with experts in the field. By highlighting these support systems throughout the year, we aim to reduce the stigma around seeking support for mental health.
Financial well-being program
We know financial stress impacts both the physical and emotional well-being of our employees. Healthy Money, our financial well-being program, addresses this stress by building financial literacy for our employees, their family members and the communities where we operate. Healthy Money provides support for a variety of financial situations, including managing daily finances (e.g., budgeting, debt management and savings), establishing good money habits for family finances and preparing for retirement.
We launched a new digital platform in 2023 to expand the Healthy Money program to new markets, with plans to roll out to nearly all markets by 2025. The new platform offers more personalized, impartial financial education and information to our employees. In addition, in most of our largest markets, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the U.K., Australia and South Africa, our employees and their dependents have free, confidential access to education and guidance with qualified financial coaches to help manage their money and plan for a more secure financial future.
Support for caregivers
PepsiCo operations in many countries offer daycare allowances, discounts with nearby care facilities or access to onsite or near-site childcare. Additionally, in certain locations, we also provide facilities for nursing parents, including dedicated parents’ rooms and wellness rooms. We aim to expand our nursing room footprint globally over the coming years.
Getting involved
By encouraging employees across the company to get involved, we hope to provide a way for all our employees to feel more engaged, have a sense of pride and establish a stronger connection with their local colleagues and community. We offer many programs to support the Get Involved pillar:
Move for Good
Sponsored by Total Rewards and the PepsiCo Foundation, this global well-being challenge gives employees an opportunity to get healthier while giving back. Employees around the world record their daily physical activity and steps over a six-week period. At the end of the challenge, the PepsiCo Foundation converts tracked steps into a donation to the selected charitable organization to help feed those in need.
Employee resource groups (ERGs)
ERGs are volunteer-based groups that serve as a support system and a means to raise cultural awareness for identity groups within PepsiCo. ERGs, open to all associates, help to embed a culture of inclusion and engagement. Our ERGs regularly sponsor well-being programming throughout the year, including general topics as well as curated content to address specific needs of the membership. We look to ERGs to create space for every voice, informing how the organization can support inclusion in our workforce.
One Smile at a Time
Our global volunteering program, One Smile at a Time, connects employees with local volunteer opportunities that fit their passions and their schedule. When it comes to volunteering, we are united in our desire to help those around us. Volunteering can also be a positive step toward improving health by reducing stress and boosting happiness.
U.S.-specific programming
In the U.S., our national self-funded medical plans offer a robust set of benefits to our eligible employees and their family members, including highly competitive employer-sponsored medical benefits, comprehensive reproductive health benefits, travel reimbursement for regionally unavailable medical services, paid vacation, paid sick leave, paid time off for new parents as well as in-person and virtual support for mental health, physical therapy, exercise and nutrition. We employ a number of strategies to ensure our employees and their family members enrolled in our self-funded medical plans have access to high quality health care, including:
- Care advocacy: We provide our employees and their family members with access to a confidential health advocacy team that helps employees navigate their health benefits.
- Virtual care: In recent years, PepsiCo has added telehealth and virtual care to complement the in-person care offered by our national medical carriers. Virtual care has been provided in areas such as advanced primary care offered at the wellness centers in our larger offices and plants and support for mental health, physical therapy, exercise and nutrition. Virtual care also improves access to care for employees who live in locations with limited high-quality providers near their home.
- Travel: We support our employees and their enrolled dependents in accessing critical health care regardless of where they live across the U.S., including travel expense assistance where access to care is unavailable in an employee’s home geographic region.
We offer a number of additional programs to U.S. employees and spouses/partners covered under the PepsiCo medical plan, including:
- A virtual physical therapy program;
- A virtual care clinic focused on specialized care for women experiencing perimenopause and menopause;
- Care management and support programs for chronic conditions (like diabetes); and
- Preventive care coverage, including support, cancer screenings and treatment, at best-in-class facilities for certain conditions.
PepsiCo provides a minimum 16 weeks of pregnancy leave in the U.S. to allow the parent giving birth time to bond with their child. The short-term disability plan covers 10 full weeks and the final 6 weeks are paid under the parental leave policy. The 6-week parental leave is available to new parents of all genders, including adoptive parents. We offer onsite childcare at our global headquarters and near-site childcare for employees at our offices in Plano, Texas. Care at these centers is provided by highly-trained and reputable third-party providers. Back-up child and elder care services are available through third party providers when a regular care provider is unavailable for all benefits-eligible employees in the U.S.
Progress
We have made recent progress in these key areas to support employee well-being:
- Cancer care and support: We were among the founding signatories of the Working with Cancer Pledge. By signing the pledge, we reinforced our commitment to creating a supportive workplace for anyone who is working and living with cancer. The pledge asks companies to proactively share benefits and resources available to employees living with cancer, review their global benefits and policies and create an open conversation to reduce the stigma of working with cancer.
- Financial education platform: We have significantly expanded access to financial education by launching a new global learning platform. This platform is now available to a majority of employees worldwide, with plans for a full global rollout in 2025. It delivers timely, personalized financial content in a variety of formats, including short informational videos. To ensure accessibility, all content is available in local languages, enabling broader participation across our diverse global workforce.
- Women’s health and family-friendly benefits: We enhanced family-friendly benefits in the U.S., including adding a family planning concierge service, creating a manager toolkit to improve support for new parents and adding an innovative new benefit to help ship breast-milk for nursing mothers who need to travel. We launched a global menopause education campaign, along with new benefits to support women in perimenopause and menopause. We are also expanding family building resources outside the U.S. (e.g., education, fertility, surrogacy and adoption support).
Through PepsiCo’s Wellness Certification Program, we evaluate the maturity of our health and well-being initiatives in all countries where we operate. This annual evaluation program was developed and is managed by an external, third-party global human resources consulting firm. It assesses factors such as eligibility, engagement rates, communication channels and the ability to measure impact and behavioral changes over time. Based on the 2024 wellness certification process, the vast majority of our operations currently offer market-leading wellness programming.
PepsiCo’s health and well-being programs have received numerous awards recognizing the comprehensive and innovative program design as well as the effective communication and branding of PepsiCo’s benefits programs, including the Business Group on Health’s 2025 Best Employers: Excellence in Health & Well-being award for the third consecutive year.
What's next?
We will continue to review our offerings in an effort to ensure we are supporting employees’ physical, emotional and financial well-being. In the near future, we will continue to promote the many programs available to support our employees, with a focus on financial education and mental health.
Related topics
Employee engagement, Employee learning and development, Employee recruitment
Last updated
August 18, 2025