You could think of a lackluster wellness culture as being like a ping-pong table, pretty much a fixture, but companies point to that table and say, “Look, we’ve got culture!” Perks like ping-pong tables don’t mean a company has culture. Culture encompasses experiences, emotions, how employees feel and relate to your organization and their fellow workers. That requires transparency. Has your company strayed from the path? Do you have cultural challenges to address? Here are some steps to get back on that path:
Ask yourself, “Why build a culture of health?”
(And there are several good reasons for companies to do that)
- It shows that you’re serious about your employees’ well-being.
- Your company will benefit monetarily and from increased productivity.
- Building strong social ties and an aligned community has a compounding effect.
Implement company norms that help create a robust wellness community
Companies with a prospering culture have high expectations. They implement flexible work policies and liberal leave policies. They foster employee empowerment and empathetic leadership styles, complemented by activities, perks and benefits that closely align with those norms.
Ever heard of Social Network Theory? As the National Institutes of Health (NIH) defines the theory, it is…
“an umbrella term for theories that focus on individuals, teams and organizations, and the web of interpersonal relationships that both constrain and enable human action in these social systems.”
Your business environment really does impact personal health and happiness. And creating an atmosphere that purposefully cultivates social ties can significantly influence employee behaviors and emotions. It also creates mutual employee and employer health culture buy-in. Why? Because we tend to mirror the behaviors and practices of those in our sphere, whether that be our home, workplace, or friendships.
Research indicates that within a secure social network, happiness spreads up to three degrees of separation. So, if you feel happy, your friend’s friend is more likely to feel happy as well (think: she told two friends, and they told two friends, and so-on and so-on and so-on, right?) Well, the same thing applies to people taking charge of their own health. When those in your workforce observe that their employer cares about their well-being and that others are embracing health enthusiastically, they want to mirror those behaviors.
Creating dimensions of holistic well-being
Some companies define well-being through the following eight dimensions (or pillars)
- Social
- Purpose
- Emotional
- Environmental
- Financial
- Intellectual
- Occupational
- Physical.
But there’s no magic number of pillars. Your company gets to define what well-being dimensions fit with your culture of health. Nevertheless, fostering social wellness needs to focus on these three areas:
- Advancing positive interactions.
- Providing opportunities for engagement.
- Building and nurturing team solidarity.
At its core, employment should be a spiritual and emotional journey. That’s all very well, you may be saying to yourself, but how does my company go about promoting social wellness? Read on!
Since Google instituted opportunities for workplace and office-life connections, there’s been a huge transition to social well-being among other companies over the past 10-15 years. Some of you may remember when bosses acting like jerks was the norm. Not anymore! Bullying behaviors aren’t cool in today’s workplaces. And since COVID, culture has evolved still more. Now with employees working remotely, in person, or in a hybrid situation, many companies are shifting to more caring policies and seeing employees for who they are in their diversity: parents, singles, LGBTQIA, older or younger, differently-abled, culturally connected, and more. So how do you begin to make that shift? Here are a few suggestions…
Plan work events that work for everyone
Flexibility is key. You want to serve the whole group. Start by surveying employees on what kinds of events matter to them. But refrain from surveying them about every event you plan. There will always be dissatisfied employees. When you survey about each event, it causes division. Groups split apart instead of pulling together. The best way to avoid this is to survey, at most, twice yearly.
Ask your employees what they’re interested in, what types of events they’d enjoy. Are there any better dates or times to hold events? Who would they most like to connect with (their own office mates, other departments, a larger department in the company, for instance?) How frequently would they like to engage in these experiences?
By surveying in this way you can cater event strategies that are backed by in-house data to present to your people. For example, “We plan to invite a chef in to teach a healthy cooking class because we discovered that 75% of you are mega-foodies who enjoy cooking.”
Forced fun is no fun
If you plan to have mandatory team-building events, holding them after work hours is a non-starter. To avoid employee resistance and hostility, events should be during their shifts while they are getting paid. Any after-hour event needs to be voluntary, and always stress that participation helps the company advance its mission and vision for creating connections.
Say, “We’ve surveyed you all, invested the money to plan the event, and now we’d love for you to show up, or at least send your regrets respectfully when you RSVP.”
In addition, when employees attend any evening events – especially virtual events – they should be encouraged to invite significant others, friends, kids, or roommates. Holding a cooking class works well after-hours. It feels more like a diversion than work and plays nicely with dinner (or time spent with kids, significant others, date nights or other shared activities). But perhaps most of all, holding events like this encourages companies to meet their people where they are as individuals. It creates meaningful connections. Plan “plus-one” experiences several times a year.
Once you have surveyed employees annually or bi-annually about what they’d like to do, you can simply knock events off your plate, rather than continually revisiting them monthly or quarterly.
Events won’t fix a second-rate culture
If your company culture is sub-par, no event can fix it. But when an employee goes back to work after an event where they were on the same trivia team as their boss, they both begin to relate in a deeper way. After all, weren’t they laughing together and having fun just last night? That empathy goes a long way toward working better together. When managers exercise empathy, they show up for their teams more, ask deeper questions, have fewer assumptions, and become better listeners. Truth is, it takes work to repair a toxic work environment, but it can be done. And when you have the basics of empathy down, you can start to work on other social nuts and bolts. It’s a big deal to iron out the kinks when it comes to setting values together, promoting cultural values, creating mutual boundaries, and making room for discussions about what’s important collectively. EVERY person in your organization wants to be recognized – leaders, managers, new hires, and old hands.
What’s the big deal about workplace friendships?
Did you know that having friendships at work is a prime indicator of employee satisfaction? If six out of ten of your employees said they had a best friend at work, your company could see seven times higher job satisfaction. That’s nothing to sniff at. It pays to underscore that point when promoting corporate employee wellness programs. Because only 12% of employees report having a best friend at work. And that can seem alienating. How many times have you had this conversation yourself?
Hey, how are you?
Fine. You?
I’m good.
And all the while we’re saying it, we know we’re just parroting meaningless phrases.
But here’s the thing. We spend a full third of our lives at work. It’s where we’re most likely to make adult friends. Millennials and Gen-Zers are way more likely to be fuzzy about where work ends and life begins. They try to integrate work and life from the get-go. Boomers and GenY-ers on the other hand have much less difficulty separating work from life and may feel like their personal life is their own business. But, nevertheless, when a company’s cultural dynamic is vibrant, you see employees going on vacations together, FaceTiming one another after-hours, and meeting up for coffee. It’s not just they that benefit, your company will also benefit from relationships that make work seem more like fun.
And if there’s just one thing you take from this blog, it’s this: prioritize empathy all-around. When leaders have empathy, they continually assess and reassess the company’s business practices. When you practice team building, empathy is magnified and enables you to discover what needs changing. That’s how you begin to fix a second-rate culture.
To your health!
Derek
