Workplace Wellness Must Reflect the Workforce

A colleague at the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) recently told me that IWBI’s culture of health had helped him shed an impressive number of pounds in just a few months of having joined our team.

First off, big congratulations to this colleague, because that accomplishment also took quite a bit of self-discipline. And kudos to all IWBI staff as a community as every single employee contributes to IWBI’s culture of health. Even in these pandemic times when we’ve been physically more apart than usual, and even as we’ve gradually shifted from a largely New York-based staff to one that is more widely dispersed throughout the U.S. and around the globe, the centerpiece of our work culture has stood strong.

I believe that community is at the heart of a culture that works. It’s everyone ascribing to the same basic message, even if they all go about it differently. Online dating apps cull together groups of people who want to find connection and love with another — even though it can often look like it’s a bunch of guys competing for who’s holding up the biggest fish. PFLAG has created several support communities for those in the LGBTQI community, including support groups for trans individuals and for parents of trans children. Powerful and lifelong connections get forged when continual attention and effort get invested in building an effective culture.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been meeting with IWBI teams to ask the questions: “What does Workplace Wellness mean to you right now?” and “How can Workplace Wellness serve you better in the coming months?” One common theme throughout all these conversations has been a desire for greater connection with each other: more frequent social hours, a mix of in-person and virtual social hours, smaller-group social hours, full-company social hours, opportunities to eat together, to play together, to just be together in non-work kinds of ways.

We can chalk up this consistent desire for deeper connection to the pandemic’s isolating force as well as the deeper appreciation for each other that it’s gifted us; or the fact that we’re all more disparate globally; or that IWBI’s hiring teams have amassed a fascinating group of employees. Probably all four, and then some. But the fact is, we want to know each other better and this begs us to re-think our approach to socialization within our company, and how we might re-visit past social successes as well as explore some new ways of being together.

Social hours this month will be pure fun and games. With so much despair in our world right now — from the pandemic to government coups, extreme weather and wildfires, let’s have some lighter moments together to decompress. Come fall, we will be mixing up the ways we spend non-work time together, and the settings in which we come together, to reflect our staff’s thoughtful input and terrific ideas. Afterall, what is Workplace Wellness if not a reflection of the needs and wants of the workforce it benefits?

Thanks to our dynamic IWBI community, we have a rich menu of wellness options. I look forward to building and bettering our healthy culture together!