Editorial note: It's impossible to leave the stresses of life (whether financial, relationship, health, etc.) at the door before entering your workplace each day. At Genentech over the last six years, I have been surrounded by caring co-workers and able to take advantage of many benefits (e.g., therapy/counseling, medical expert second opinion, mindfulness activities) so that I can bring my best self to work. Thus, I was absolutely thrilled that Nancy Vitale, the former senior vice president of human resources at Genentech, who was likely responsible for nurturing the workplace culture as well as for my employee benefits, agreed to share a guest post about her vision for wellbeing.
Guest Post by Nancy Vitale, Co-founder & Managing Partner of Partners for Wellbeing
In July, I left my dream job at a great biotech company to help organizations build thriving cultures through a lens of total wellbeing. Inspired by the work my team started at Genentech and motivated by a desire to help companies enable their people to be at their best, I launched Partners for Wellbeing. With this new full-time focus, I have come to appreciate more than ever that when people can be at their best, they can perform at their best.
Why do I believe this? The research is compelling, but so are the stories and testimonials of people struggling, suffering and living with stress, anxiety and other health conditions. Gallup was one of the first organizations to really study holistic wellbeing, and the book by my friend, collaborator and best-selling author Tom Rath, co-written by Jim Harter, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements clearly articulates Gallup’s global research and findings on what makes a life well lived.
Today, many studies from a myriad of researchers and organizations like Optum, WELCOA, LifeWorks, SHRM, Deloitte, AON (and the list goes on) underscore the imperative that today’s organizations must heed – people’s wellbeing is suffering, and when that happens, their performance suffers too. In addition, we know that people are demanding more from their employers today – especially Gen Z and Millennials - and they need our support. The American Psychological Association highlighted in its 2018 report on stress that Gen Z and Millennials are the most stressed out generations in America, and across all generations, 1 in 5 adults feel they do not do enough to manage their stress. These are the same people who are working for our companies (or perhaps due to absenteeism and presenteeism, they are not actually working productively).
In a report entitled Prevention is better than cure, AON highlights that “ignoring the outcomes of poor employee wellbeing is not an option. The relationship between employers and many employees is increasingly challenged by the link between poor health behaviours and chronic medical conditions, which manifests in a number of different ways, such as increased absenteeism and presenteeism, reduced productivity, increasing claims costs, poor financial wellbeing and general disengagement.” Beyond a clear and compelling business case, there is a moral imperative when you consider the research of Gallup that highlights a declining state of wellbeing overall in the country, according to its wellbeing index, and the same holds true for many countries in its global study.
Implications for Leaders
So what does all of this mean for leaders trying to help their people do their best work? It’s not about piling on programs, layering in activities, introducing new resources or launching more apps into the mix of your offerings (although that may ultimately be some of what you do to support your people). Rather, it is about examining the culture you embody within your team and organization – the DNA and fabric of how things get done in the context of your company, and integrating/connecting the concepts of wellbeing thoughtfully into that culture. It’s about engaging team members to help them be at their best. It’s about leaders creating their own high octane fuel by integrating the five key ingredients of wellbeing into their own lives and seeing how that energizes them and helps them to be at their best. A healthy by-product of this is stellar role modeling by leaders who recognize that they are always being observed by their people.
A Contemporary Wellbeing Framework
Since launching Partners for Wellbeing, I have adapted and modernized Gallup’s original framework based on what I have experienced or observed at top-rated organizations. The Partners for Wellbeing framework includes the five key ingredients to not only fuel greater wellbeing in your team/organization, but ultimately enhance your culture to attract, retain and sustain high-performing talent and build greater resilience, engagement and productivity of your people. These five ingredients include:
- Fulfillment: having purpose/meaning (at the individual, team, and organization level) and leveraging strengths to contribute each day in what you do. It’s about how you occupy your time with some things that spark joy for you 🙂
- Human Connection: having quality relationships and positive interactions in your life, especially in the Digital/AI era and with the realities of technology overload. It’s about connecting with supportive networks of people.
- Financial: managing your resources effectively and having enough resources to do what you want to do in life.
- Mind/Body: having enough energy and the frame of mind to do what you want to do, being physically and mentally healthy.
- Community: being actively engaged where you live and work.
