Making Your Workplace Healthy for Everyone: An Interview with Authors of “Make Work Healthy”
Loeb Leadership was honored to have the chance to sit down with Michael Burchell, a Loeb Leadership consultant and executive coach, and John Ryan, CEO at Healthy Place To Work® Ireland, who have just released their new book, “Make Work Healthy.”
In this exclusive webinar, Dr. Burchell and John Ryan share their research and insights that informed their book. Learn about the crucial role that people data and workplace health scores play in driving positive business results. Discover the proper diagnostic tools and methods necessary to benchmark employee well-being, allowing leaders to take a more strategic approach to create a healthy workplace for all.
Watch the recording or read the transcript below!
Tamara Fox:
Hello everybody. I have Dr. Michael Burchell and John Ryan with us today. And quickly I'll let them introduce themselves and then we're going to kick it off with a quick poll. So John, would you like to introduce yourself to our audience?
John Ryan:
Sure. Yeah. It's a joy to be here, Tamara. So thank you very much for the invitation. So John Ryan is my name and coauthor the book with Michael. I would've spent 10 years leading the Great Place to Work in Ireland. And the last number of years, I'm the Global CEO of Healthy Place to Work. That's pretty much me. Michael?
Dr. Michael Burchell:
Yeah. So I'm Michael, and as you can see, I'm wearing the Loeb Leadership paraphernalia. I'm actually a Consultant and Executive Coach with Loeb Leadership. When I'm not doing that, I write with John Ryan about Healthy Workplaces and Workplace Wellbeing. I've been doing an executive coaching and change national work and diversity work for a couple decades. And I met John way back in the day when I was also at Great Place to Work, but I think 15, 20 years ago now. So it's a little about me.
Tamara Fox:
Wonderful. Let me quickly share my screen before we jump into a quick poll with our audience. And thank you both again for being here. Really excited to talk with you today. I know I geek out on this topic, so excited to be able to share it with our audience. So the audience knows throughout this webinar, please feel free to chat in questions for John and Michael to answer. We will be monitoring the chat and want to hear from you. So if you have any questions, please don't wait till the end. We want to hear those questions throughout. All right. We're going to kick it off with our first poll.
We're going to ask you two different questions to start. The first question is, number one, how healthy are you on a scale of one to 10? So one would be very unhealthy, 10, you would feel that you're very healthy. So Lance Armstrong would probably be in the 10 category, someone who does triathlons, if that's your definition of healthy. All right. And then our next question is. How healthy is your organization? So when you think about your organization as a whole, one being very unhealthy and 10 being very healthy. How healthy is your organization? All right. Thank you all for answering those polls.
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John Ryan:
Sure. Yeah. I mean, the book is called Make Work Healthy. And I suppose the reason why we felt there was a need to write a book about that was twofold really. One was societal, governments all over the world are spending an increasing amount of money on the health of the society. And unfortunately that money has been taken away from other things like social supports and education and the like. This is like there's an insatiable demand for support for people's health. And a lot of these things are not genetic, they're actually lifestyle related unfortunately. And also there's an explosion in the needs for mental health services. And we can see very clearly the amount of people who need medicinal support just to basically get through their day. So when you add to that, the demographics, it only gets worse. And unfortunately, governments all over the world can't keep spending increasing amounts of money to meet the needs here.
So something has to change because if something doesn't change, unfortunately it'll be a case of only the wealthy will be healthy, and that's simply not fair and not sustainable. So the question is, who's the next biggest grouping in society who can actually help, who have the power to make things happen? And that's the leadership of organizations all over the world. They employ a lot of people and if they can at least look after the health and wellbeing of those people, making sure that those people aren't going to be hitting the health services all over the world, even just giving the health services a break for maybe 10 years, in terms of the demographics. That's a really, really important thing. And I'm very taken by the work of Nuria Chinchilla who talks about organizations we're told not to pollute environmentally and they ignored that advice. And it wasn't until governments actually started to penalize them and find them that they woke up and stopped polluting.
And it's the same she says for what she calls social pollution. Sometimes workplaces can destroy people, they can be toxic, they can be very difficult, they can place incredible demands on people. So much so that those people have to go to the health services of the world. And she believes a time will come where there's going to be tracking back to the organizations and saying, "Hold on a second, you guys actually caused the problem here, so you're going to have to pick up the bill." So that's the social pollution piece. And what we're saying is, "Hey, before we get there and actually have to implement fines and go that negative way, why don't you guys actually step up to the plate here? And why don't you turn around and actually make a commitment and say, 'actually you know something, we'll look after the health and wellbeing of our people as best we can. We'll try to make sure that our workplace isn't actually causing people to be sick. And it's actually in the best case scenario, actually supporting them to be well and to flourish.'"
Because the truth is that work can be both of those things. It can be the worst part of your life or the best part of your life. It can make you really ill or it can allow you thrive. It can give you all that you need to have a really brilliant life with great purpose and meaning, or it can completely destroy you. And actually in the worst case scenario, as Jeffrey Pfeffer says, "It can actually kill you." So what we wanted to do with this book was give people a really clear framework to make work healthy rather than make it something that destroys you.
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Tamara Fox:
So it sounds like then it wasn't one event that inspired you and Michael to write this book. It was accumulation of your years working with all of these different organizations and all of these different leaders, and seeing what you're seeing throughout the world that inspired you both to write the book?
