HR Tea HR Tea

In our final episode, we put it all together. Now is your time to go practice well-being. Too often, well-being gets lost in our busy schedules, our deadlines, our strategies. If we want to truly offer well-being as a practice for our employees, it's time we start practicing it ourselves. Go give it a try!

In this episode, Scott Behson talks about his interviews with business leaders, CHROs, CEOs and small business owners (the topic of his book called The Whole Person Workplace). His key learning is that the best employers value their employees as whole people. Organizations that recognize, appreciate, and try to help employees rise to meet their life challenges, priorities, and passions outside of work also have employees who engage, who innovate, and who stay. He also talks about working dads' particular struggles and how HR can gear programs to meet dad’s needs.

In this episode, Joseph Starchia, a recruiter in the DEI space and Villanova HRD Alum, says we need to “make sure that we're not hiring people into burning buildings and then they're complaining about the smoke and the fire.” Organizations need to create inclusive and healthy work environments if they expect employees to be well and do well. DEI is ultimately intertwined with well-being because people can only fully contribute at work when their physical, mental, financial, and social needs are supported. When diverse voices are included in wellness program planning, only then will diverse needs get met.

In this episode, executive coach Kelly Meerbot talks about her work with top leaders who are often burned out. To help them regain a sense of well-being and purpose, executives have to be willing to become uncomfortable if they are going to truly benefit from coaching. Emotional intelligence training is often the key to helping them achieve the best version of themselves.

In this episode, Work-Family Researcher Ariane Ollier Malaterre discusses the ways that work technology can support or harm well-being. The bright side of technology offers connectedness, communication, efficiency and well-being when paired with proper digital regulation. The dark side comes with the electronic leash, unsustainable availability expectations, “bossware” AND anxiety, stress and burnout. This is what happens when boundaries blur between work and the rest of life. Dr. Ollier Malaterre believes that organizations can find common sense solutions that are also a win-win for both employees and organizations.

In this episode, we have a physician's perspective on well-being. Dr. Adam Gavsie describes well-being and health not just as the absence of disease but so much more. In fact, he says “what is it not?” Dr. Gavsie sees his mandate as helping patients “realize their own potential to cope with normal stress, be able to work productively, and to contribute to their community". Organizational research has also supported the link between employee well-being and productivity – when organizations support employees’ mental, physical and other types of health, they also support their ability to contribute to the organization.