Employee Wellbeing 

• The Employee Assistance Program (EAP) services are provided by Lyra Health.

  • Counseling and consultation services are available virtually, via telephone, or in-person with a professional counselor. You can schedule appointments with counselors at a location convenient for you across greater Minnesota or in the Twin Cities.

  • EAP counseling and consultation for work or personal concerns:

    • • • • • Job concerns and work productivity

            • Personal, interpersonal, and work relationships

            • Conflict resolution

            • Family issues

            • Adjustment to grief/loss or change

            • Coping with stress

            • Mental health

            • Chemical health

• Below is a recording of the Lyra services presented Kirsten Cegla, Senior Manager, Customer Success at Lyra Health.

• Lyra Health benefits are available to all benefits eligible employees and their dependents on all system campuses. This does not include students (undergrad or graduate), residence, fellows and interns.

Taking time away from work is essential to maintain employee wellbeing and work/life balance. In the Medical School Supervisors are encouraged to ensure their employees that they are in full support of taking the time off they need and to avoid losing vacation accrual. 

• Stepping away from work for a vacation allows people to replenish the energy they’ve lost from meeting the demands of daily life. Not only do people feel recharged after their vacation, they also report increased self-esteem and resilience. Despite the many researched benefits of taking time away, some experts consider employees in the United States to be “vacation-phobic.”

• A lovely trip or staycation are only temporary solutions to burnout. Recognizing and managing burnout requires continuous and long-term strategies. 

• The Quick Guide to Building Work Stress Resilience offers guidance on how to model burn-out prevention for your direct reports, while not being "over resilient." Learn how to help your team to adapt to difficult circumstances by coaching them to use effective coping strategies by addressing, reducing, or even removing work stressors.

• Take mini-vacations. Not every vacation needs to be an Instagram-worthy getaway. Half-days off and treating the occasional weekend like a vacation, where you ignore housework and act like you’re on vacation, results in positive emotions during the work week.

• Detach from work. Detaching from work during lunch, free evenings, and weekends mirrors the recovery experienced during vacations. Such boundaries support reduced psychological strain and exhaustion while increasing vigor at work. Relaxing during the weekend doesn’t just make Mondays easier, the benefits last throughout the work week.

Transportation Safety

The UMN Transportation Safety page is a good resource for all of your transportation safety needs. All of the resources the U offers is found on this page along with more information about each program that they offer for safety. More information about the UMN Transportation Safety services can be found here.

Safe U Alerts

Safe U Alerts are designed to help keep students, employees, and other members of the University up to date on the safety and on-campus emergencies that include fire, severe weather, bomb threats, major crime, riot, or accident. Situation updates will be posted on the Public Safety “Safety Notifications” webpage. Instructions for how to set up Safe-U alerts are found on the here under “Safe U Alerts”

624-Walk

The 624-WALK service allows you to call 612-624-WALK and a uniformed University Security Officer will meet you and walk you to and from any campus location and nearby neighborhoods. This service is really easy to use and convenient for all members of UMN. This service is available year round and can be used at any time in the day. More information can be found here.

Rave Guardian Campus Safety Program

The Rave Guardian Campus Safety Program is an app that you can download onto your mobile device that will provide a virtual escort to assist you while walking. When setting up the account, you can put individuals that you would want to be notified in cases of emergency. These individuals would be notified if you do not make it to your set destination in the amount of time that you had set. This service allows you to add “Social Guardians” that can track your location while you are walking to your set destination. More information can be found here.

Gopher Chauffeur

Gopher Chauffeur is a student-employee run transportation service that provides students with free rides home during the set hours of operation. This service is available every night during the Fall and Spring semesters. Hours of operation depend on the day and can be found on their website or their app. This service allows you to request a ride through the app and the next available van will pick you up and drop you off at your set drop off location. More information can be found here. 

Emergency Call Tower Locations

Linked here is a map of the UMN-TC campus where they have marked exterior lighting as well as emergency call phones. The yellow lights are the exterior lighting around the campus. The lighter blue lights are the interior emergency call phones (found in the Gopher Way tunnels). The darker blue dots are the exterior emergency call phones.

• The University of Minnesota values diverse identities and experiences, and honors disability as an important aspect of human diversity. The DRC partners with students, faculty, staff, and guests of the University to facilitate accessibility and reduce barriers on campus to improve access for disabled people through:

  • Consulting on strategies to provide access and inclusion;

  • Determining and implementing reasonable academic, workplace, and guest accommodations;

  • Partnering with University offices to support meaningful physical and technological access.

• Contact DRC

  • drc@umn.edu or 612-626-1333 (leave a message).

  • If you are a staff/faculty member, contact: ureturn@umn.edu or 612-624-3316 (leave a message). 

Employee Services

Welcome to UReturn!

A division of Disability Resource Center, is the office designated to serve all employees (including faculty and staff) with any disability or medical condition requiring accommodations or workstation adjustments. UReturn obtains and confidentially maintains medical documents, certifies eligibility for services, recommends workstation adjustments or reasonable accommodations, and develops plans for the provision of these accommodations and adjustments for employees with illness or injury. As a neutral party, specialists assist employees and their supervisors in implementing appropriate accommodations/adjustments.

Information for Employees

UReturn works with employees to ensure that medical conditions—both occupational and non-occupational—are evaluated so that employees can return to work safely and in a timely manner.

If you think you have a medical condition or disability that is affecting your job, please contact UReturn for a confidential consultation with one of our access consultants.

To start the registration process by filling out our online request for consultation form.  Once completed we will follow-up via email to schedule a consultation.  During this consultation one of our access consultants will discuss with you ways we can minimize disability related impacts and promote access to your job functions through the implementation of accommodations. 

For more information, please visit the DRC website at https://disability.umn.edu/employee-services

• Workplace Mental Health: TedTalk by Tom Oxley

• The Future of Work is Employee Wellbeing: Article by Jeanne Meister

• What is Employee Wellbeing and Why is it Important?

• 7 Strategies to Improve Your Employees' Health and Well-being: by Erin L. Kelly, Lisa F. Berkman, Laura D. Kubzansky, and Meg Lovejoy

• Crisis and Mental Health Resources from the NAMI Minnesota