ESG Topics A-Z
Employee well-being

To PepsiCo:
Promoting the well-being of our employees helps them to lead healthy and balanced lives, and provides the support they need to be more successful in their personal and professional lives.
To the World:
Now, more than ever, people need support - from each other, and from the companies they work for. We believe that encouraging healthy practices and providing employees with the help they need will have added benefits for their loved ones and beyond.
Approach
Healthy Living, PepsiCo’s employee well-being program, is designed to help employees and their families improve their physical, financial, and emotional health. The program is based on three pillars of well-being, offering employees a variety of programs:
- Be Well—Programs to get healthy, get moving, and be safe.
- Find Balance—Programs to manage stress, build resilience, and improve their 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.
To provide a sense of the scope and reach of Healthy Living, in the U.S. we offer a variety of programs to all benefits-eligible employees. These include: a wellness questionnaire and biometric screening to gauge health metrics; flu shots; a stress and resilience program; weight management programs; and fitness and nutrition programs. Through a digital well-being platform, participants may earn points by engaging in these programs. They can redeem points for rewards such as gift cards, Health Savings Account contributions, and sweepstakes entries. We also offer a number of additional programs to U.S. employees and spouses/partners covered under the PepsiCo medical plan. These include a healthy pregnancy program; a tobacco cessation program; a virtual physical care program; care management programs for chronic conditions (like diabetes); comprehensive mental health care programs; and preventive care coverage.
Outside the U.S., we offer global programs like the Well-Being Support Line (Employee Assistance Program) and a stress and resilience program through a mobile app. We also hold an annual physical activity challenge that motivates teams to move more. All activity translates into donations to help feed families in need. During the challenge, we also offer a Health Risk Assessment for employees to develop self-awareness and action plans to improve their health. Many countries also run local events and programs to address their employees’ needs, like biometric screenings, nutrition support, fitness platforms, mindfulness sessions, financial wellness programs, awareness campaigns and many more.
Our Healthy Living programs focus on improved health outcomes for our employees, which also drive cost efficiencies for PepsiCo.
Our focus on fitness and nutrition
Fitness and nutrition programs are among our most popular offerings:
- Fitness Programs: A number of locations with a large employee base provide onsite fitness centers. We offer virtual on-demand fitness classes, taught by our PepsiCo fitness center instructors, to all employees globally as well as an on-demand fitness app in the U.S. Some locations promote physical fitness through discounted gym memberships, and others offer vouchers and incentives for employees who join a gym. In addition, we hold annual events to help employees increase their physical activity, including a global step challenge, company soccer and softball tournaments, and ping pong competitions.
- Nutrition Programs: Healthy eating is a key component of the "Be Well" pillar of PepsiCo's well-being program. In many of our larger markets, worksites provide free fruit onsite and healthy food options in cafeterias. Some locations provide nutrition advice and seminars to employees.
- Well-Being Education: We offer monthly webinars featuring health and well-being topics designed to provide education and support and help employees mitigate health risks. Webinars are hosted by expert partners, and topics are tied to the three pillars of our well-being program and promote our various programs where available. Recordings of webinars are also available.
Support for caregivers
We offer onsite childcare at our Purchase, New York headquarters for our Westchester-based employees, and near-site childcare for employees at our Frito-Lay North America headquarters in Plano, Texas – with care 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.
We also offer access to onsite or near-site childcare at select international locations, and we will continue to evaluate opportunities globally. Additionally, in a number of our locations, we also provide facilities for nursing mothers, including dedicated mothers' rooms and wellness rooms.
Progress
In 2021, 52% of our eligible global population engaged with our digital well-being platform—more than 81,000 U.S. employees and more than 10,000 employees outside the U.S.
Progress against well-being goals
Through a PepsiCo initiative called the Wellness Certification Program, we evaluate the maturity of our health and well-being initiatives across all countries. We assign each country to one of four categories—Basic, Intermediate, Advanced or Cutting Edge—based on specific criteria like engagement rates, ability to measure ROI, and behavioral changes over time. PepsiCo well-being programs are already available in 100% of countries with 50 or more PepsiCo employees. We challenged ourselves to reach either “Advanced” or “Cutting Edge” status in at least 50% of these countries by 2025. In 2019, we surpassed that goal, with programs in 60% of participating countries achieving Advanced or Cutting Edge status1. We implemented a new, more quantitative certification process in late 2021 and will be updating our rankings later in 2022.
Supporting employees through COVID-19
To support the well-being of our employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, we implemented a number of new programs and expanded others. Most notably, we continued to expand our Employee Assistance Program, called the Well-Being Support Line, to new markets outside the U.S., bringing EAP services to a total of 75 countries. We also expanded our stress and resilience program (meQuilibrium) outside the U.S.
To support our working caregivers, we introduced child care support and enrichment options in the U.S. to help employees manage their family’s needs as most schools moved to virtual learning. This included tutoring options at discounted rates for private or small groups through Bright Horizons partners (Varsity Tutors, Revolution Prep, and MarcoPolo Learning); a new “Learning Pods” service from Bright Horizons to help parents find educators who can guide in-home learning for small groups or one child; and free access to Rethink, including up to 7 hours of teleconsultation for parents, and thousands of videos, tools and materials.
What's next?
We will continue to review our offerings 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 mental health and building resiliency.
Related topics
Employee engagement, Employee learning and development, Employee recruitment