Workplace Wellness: Three Places to Start (and no, it’s not yoga!)

Photo credit: Canva.com

By Eric Bulmash

October is Workplace Wellness month which is one of my favourite times of the year. It’s harvest time, the air starts to cool, colourful leaves fall from trees and line the streets. It is the perfect time to reflect on how to best improve our workplace wellbeing!

In today’s business environment, while organizations require a lot from their people, employees also expect a lot in return from their employers. There is a natural symbiosis here. The imperative is to look at workplace wellness through the lenses of both (1) the employee experience and (2) business impact. By integrating these views, workplace wellness becomes much more strategic, high impact and meaningful for employee’s wellbeing and the organization’s health.

And yet - so few companies do this well (or at all!!)

It’s often HR leading the charge with a ‘check the box’ approach. A few yoga or Pilates sessions are launched, EAP resources are re-communicated, and personal wellness spending accounts are introduced.

Don’t get me wrong – these may be important tactical elements to an overall wellness strategy. However, by not deeply integrating wellbeing into a company culture and a way of working, workplace wellness becomes less strategic. It becomes an adjunct. Something we do off the side of our desks that pops up every now and again but doesn’t provide real leverage or meaningfully enhance quality of work-life.

So - if you are a leader passionate about workplace wellness who wants to have a real impact – where to start? Below are three ideas based on my experiences of what works and has the greatest leverage:

1. Start with data and measurement.

How do you measure workplace wellness? What insights come from your measurement and how can your company tailor actions that move the dial? How do you track change over time to show impact on people, culture and the business?

So many companies under-invest in their data and insights approach. But being able to measure workplace wellness provides a mechanism for employees to feel heard and for the company to quantifiably show data on wellness and wellbeing which can inform tailored action at the organization, department, and team level.

Your measurement approach should:

• Be holistic. There are multiple factors underlying the very broad construct of workplace wellness including elements of engagement, culture, psychological safety, stress and workload management, wellbeing and performance to name a few. A measurement tool should assess broadly across domains. If you are only measuring burnout or mental health stress, you are likely missing key elements that can inform your action plans.

• Track over time. Measuring at least 2x per year provides a pulse, but also enough time to share results with the organization and tailor actions before the next survey. Using the same tool over time provides an ability to map change and trends.

• Anonymous and transparent. Find a way to ensure that respondents’ data cannot be tracked back to them which will engender trust and safety. Do you work with a 3rd party? Or is there a central team that protects the data? At the aggregate level, be transparent and share back results at the team and organizational levels with staff and leaders but always maintain individual anonymity.

• Visualize the Insights. A picture is worth a thousand words. Take time to make the data sing. Visualize it in a way whereby insights POP and create conversations that matter with senior leadership. What story is the data telling us? Is workload stress reaching at risk levels? Do customer-facing roles feel safe with their leadership? And how has this correlated with fluctuations in customer feedback and NPS scores? These are sample questions related to insights derived from great data - and can lead to real action and change that will make a difference for the business, the people and the culture.

2. Leverage people leaders to scale wellbeing.

One of greatest opportunities for a workplace wellness strategy is to leverage people leaders as a mechanism to scale wellbeing. Why is this so important? For one, leaders have the greatest impact on the psychological safety within their teams. Leaders carry, set and enforce company culture at a team-level. They make it safe, or unsafe, for team members to speak up, innovate, take risks, and grow.

Direct leaders also play the key role of an ‘early detection system’ for wellbeing issues (and many other issues that may arise). If a team member’s wellness starts to wane, indicators will start to show up (e.g., disinterest/disengagement, being visibly stressed, making uncharacteristic errors, isolation, or conflict behaviours, etc.).

A good leader will detect that something is ‘off’ early and check-in with the individual in a meaningful way before the situation becomes unsalvageable. This is a HUGE business benefit and is very important for the individual going through a wellness or wellbeing challenge. At this stage, small supports and interventions can make a big difference whether it is adjusting workloads, talking through issues and getting mentorship/advice, or even just letting the individual know that they are cared about.

To do this well, companies should:

• Hire true ‘people’ leaders. One of the classic mistakes companies make is hiring people leaders who are technically strong but not motivated to manage and lead people. Why? Maybe the people who made the hiring decision lack experience, do not truly understand the connection between effective people leadership and driving results on a high performing team, or perhaps there was no one else to promote, so a gamble was taken. This rarely works out well. Ensure when leaders are selected into leadership roles that they demonstrate motivation and interest to support their people holistically and from a wellbeing perspective.

• Develop leaders’ Emotional Intelligence through ongoing corporate learning. Josh Bersin recently penned an article detailing the higher value that HR departments can drive when operating as a fully integrated system – connecting the dots between functions such as leadership development, leadership hiring and workplace wellness. Organizations should weave wellbeing leadership directly into leadership competency requirements and ongoing learning programs. Build skills and provide practical tools to grow leaders’ emotional capacities and the business and people returns will be disproportionally positive.

• Champions at the top. Nothing will erode success faster than senior leadership who do not believe in, or stand behind a message. And vice-versa, having senior leadership champion an initiative can significantly boost the chances of success. Ensure that senior leaders connect to – and personally speak up for - the importance of workplace wellness and the value it brings to the organization.

3. Strategic workforce planning (the unsung hero of workplace wellness)

Screech! Halt! Wait – am I still reading a blog post on workplace wellness? Yes, you are! I am going to suggest here that workplace wellness is fundamentally tied to more strategic workforce planning. And that this connection has a MAJOR impact on wellbeing and results across a company.

These days, companies are changing so fast. Business plans, growth strategies and shifting organizational priorities create pressure, change and stress that impact team members and the day-to-day workplace experience in various ways. For example, when business plans are rolled out, this can potentially increase workloads for employees, create new tasks and work for people to step into, and require learning new and different skills than in the past (e.g., AI).

How well workforce planning is done has a big impact on the wellness of people and culture. Below are some considerations to keep in mind to do this well:

• Team Design: Given the business and team’s strategy – what skillsets are required to achieve the business goals? And does the team operate optimally given this strategy in terms of processes, collaboration, workflows and hierarchy? For example, after delving into these questions, it may be determined that greater technical skills are required than are currently present on the team. And that there is a leadership gap. Once this is clearly brought to the surface, actions can take place which can drive both higher wellbeing and performance. This may lead to hiring plans, team reorganization, changing the roles on the team, or training and development initiatives. If this work is not done, teams will often flounder for years experiencing low levels of wellness and a gap between what good looks like, and the team’s performance.

• People, Process and Technology are all parts of the picture: Given the business strategy and plan, does the team have the right number of people to carry out the work in the next 12 -18 months? This is more tactical workforce planning, but you would be surprised how often this step is not taken – rather – teams often simply layer on more work, see overtime rise or wellbeing slip – and never analyze the number of people required to do the work. At the same time, an analysis should be done to determine if efficiencies such as improving operational processes or leveraging new technologies should be invested in to give the team and the work a more sustainable lift.

With the autumn season upon us, and as you consider how to enhance workplace wellness at your organization, I wish you the best of luck. I hope these tips have been helpful!

Eric Bulmash is a people and culture leader living in Vancouver, BC. He has worked across a number of sectors and industries in his career and has a passion for integrating wellbeing, people growth and business impact to shape company culture and drive results. You’ll find Eric participating in local Vancouver triathlons, enjoying great coffee at local shops, and spending time near the mountains and water as much as he can. You can connect with Eric on LinkedIn here.