Corporate Wellness Starts with Leaders

Corporate Wellness Should Place People Before Performance

Corporate wellness (often called workplace wellness) is a hot topic today in business circles. We could define this term as:

A set of programs and initiatives that companies implement to support their employees’ health and well-being.

While it may be tempting to dismiss this concept as another corporate buzzword, the rise of wellness programs is well justified as investing in your team’s wellbeing carries many business benefits. A recent study by Gallup found that poor employee well-being leads to significant costs including:

• 15-20% of total payroll costs due to burnout

• 75% of total medical costs due mostly to preventable conditions

However, the good news is that there is an incredible opportunity on the other side of this problem. An analysis from Sun Life Financial showed that companies who implement an effective wellness program experience the following benefits:

• 11% higher revenue per employee

• 1.8 fewer absentee days per employee each year

• 28% higher shareholder returns

However, the keyword here is an effective wellness program. Now as you might have guessed from the title of this article, my goal today is to unpack the role of leaders in promoting a culture of wellness in their organization. Values drive behaviors, and if a corporate wellness strategy is not guided by the right values, then it can often look like this:

What your team needs is not more pizza parties, ping pong tables, meditation classes, or even a great hybrid work structure. Although I am not opposed to any of those things. The key is that whatever the tools and methods of your wellness plan are, they need to be guided by a strong vision that places your people before performance.

The Who and Why of Corporate Wellness

Now that may sound crazy for me to say in a business context, but bear with me for a second. As I mentioned earlier, values drive behaviors. I unpack more on this concept in a recent article I wrote on the link between culture and values. The problem I have often seen with wellness initiatives is that although they start with good intentions, they take on a very transactional framework. Let me explain.

A mentor of mine taught me a great concept he called, the 3 Spaces of an organization. On one end we have the Transactional Space which encompasses all the structural components of your business including systems, tools, SOPs etc. We could think of it as the WHAT and HOW of an organization. 

Then on the other side, we have the Relational Space which includes your people, their relationships, vision and values. This is the WHO and WHY of your business.

The problem is that often, we see these 2 spaces as competing siloes for energy and resources. It’s a zero-sum game where in order to invest in one, we must detract from the other. While this problem can go both ways, the most common scenario is that we overvalue the transactional space and it topples over and crushes our people. So how does this relate to wellness programs?

So many times I see leaders approach these programs from the transactional space thinking, “What can we offer our people to get them to produce more?” Then if a team fails to meet the leader’s expectations, they grow resentful and complain about how much they are doing for their team and not seeing the benefits. As someone who has many conversations with employees at all levels of an organization, let me confirm that your team can smell this judgmental attitude a mile away, even if your business offers good perks.

Offering your wellness program as a transaction in exchange for increased output defeats the very purpose of what a wellness program is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be about caring for your people. In order to properly do that, leaders need to embrace the relational space more.

What Corporate Environments Are Missing

In his book Leader’s Eat Last, author Simon Sinek shares a story about the former CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, Bob Chapman. One day Chapman was attending a wedding and had a revelation about the responsibility of companies and leaders to their employees. He compared it to a Father handing over his daughter to the groom. He is handing over the responsibility and care of her to another, hoping he will demonstrate the same level of care. Chapman put it this way:

“It is we, the companies, who are now responsible for these precious lives.”

Maybe that example seems a little excessive for you, but the principle is that leaders need to see themselves as responsible for the care and well-being of their team. When that happens, a leader is fully accessing the relational space. This creates a sense of trust and safety as Sinek puts it, thus creating an optimal environment that balances wellbeing AND performance. This is where we get the Creative Space. Bet you didn’t think I would return to that, did you? This is the 3rd Space of an organization where trust, collaboration, and innovation thrive.

It takes patience, hard work, and an open mind to access this space. However, when leaders arrive here, they realize that it is truly possible to balance wellbeing and performance. We can care for our people, and make a lot of money along the way. It doesn’t have to be one way or the other.

Wellness is all about Relationships

So how can leaders engage the Relational Space more? A helpful exercise is to reflect on all pieces of the 3 Spaces when creating a wellness plan:

WHO – Who are we trying to serve (employees, customers, shareholders)? Do we understand their needs?

WHY – Why are we passionate about implementing this? What is the vision behind it?

WHAT – What elements need to be included in this based on our WHO and WHY?

HOW – How are we going to measure success and protect the vision of our program?

You can obsess over all the details of a wellness strategy, but the important thing is that leaders have a strong vision for what they want to achieve and that the vision engages all 3 spaces.

While I do not build wellness programs, I do equip leaders to become more impactful in their roles so they can balance relationships and performance in their organizations. If you are looking to invest in your leadership and the relationships on your team, I would love to have a conversation about how coaching and workshops with Unearth can help build a strong culture that engages all the transactional and relational pieces of your business.

Go ahead and book a free Discovery Call with me to start the conversation!