At Williams, we are dedicated to promoting employee mental, physical and emotional well-being. Our employees are the reason that we can be there to provide safe, affordable and reliable natural gas every day, so it is critical that they feel supported and healthy in and outside of work. We offer comprehensive medical plans, disease management programs and wellness coaching to all full-time and most part-time employees across our footprint. We also offer special leave and flexible work arrangements to encourage a healthy work-life balance for many employee groups. We are committed to improving our practices and benefits to support our world-class workforce.
Our Total Rewards benefits package offers multiple programs that promote workforce health and wellbeing. The Williams Way to Wellness program rewards employees and their eligible spouses or domestic partners for participating in holistic wellness-focused activities, from physical activity to mental health awareness and financial planning. A highlight of our offering is the Real Appeal weight-loss program, which fosters science-based healthy habits and is available at no extra cost to employees and their families through their health insurance plans. Our programs are activity-based; employees do not have to achieve any specific outcome to earn incentives. Rather, we encourage employees to try a variety of wellness activities, physical and non-physical, in pursuit of long-term positive behavioral changes.
In 2022, 21% of our employees took part in annual biometric screenings and wellness assessments. Williams offers these services at many facilities to help employees check their physical health and identify potential medical risks early. For those who cannot participate on-site, our health insurance plan generally includes preventive screenings at no cost to plan participants. We offer incentives to encourage participation in these screenings that empower employees to address their wellness. To preserve the confidentiality of personal health information gathered during wellness screenings, any employee who works with personal health information is required to complete HIPAA training upon hire and periodic refresher training.
Williams takes care to listen to and understand employee health and well-being priorities by evaluating program participation and feedback. In recent years, we enhanced our mental health support by increasing the availability of contracted mental health services for our employees. We also offer therapy benefits that include telehealth and office-based options.
We provide six weeks of paid parental leave for both birth and non-birth parents. In 2023, enhancements to flexibility include allowing employees to take leave in one-week increments over a 12-month period to provide our employees the ability to choose how best to participate in this benefit. Also in 2023, we will add foster care placement as an eligible event for which employees can use parental leave.
Additionally, we offer access to designated lactation facilities. For more information on our benefits, please refer to the Employee Attraction, Retention and Development section.
The workforce health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic decreased in 2022, allowing Williams to return to the in-person connection that drives our operations and culture. Still, we continue to monitor ongoing threats to public health and implement lessons-learned regarding administrative, engineering and substitution controls that safeguard employee health. Our central emergency response team, corporate support team and Emergency Operations Center coordinated our response to workplace COVID-19 exposures, symptoms and cases using CDC guidance. Even as reported cases of COVID-19 diminish, we continue to practice our successful workforce business continuity procedures to build system resiliency against future disruptions.
