The Stakes are High for Men in Hong Kong

HSBC has embraced the Movember spirit and is supporting men, across its business, to take care of their own physical and mental health.

HSBC is Hong Kong’s largest bank with around 30,000 employees in Hong Kong alone. Aware of the pressures of the finance world, the banks ‘Ability’ Employee Resource Group first became involved with Movember in 2019 and is committed to supporting employees' physical and mental health. Building on HSBC’s support for Movember in the UK, the Hong Kong HQ saw an imaginative opportunity to raise wider awareness of common men’s health issues, including mental wellness - while having some fun!

The Hong Kong campaign has been spearheaded by HSBC employee Nigel Shroff, who was familiar with the Movember campaign and saw this as a chance to generate support from colleagues and management alike. Nigel’s commitment to Movember is driven by a passion to get men to speak up.

“I support Movember to raise awareness for men’s physical and mental health issues. Having experienced people close to me suffering in silence, it’s important to break the stigma and highlight the need for greater awareness and discussion!” – Nigel Shroff

A Hair-Raising Start

In 2019 Movember was quite a new concept for HSBC and the campaign started off relatively small with a Grow fundraiser, inviting teammates to support their colleagues who were growing a moustache. An additional Move for Movember campaign was then set up to raise further funds through physical challenges and HSBC organised to Host a Mo-ment at the end of November. The campaign was a hair-raising success and over the last two years, the HSBC team has gone from strength-to-strength raising over HKD $300,000 for Movember and has placed within the top two largest corporate fundraisers in Hong Kong.

Seriously Growing

The crucial need to build further awareness of men’s health issues, particularly mental health because of the pandemic, has led HSBC to take Movember more seriously than ever. Last year the campaign grew bigger and better, with the corporate team even organising a mid-year Movember event, in collaboration with Sauce Barbershop to acknowledge International Men’s Health Week (14th-20th June). The HK business, while aligning to the HSBC UK Movember initiative, is proud this year to also be extending the campaign across Asia-Pacific to its counterparts, HSBC Australia, and HSBC Singapore.

In order to generate greater awareness of Movember internally, HSBC activities for 2021 included:

• A Grow fundraiser, which proved to be hugely popular and included a ‘Mo-Pageant’ at the end of the month, with an esteemed judging panel. In addition to an official shave-down in collaboration with Sauce Barbershop, that rewarded staff for their commitment to growing a moustache across the month.
• A ‘Move for Movember’ challenge, inviting staff to commit to physical activity totalling 60km over the month. That’s 60km for the 60 men lost to suicide each hour, every hour across the world. Colleagues choose to either run, hike, bike, or swim individually or collectively - There was even a Triathlon challenge!
• A weekly Mo sign-up and donation booth in the bank lobby, Movember's ‘Health Matters’ messaging and artwork featured on the bank’s screen savers throughout the month. This included all computers used at HQ as well as screens used across all retail outlets.
• A panel discussion and story-sharing session which was led by the Regional Head of Commercial Banking, who is also an Executive sponsor of the Ability Employee Resource Group.
• A major fitness initiative where individuals and teams across the business, were invited to ‘Run the Tower’, with encouragement and camaraderie from exclusively invited HK rugby players and personal trainers.

HSBC is an outstanding example of how to integrate Movember into a large-scale business, to spread the important messaging of men’s health. All it takes is one motivated individual like Nigel, to become a major force for the good of men’s health, within an organisation.

A massive final word of thanks to Nigel and the HSBC Team as they focus on their 2022 Movember campaign - We can’t wait to see what you have in store.