#People Post #6: Are you well?
Or, how humans perform better when they feel great.
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Wellness, it’s quite a thing now isn’t it? From yoga and mindfulness to quinoa (keen-wah) and licking salt lamps. It's a multi-trillion dollar industry, with more startups, yogis and wellness practitioners than you can shake your chakra at. But what does it mean for those of us in the world of people?
It’s no secret that, if you’ve got well staff, then you’re much more likely to have lower attrition, high productivity and better reviews in Glassdoor. Healthy employees also cost you less, well people don’t need as much time off, they don’t need as much support and they can create more value in less time. But how do you have well staff? There’s a huge industry for wellness at work to ensure that people are healthy - both physically and mentally (unless you lick salt lamps), and it can be confusing to know what kind of thing you can offer your staff. And you should offer things, there's a hard return and it can no longer be thought of as a bonus or incentive.
Some companies offer a plethora of wellness incentives and bonuses. Notably Google do ... but what if you don’t have the clout, finances or dedicated wellness staff that Google has? Flexible working is seen as one way to keep your folks healthy (this one is really easy to make work!). You can look at your employees brains, by offering meditation classes, or even just a space to meditate. Some places I've worked had a "multi-faith prayer room" that you could use if someone else wasn't praying. Drop in a couple of yoga mats and it's also a place to knock out 15 minutes of sun salutations for those that enjoy that.
Mental health is the leading cause of workplace absence in many countries and costs the global economy $1trillion each year in lost productivity and so attending to the people who spend most of their waking lives in your care is important. It'll reduce attrition and boost productivity, keeping you and your managers sane. Happy, engaged staff look after their colleagues and maintain their own lookout for each others mental wellbeing.
As well as looking at employees brains, you can help them with their bodies. Subsidized gym memberships is a common route to this, but pretty lazy and not really something you offer. Instead, think about running clubs, after work basketball or badminton. You can get your employees fitter and generate community at work while you're at it. Make time for wellness days and, instead of paying for everyone to eat pizza or do some crappy team-building, hire a personal trainer or wellness coach for the day, stick them in a room and offer people appointment slots to go and visit at their own leisure. Make it regular and people will visit more often. Bringing the wellness to them, instead of making them find it themselves, will normalize it, make it a common occurrence and will rub off on them.
People spend most of their time at work, do we have an obligation to look after them? Yes, I think we do.
Wellness from the web
YOU WILL BE FIT!
If there are so many good reasons to look after the wellbeing of our employees, should we just make it mandatory? No, probably not. "Enduring transformation occurs when people acknowledge a benefit and willingly change their behaviour, rather than being compelled to change... Compulsory wellness programming would open up the doors to all sorts of liabilities that at present fall to the individual... ‘Compulsory’ is not a word that typically engenders a sense of excitement, buy-in or appreciation, is it?" - Workplace wellness programs - should they be mandatory?
I don't think people lick salt lamps, but there's this frog...
"The host spends the next hour explaining the history of kambo and how the session will proceed. “I have prepared two liters of lukewarm water for each of you,” he says. “First thing is for you to drink five pints of it. After I apply the kambo, your temperature will begin to rise pretty quickly, and the purging should start within a few minutes.” If you're not keen on reading about people vomiting, don't click this link. Is Kambo Really The Next Wellness Trend?
Actually, forget all that, wellness at work makes us unwell
Forget everything you just read! Don't do it! Wellness at work is a scam! "First, employers need to ask, Do we need all this? In some cases good, simple interventions—like gym facilities—may be enough. Second, employers should be realistic about what they hope to achieve from these programs. Often they’re sold as everyone in the firm will quit smoking. Unrealistic goals like that will backfire. Third, you must establish boundaries. ... Too often people go all in on investments like treadmill desks when they could get the same payoff by giving their employees natural light, fresh air, and some fresh fruit."
Corporate Wellness Programs Make Us Unwell: An Interview with André Spicer
From the channel
An interesting looking tool that analyses your employees slack chatter to provide insights on company culture. Can't decide whether this is cool or creepy. At least it would stop this horrible questionnaires going out once a quarter. https://bunch.ai/
Although it will harvest your email address, this looks like something worth downloading for all your startuppers in the US, especially if you're not a money person: https://library.namely.com/payroll-guide-to-federal-and-state-taxes
A really great post from a recruiter on linked in. I've never done much in the way of recruitment myself, aside from buying coffee and chatting to people I wanted to hire, but it seems like a pretty horrendous job at times. This post starts talking about tech, but then delves into what it's like to recruit. A must read: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tech-recruitment-pedro-barahona/
Twitter
End #post
The end of #6. One more and I can call it a "regular email". Hope you enjoyed this one. During the research it's made me think quite deeply about my own level of mental and physical wellbeing. So, once I send this, I'm going to run to the donut shop. Because that's healthy for my body and my brain.
If there’s something in particular you’d like to see in here, then let me know. I enjoyed putting together this issue, so any other topic you’d benefit from hearing about would be great.
In the mean time, tell your friends about the email and the slack channel: http://hashtagpeople.co.uk/ .