How to Add Well-Being to Your People Strategy
With burnout at an all-time high and becoming a global trend, you need more than the occasional wellness perk to tackle it.
If well-being in your organization is a top priority for you, but you aren't sure how to move from yoga and happy hours to something more meaningful, then this episode is for you.
I’m discussing how to create a holistic plan for well-being that fits seamlessly into your HR and talent development strategies with well-being expert Dave Allman.
Listen to the episode or scroll down to read the blog post ↓
Key Points:
03:44 Wellbeing@Work by Gallup
08:22 Dave’s well-being journey
12:01 The meaning of well-being versus wellness
16:56 Using Wellbeing@Work as an individual
18:47 Using Wellbeing@Work as a nonprofit
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How to Add Well-Being to Your People Strategy
Yoga.
Massage chairs.
Free Lunch.
When I worked at a national nonprofit, they offered a variety of wellness perks. And this was before burnout had really reached an all-time high. I loved these perks. Take 30 minutes out of my day to get a chair massage? Yes, please.
I found these perks to be helpful. But burnout has reached record levels over the past two years, becoming a global trend. And these perks by themselves aren't going to cut it anymore.
Can they be a part of your wellness strategy? Absolutely.
But we have to be intentional, holistic, and strategic about well-being in the workplace.
McKinsey & Company reported that four out of five HR leaders have included well-being as a top priority. If that's you, but you aren't sure how to move from yoga and happy hours to something more meaningful, then this blog post is for you.
I’ve asked well-being expert Dave Allman to share more about creating a holistic plan for well-being that fits seamlessly into your HR and talent development strategies.
In this blog post, we’re covering the following:
Through an exclusive partnership with Gallup, Dave has spearheaded a joint mission partnering an individual's growth with that of their organization. He launched Wellbeing@Work to enable employers to align purpose, potential, and performance.
1) Workplace Wellbeing in Partnership with Gallup
Dave explains that Wellbeing@Work was born out of his own personal kind of necessity after reading the book Wellbeing by Dr. Jim Harter from Gallup in 2010. Before that, he thought his life was perfect. However, after taking the well-being assessment he realized that he was not thriving in the areas he thought he was.
“It was really a wonderful moment to say self-care is not selfish, and I need to pause and really invest in myself.” - Dave Allman, Learning for Good Episode 80
Dave refers to it as a seven-year journey of getting his own house in order.
“Looking back, I saw such a positive impact on myself and those around me that I decided to approach Gallup. I said, ‘This really impacted my life personally; I think it could impact billions over time.’ And we struck a partnership to really bring the science to life in a very simple, consumable way.” - Dave Allman
But how does Wellbeing@Work actually work?
“The idea is just simply Google Maps for everything that's going on in our life in terms of well-being and mental health.” - Dave Allman
Dave explains that the first thing that happens when you open Google Maps is it finds your current location. The same thing happens with Wellbeing@Work.
“The way we do that is through a conversation using the Gallup well-being index. So imagine a five-minute conversation that has been used over 3 million times across the globe. So it's validated by 98% of the human race. But in five minutes, it immediately locates where you are thriving in life. […] It indicates where you are struggling.[...] So you immediately have a location as to where you are.” - Dave Allman
This could be from multiple perspectives:
Emotional
Career
Social
Financial
Physical
Community
They then ask where you want to go.
“Once we have the destination, we use AI to dynamically set up very small, simple atomic habits that are easy to achieve, literally in the moment. And then we dynamically give you resources that typically are available through your organization or in the community at large.” - Dave Allman
It may sound complicated but it is a step-by-step process.
“So location, destination, and then simple turn-by-turn directions for navigation. That's the experience.” - Dave Allman
2) The Science of Well-Being
Dave is particularly interested in the science of well-being and he breaks well-being into three sections.
1. Pre-pandemic
“Pre-pandemic we were in the fringe benefits era of wellness whether it was a pizza party or a manicure.” - Dave Allman
2. During the pandemic
“We then found ourselves with the pandemic [...] which was basically the medical necessity era where there were leaders doing all the right things. We were all scared and there was this tremendous, I'll say ‘point solution’ effort to just provide relief.” - Dave Allman
3. Post pandemic
“All along that way I just kept looking for what's not working. What are the gaps that are standing in the way of leaders to get credit for doing the right thing? And for individuals to feel secure? Psychologically safe, but also empowered, and wanting to lean in to invest in their own well-being and trust their employer has true positive intent, as opposed to this is just another wellness initiative to get my blood pressure down to reduce healthcare spent.” - Dave Allman
Dave refers to this as enterprise growth.
