Many employers create a wellbeing program but fail to build a culture of wellbeing. Behaviour change happens because of a movement, not a mandate. As an organizational leader your wellbeing offerings alone are often not enough. Creating a wellbeing culture is about building with intentional, sustainable materials which allows your organization and the people who work there to live happily ever after.
WHAT IS CULTURE AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Culture is a way of life. It is the heart and soul of an organization. It includes values, beliefs, roles, communication, attitudes and traditions. Culture is reflected in everything a company does. When people are highly engaged with the company they work for they are happier, more productive, loyal and enthusiastic about their work. This has a direct spin-off on the quality of their work, and if they are customer facing, their interactions with your customers.
Just like in any other personal relationship in our lives, if we don’t feel seen, heard and valued at work – we disengage. We don’t trust the message we don’t feel supported in our mission and we can’t understand the purpose. This is human nature.
Through a deliberate investment in creating a wellbeing culture, your employees will develop a sense of belonging and purpose. You can then gently nudge personal and cognitive growth that encourages intrinsic behaviour change. Quite simply, if the culture allows for people to feel authentically valued and supported, then we trust the intentions behind any call-to-action to engage in wellbeing.
The tricky part is while it’s clear that culture is important; culture itself and how to change it can feel like the big bad wolf. It can often feel like something separate from day to day operations. However, if we view wellbeing culture as part of the foundational bricks to build the house, it can feel less elusive. Your organization and its culture are interdependent. Each little change in culture impacts the whole house.
CREATING A CULTURE OF WELLBEING
Investigate. Design. Ignite.
First, investigate what your culture is today and if sticks and straw need to be blown down. Second, once you understand where you are and how far you are from your ideal, it’s time to design it building it brick-by-brick. Finally, it’s time to ignite the movement.
INVESTIGATE if you need to blow down the house.
- Take active steps to understand and learn where your culture currently stands. It’s important to know where you are starting from, to know where you want to go.
- Determine what motivates your employees. Ask everyone on the team how they define wellbeing. Remember wellbeing in your finance department could be different than wellbeing in the human resources department.
- What’s your WHY? Spend time to analyze why your organization wants to create a culture for wellbeing? Encourage your workforce to take an active role in telling you why they want a wellbeing program. Make sure your leaders share their why too.
- Connect with EAP Assist to understand the services they offer to help you evaluate, refine or improve your organizations culture.
- Define wellbeing. Be clear on what you and the team need to be well. Don’t cut and paste to design your wellbeing program. Instead create a program that works for your culture and your workforce.
- After your discovery phase, determine whether you need to change, update or maintain your culture and be persistent to achieve your goal.
DESIGN your culture to build the bricks of trust.
- Provide employees with the training and resources they need to understand your offerings. Hold small group meetings to create an in-person forum for Q & A.
- Is wellbeing one of the core values of your overall mission statement? If not, consider adding it. Train your leaders to incorporate this core value into everything they do.
- Be consistent. Make sure wellbeing and culture are deeply linked in daily work practices, language, decision making and symbols.
Deep culture change can’t happen without deep relationships. Develop meaningful relationships at work. Create a formal time for your team to share authentic stories and radical gratitude around wellbeing values.
- Provide a wellbeing platform that meets the employee where they are on their own journey. Develop a personalized wellbeing journey by integrating and analyzing employee data from multiple sources, including demographics, assessments, biometrics, interests, preferred modalities and more.
- Create a wellness champion network that empowers a critical few to ignite a critical mass. Provide the network with the tools they need for on-the-ground culture development strategies.
IGNITE to make sure even the wolf can’t blow it down.
- Be Bold. Model your pillars of wellbeing in every action of every day. For example, be mindful of flexible working arrangements, encourage walking breaks, create time for mindfulness in formal activities, encourage high-performance habits by teaching “out of the box” techniques, allow for gut checks and create space for emotion.
- Remember everyone is watching the house. Leadership and middle management must buy in to embrace culture change and wellbeing.
- Be intentional on how you encourage everyone to enjoy the process of wellbeing. Be mindful to communicate support for “failures” as well as excitement for victories. Share inspirational stories that create raving fans for the wellbeing program.
Constantly communicate and communicate well! The story or narrative of your wellbeing culture must be clear, inclusive and reasonable. It must be able to motivate and organize a large group of people around a common vision/goal. Work with your wellbeing vendor to use words that specifically resonate with your organization.
Culture sustains employee engagement and enthusiasm. Your wellbeing culture can retain and maintain a top-talent workforce that is healthier and happier at work and at home. This impacts the bottom line in more ways than one. Once wellbeing becomes something you are, not what you do, intrinsic behaviour change is the prize. This is a multi-prong, multi-year approach that requires trial and error. However, a wellbeing strategy that understands the power of culture is sure to succeed.
For further advice & support contact EAP Assist.