In this context, we need to rethink/reframe productivity and performance and also how we view leadership effectiveness. Business Insider cited Jessica Pryce-Jones (2010) when it recently reported that “the average American spends 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime.” How does an organization ensure the optimal performance and productivity of someone whose work life cycle is 90,000 hours? Is it about squeezing every ounce of productivity you possibly can while that person is in your employ no matter the duration? Or is it about more effectively leading through the lens of wellbeing, given where your people are joining and engaging with you in their 90,000 hour work life journey?
Productivity in this context is fueled by the five key wellbeing ingredients that drive a person’s energy and ultimately their performance. This is about leaders enabling sustained, long-term productivity and high performance for each and every person on their team. Integrating the five ingredients of fulfillment, human connection, financial wellbeing, mind/body health and community into culture can start anywhere, but ideally it starts with leaders - leaders who understand their leadership effectiveness is enabled by them being at their best. Being at their best requires cultivating the five key ingredients for total wellbeing. Leadership effectiveness, however, is not only a factor of the leaders' personal wellbeing, but the wellbeing of each and every one of the people on their team.
I am not suggesting that any of this is easy, simple or fast. I am suggesting that nurturing and evolving a culture to integrate the five key ingredients of total wellbeing will pay dividends in the long-run, and will result in a thriving culture of high performance. People want to work for leaders and within teams that genuinely care about their wellbeing. People want to work for managers who support them - not only as “workers” but as people who are, yes, human. One data point in support of this relationship is from Google’s research that uncovered the eight habits of highly effective managers at Google. Coming in at #3 is “express interest in employee's success and well-being.”
Editorial note: Here is a quick guide for starting the process of getting to know the people you manage at work.
These five key total wellbeing ingredients are interdependent. Focusing solely or primarily on just one or two ingredients is like following a recipe that calls for five ingredients, but only using one or two in the hopes that it won’t be too bad. When it comes to people, this limited focus can lead to declining health and overall struggle instead of thriving with vitality in our lives and on our teams.
How can leaders integrate wellbeing into their teams?
Important to note is that in any of this, one size does not fit all - one size fits one. That said, leaders should consider what the aggregate themes are across their team or in different pockets of their organization, and address those needs accordingly. Know and understand the gaps and challenges your people are facing in nurturing the five key ingredients. I am excited to be working with A Great Place to Work Institute on a wellbeing index, leveraging what they know about great places to work, and co-developing a diagnostic that can be leveraged for understanding the themes and priorities within the organization. Whatever the tool, it’s important to know and understand your people and how to better fuel their wellbeing.
Once you understand the themes and needs, it’s important to inventory what you are already doing to effectively support those needs and what you may be doing to diminish (potentially even unknowingly) the wellbeing of your people. The important thing to remember is that this is not about piling on programs and activities. It’s about doing the relevant things for your people to help them be at their best. For leaders, this is about connecting, integrating and embedding that support into a thriving culture and into the day-to-day environment of the team. It’s simple, and yet, not so simple. The key is to be intentional about what you are setting out to do. Give due consideration in all of this to the role you play as manager/leader. Start small with a concept that you think might help nurture an ingredient or two, then experiment, learn, iterate and grow accordingly.
Conclusion
Productivity is a factor of people’s performance, which is enabled by their energy. Their energy is fueled by the mix of five key total wellbeing ingredients: fulfillment, human connection, financial wellbeing, mind/body health and community. As leaders, we can rethink productivity and our own effectiveness in this context. Explore with your team how to better support the wellbeing of each team member, so that each person can be at his/her best during whatever amount of time spent with you during that 90,000 hour work-life journey!
About our guest author
Nancy Vitale is a senior human resources executive with 25+ years of experience driving culture transformation, organization change, and profitability for industry leaders, including Genentech/Roche, Procter & Gamble, CIGNA, and Deloitte Consulting. Through people, culture and strategy, she has delivered business growth while building recognized great places to work.
Nancy is now the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Partners for Wellbeing, a boutique consulting firm that integrates total wellbeing into thriving cultures to enable greater attraction, retention and sustainment of high-performing talent while building greater resilience, engagement and productivity. Nancy is also a board member for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America. In 2015, she was recognized by the San Francisco Business Times as one of the “most influential women in the Bay Area” and in 2016 was named to its “forever influential” honor roll.