Workplace wellbeing has come a long way. What used to be little more than an assortment of health risk assessments, gym memberships, and walking challenges has blossomed into an array of multidimensional offerings.
Employers are investing heavily in workplace wellness programs, with 70% of organizations identifying employee wellbeing and mental health as a top priority, according to a recent McKinsey Health Research Institute survey. And yet…. Employees are less healthy, and they are more stressed than ever before. Why?
Employers have been conditioned to believe in the American Way of Wellness.
The American Way of Wellness views the pursuit of health and wellbeing as a solo enterprise, rooted in an unshakable faith in every person’s capacity to shape their own destiny. Sound familiar? It’s the same line of thinking as the American Dream. Whether it’s achieving wealth, status, or health, all of us (employers included) have been conditioned to believe in a “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” approach. Self-optimization, we’ve all been told, is within reach for each of us. It’s just a matter of putting in the effort. It starts with you! Take personal responsibility! With effort, anything is possible! What if this American Way of Wellness is actually diminishing our wellbeing? Evidence suggests that may well be the case. Consider, for example:
We need to rethink wellness. A better way forward is a Community Way of Wellness. Let’s explore why. The American Way of Wellness stems from an individualistic belief system, which assumes that each of us is a stable entity, autonomous from others and not subject to our surrounding environment. The Community Way of Wellness, on the other hand, is rooted in a collectivist belief system that we, as people, are dynamic entities shaped by the conditions in which we operate. While the idea that every individual has the power to unleash themselves from their circumstance may sound good, it’s not based on fact. Rather, 80% of our wellbeing is shaped by our environment or the conditions in which we are born, grow, live, work and age. Narrowing in on the workplace, a growing body of research shows that the wellbeing of employees hinges on the extent to which the workplace itself is healthy, not how many wellness programs are made available. Creating a healthy workplace, by definition, calls for a Community Way of Wellness. It is the systemic issues, such as unfair treatment at work, unreasonable workload, low autonomy, and lack of social support, that are at the root of employee burnout and distress. None of these are challenges that can be reversed with wellness programs that target the individual. Think about it. None of us can “yoga” our way out of dealing with a toxic boss. No mindfulness app can offset the effects of working in an environment where there is a lack of transparency or where there is a lack of resources to do our job. No work-life balance program will make a difference if the culture supports managers who send late-night emails and celebrates employees who overwork. Enter: “What’s water?” analogy. As famously told by David Foster Wallace at the outset of his Kenyon College commencement speech, there were two young fish who were swimming, who encountered an older fish. The older fish asked the two younger fish, “How’s the water?” – and the two fish kept swimming. Then, a few minutes later, one of the younger fish asked the other: “What the hell is water?” When it comes to our wellbeing, this analogy fits. Much like water, we may not see the culture and environment that we’re “swimming in” – and yet, arguably, it shapes and determines our health and wellbeing in ways that we might not ever imagine. Upshot: It’s the water, not the fish. So, where do we go from here? A first step is to study the currents. Just like fish in the ocean, employee wellbeing largely comes down to the currents they’re swimming in. Are they swimming in water that is supporting their wellbeing – or undermining it? What currents are working in their favor? What currents are they swimming against?
A second step is to optimize the water. If the aim is sustained behavioral change, we must address the work environments where employees operate. We need to tackle the root, the systemic causes of the way work gets done (aka the workplace culture). This starts with policies and company-wide norms that start to make wellbeing a way of life – not just a standalone program. The third step is to start positioning your managers as multipliers of wellbeing It’s likely that in your workplace, the wrong people are the ones communicating about wellbeing. Though well-intended, employees are not going to listen to an HR coordinator or wellness champion from another department as much as they will listen to their managers. Managers have the most influence in persuading or dissuading an employee to take advantage of company offerings - that’s why I call them multipliers. They can energize their teams, peers, and leaders and help an organization rise up to foster a healthy culture of wellbeing. To activate your managers, they need to be trained on how to incorporate wellbeing into their roles. Opportunities to train exist within pre-existing initiatives like leadership development and safety, such as our Managers on the Move workshop series, which can assess what your organization’s managers specifically need to become multipliers of wellbeing. Managers should feel clear about their impact and roles in wellbeing and be equipped with a template that is easy to utilize. In our training series, we use a method of Do, Speak, Create (you can hear examples of each in a recent episode of the Charity Miles podcast): While managers cannot control bigger organizational issues, they can control the dynamics of the team, boost psychological safety, awaken compassion, and normalize the practice of wellbeing. This is all within the reach of every manager and every team leader. That’s why they are the “everyday heroes” of every organization. Wellbeing for everyone, by everyone. Better wellbeing for each is best achieved through better wellbeing for all. In lieu of self-optimization, we need culture-optimization, built team by team, organization by organization, community by community. This community approach stems from a collectivist belief system that we, as people, are dynamic entities shaped by the conditions in which we operate. Book Laura for Your Next Event.In her keynote, What if it’s the water, not the fish? Laura breaks down how our obsession with habits and mindsets has blinded us to what’s happening all around us. What are the cultural shifts that have gotten us here, the pressures that sustain it, and how do we transform wellness from personal responsibility to one of collective care?
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