“If we can get permission to invest in the person as a person, they'll open up for professional development. And when there's personal professional growth, the organizational growth naturally follows.” - Dave Allman
3) Defining Well-Being for the Workplace
Dave shared two thoughts about this.
1. Standards
Dave explains that the key to standards is defining well-being as the six essentials that we need to thrive (emotional, career, social, financial, physical, and community).
“Having the standards of vocabulary creates shorthand so that conversations can become commonplace, if you will, in the day-to-day workplace.” - Dave Allman
The second part of standards is measurement.
“We can deidentify an individual taking their assessment, we can aggregate that and provide a new level of insights that just don't exist today as we think about the development of individual’s leadership development or just organizational growth.” - Dave Allman
Dave explains that the key to moving from a purely wellness perspective to a well-being perspective is having a standard definition.
2. Well-being as a verb NOT a noun
“I think most think of well-being as a noun. That's the measurement part. And we're very proud of that. But there's so much more there.” - Dave Allman
The idea of well-being as a verb is two-fold according to Dave. Firstly, you should be able to learn what the attributes of well-being are and secondly, you should be able to put them into practice.
“It's good practice that suddenly allows us to get to the point of mastery. [...] So that's really all focused around self; self-care, self-efficacy.” - Dave Allman
Then there’s the idea of modeling and advocating. Think of it as oxygen masks in an airplane. You first have to put yours on before you can help other people.
“Well-being is at the core of our existence. When we have that as a competency, we can then put all the other competencies we need on top of that. But without that, it's pretty much a hollow center.” - Dave Allman
In the nonprofit space, it can be easy to forget about yourself when you are serving so many others.
“It's built into the DNA of anyone in the nonprofit space. It is to give, and it's to give to the fault of literally depleting ourselves as human beings. And so our purpose is to help others. So by default, the idea that well-being or self-care is not selfish, it's actually essential in order to stay in the game and be able to do what we've been put on this earth to do. To help others.” - Dave Allman
4) Individual Well-Being
I asked Dave what it looks like to interact with Wellbeing@Work as an individual. According to him, it’s as simple as an email invitation.
“First thing you're invited to do is take a couple of deep breaths and invest five minutes in yourself just to see where you are. Everything from that point forward is pretty intuitive, in terms of serving up simple things you can start doing immediately.” - Dave Allman
You are provided with a digital catalog of things you can do based on where you are thriving, struggling, or suffering. You can take advantage of the resources as they are prioritized for you, but you can also use them in a different order if that is what you feel you need.
“It's your journey. So I can't emphasize enough for the individual, it is as simple as Google Maps location, destination, turn-by-turn navigation, and then revisit often because we have good days. We have bad days.” - Dave Allman
5) Workplace Well-Being for Nonprofits
You can use Wellbeing@Work in your nonprofit as part of your talent development or HR strategy.
Dave explains that it can be used in a couple of ways. There's the Wellbeing@Work platform and there's also an organizational well-being map which is the communication, the collaboration, or the community you create within your organization.
Dave talks about a theme he calls connecting the dots.
When individuals are asked if their organization cares about their overall well-being, only one in four people strongly agree that their leadership cares.
“That's the definition of well-being is to care about somebody. [...] Care and trust move hand in hand. When I believe you care about me, I am five times more likely to trust you as a leader. And so that simple connection of care and trust then creates this idea that people unfold their arms, and they're looking around, and they're finding reasons to belong.” - Dave Allman
That belonging then creates an environment to align on purpose.
“Most times in nonprofit environments people come in and think their purpose aligns with the purpose of the organization. But the care, trust, and belonging isn't there, and all of a sudden, that leads to burnout.” -Dave Allman
Dave explains that once there’s that alignment on purpose, there’s engagement.
Key to what Wellbeing@Work does is the communication that is enabled by the technology.
“It then allows there to be that authenticity or full transparency that leaders are acting and behaving and communicating in a way consistent that they do care. They do entrust others. They want to create an environment where we belong.”- Dave Allman
Wellbeing@Work is a great, easy-to-use tool that helps you as an organization support the well-being of your people. And as Dave mentioned, well-being is really just the core of everything. We need it in order to do all of the other things that we expect nonprofit staff to do.
If you’re trying to prioritize well-being in your organization, check out these episodes:
Episode 67: A Well-Being Approach to Leadership Development
Episode 38: Dealing with Corporate Burnout? One Easy Way to Manage Stress as a Nonprofit Leader with Jessie Pagliari
Episode 30: Why Well-Being Is The Secret Sauce to Change Management with Mandy Sharp Eizinger
To hear the full conversation I had with Dave Allman on the Learning for Good Podcast, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 80.
The Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective
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