SNCF Réseau: supporting mental health and quality of life at work with tailored support

The situation before Qualisocial

“Mental health and quality of life are at the heart of SNCF Réseau's concerns. We have been working on the prevention of psychosocial risks (PSR) for a long time, and recently, the subject of mental health has also become central.” — Anne Boucher, HR Director of the National Industrial Technical Departments at SNCF Réseau

The objective is to promote well-being at work and to best prevent psychosocial risks through collective and individual actions, as well as training courses dedicated to the detection of weak signals, accessible to managers and all employees.

The concrete challenges

SNCF Réseau must now face increasingly complex situations: frustration that is difficult to channel, suffering experienced even in the absence of harassment, discomfort linked to internal testimonies... These situations, which are often diffuse but profoundly impacting, weaken the mental health of employees and the quality of the work collective.

Beyond responding to these signals, the ambition was above all preventive, long-term and large-scale. The objective: to act early, to build a common culture around well-being and to make mental health a driver of sustainable performance.

There was also an assumed desire to share the responsibility for “living well” at work : for the employer to create favorable conditions, but also for each employee to be actively involved in their own mental health. Innovative positioning, especially in an environment technical and mostly male, where engineering culture has historically left little room for these topics.

Finally, each department retained the freedom to engage in the process, which made it possible to empower local actors and to anchor prevention in the reality on the ground, rather than in a top-down logic.

A tailor-made partnership

“The Qualisocial offer allows everyone to be more independent in taking care of themselves” — Anne Boucher, HR Director of the National Industrial Technical Departments at SNCF Réseau

SNCF Réseau has developed various types of devices with Qualisocial:

• Digital platform for self-assessment and access to resources tailored to workload, stress, parenting, or other personal and professional concerns.
• Interviews with specialized psychologists for targeted individual support.
• Monthly webinars adapted to company news (reorganization, change, etc.), to support managers and employees in their daily practices.
• Annual barometers analyzed as a team, to identify areas of progress and co-construct action plans.

In concrete terms, to meet needs, two complementary levers have been developed:

1. Develop collective skills around mental health and QVCT.
Better understanding the mechanisms of stress, emotional load or relational tensions makes it possible to strengthen the culture of prevention and the ability to act on a daily basis. Collective resources (workshops, awareness-raising, training, training, exchanges of practices, etc.) contribute to establishing a common language, to destigmatizing mental health topics and to equipping teams to identify and manage signals of fragility sooner.

2. Support employees individually in their areas of progress.
Beyond the collective, everyone can benefit from personalized support in the form of coaching, focused on a key theme: stress management, workload/energy balance, assertive communication, or even emotional regulation. These confidential spaces promote taking a step back, setting in motion and consolidating sustainable practices in the service of well-being and performance.

By combining these two approaches, both collective and individual, SNCF Réseau strengthens the resilience of its teams, while affirming that mental health is an essential pillar for the proper functioning of work.

Benefits and concrete results

“Even after a recent reorganization, almost all entities have continued their collaboration with Qualisocial, which shows that the offer meets a real need” — Anne Boucher, HR Director of the National Industrial Technical Departments at SNCF Réseau

Thanks to these devices, SNCF Réseau:

• Supports the mental health of employees in a proactive and sustainable way
• Enables managers and teams to better detect and prevent fragile situations
• Promotes individual accountability in self-care
• Maintains a constructive dialogue and follow-up of QVT's actions

The vision of SNCF Réseau

“Mental health is a major issue for our company. Supporting our employees in this dimension also means contributing to collective performance and the quality of life at work. With Qualisocial, we have found a partner who can help us meet these new challenges” — Anne Boucher, HR Director of the National Industrial Technical Departments at SNCF Réseau

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