John Ryan:
In a way, yes. But equally, there was a moment, and that moment came in New Orleans, to be honest, when Jeffrey Pfeffer from Stanford University stood up at a presentation I was at and he had a slide and it said, "Workplaces are killing people, and worse, nobody cares." And I remember at that moment I was wondering like, "Is he overplaying it here a little bit?" But then he started to give data and it was scary, around suicides, around cancers, around heart attacks, around stress in workplaces even talked globally about in Japan where they have a word karoshi which is death by overworking, it's a reportable on your death cert. It's so prevalent and the same as in China. So I remember at that moment going, "We should really do something about this," because I had been obviously in the great place to work world where you're dealing with elite organizations who are the best of and the like.
And then I realized, there's a much more fundamental level here where actually just keeping people healthy is something that's really, really important to do. And so that got me saying, "I wonder, has somebody created a global model methodology and a model that can be implemented and they can certify against it?" I actually say, "Hey, we're actually a healthy place to work," so that they can attract and retain people and really they can deliver high performance because that's the beautiful thing here. Because this isn't only the right thing to do, it's also the smart thing to do for leaders and organizations. Because this drives high performance, but namely sustainable high performance, which is the ultimate, right? So from that point of view, we actually started building a model and methodology and the question was, what should that look like? And we came across the work of a guy called Aaron Antonovsky.
Unfortunately he's passed, but he was an American Israeli who did a lot of work analyzing a longitudinal study of women who were in concentration camps during the war. And what he actually found was a cohort of Iran, 33% who actually were able to live fairly normal lives after been through the horrors that they were through. And what he really wanted to figure out was what made those people so resilient in the face of what they had gone through. And what he found was that the world was seeing health as the absence of illness. So if I'm not sick, I'm healthy. Okay? So that's what he said was a very pathogenic approach to health where you're avoiding disease, you're avoiding anything that could lead to a disease, you're actually reducing risk factors. It's all about what you don't want. But what he found about these women was that they had what he called a salutogenic approach to health, which is they understood what actually made them really, really healthy and they became stronger, stronger physically, mentally, socially, emotionally and spiritually.
And that was the key to them having this sense of resilience. One final thing that he identified was the thing that made a real difference was having a deep sense of coherence. So if you imagine, Tamara, you have your ideal self in this world, right? Who you want to be and who you feel comfortable being, but then sometimes your real self is not really close to that. And if that's a long way away, there's a dissonance in your life. And that dissonance and that lack of coherence, a lack of alignment actually leads to you being at a disease and that leads to you getting sick. So the more you can actually make sure that people are living a very coherent life and work is a key part of life. And if they can be very aligned to the work they do, and the organization they're in, and the culture that they're in, and the leadership that's in that organization, that allows them then live a good healthy life and much, much, much more possible to be able to manage the stress that everybody is under.
Because that's one of the things Aaron Antonovsky talked about. He said, "People have this idea that everybody's going through life fine and then suddenly stress hits them." That's actually not the way it is at all. We're all under stress all the time. The only question is, can you manage the stress you're under? Now, what we clearly can see from the data is that people who self-report that they're really healthy can manage more stress in their life and the things that might affect you or me won't affect them at all. Whereas, if you start to feel unhealthy as yourself, it can be the slightest bit of stress that can actually tip you over. So the art of this is to really help people to be really, really healthy on all those levels, physically, mentally, socially, emotionally, and spiritually so that you can actually operate in this world in a really sustainable, resilient way.
And that's basically the idea behind the book. And I think you'll be showing the model and the methodology in a while. I mean, the last thing I'd say is just when we talk to organizations, I think you have a slide there which probably shows it really, really well, that we ask organizations, "What are you doing in this space?" And they say, "Oh, we're doing a lot of stuff." And when we drill into it, what we find is that what they're doing is a little bit superficial in some cases, to be honest. Others are doing very much events are taking a very programmatic approach, or it's the latest, greatest thing they've heard on LinkedIn that they actually start to work on. And it's all driven by HR and it's very much about absence and illness. But for us there's a huge shift that takes place when you move away from that towards understanding that this is the biggest driver of sustainable organizational performance, workforce health.
If the CEO and the C-suite believe that and they're really passionate about it, they'll have a number. And that's the art of this is providing numbers around this area so you can have your finger on the pulse of your workforce so that you can understand what's going on. So what you're actually doing is taking a data-driven, evidence-based approach. So if you're going to do something, the reason you're doing it, if you're running maybe support for mental health, you're saying, "The reason we did that is because we analyzed our workforce and this was the biggest presenting issue. Or maybe it's actually financial wellbeing, because people are struggling with inflation or the like, well this is why we're doing that." So it's really been able to target the initiatives so you're not wasting time and money on the wrong things. These are the things that matter most to people, and that's why what you're doing is moving the dial in the lives of those people, delivering them things that they really, really need right now.
Tamara Fox:
Wonderful. And one question because, John, obviously I know you and Michael well, but some of our audience has not yet met you. What led the two of you to write the book together? Because I'm sure there's some of our viewers right now that are like, "Why did these two write a book together? How did these two write a book together?" Or, "What makes these two qualify to write a book together?" What could you tell our audience as to how did this come to fruition with the two of you writing together?
John Ryan:
Over to you, Michael?
Dr. Michael Burchell:
So that's a great question. So I think one is that John and I have had a long working relationship at with the Great Place to Work institute before this project. And John, as you can already tell, is passionate, right? He'll be like, "No, not me," but he's incredibly intelligent, incredibly passionate, and just full of energy, and he is an influence, wherever he goes, he's an influence. And it's like when you see a shooting star, you want to capture that energy. So there's a little bit of that going on. At the same time, there's this conversation that John and I have been having for a number of years around workplace health, not just wellness, but wellbeing and organizational health. And I think this is one of the things about the book, it's not about, how do I actually manage my own energy and become more physically well, emotionally well?
It's about that a little bit, but it's also about organizational health. How do we actually create healthy people-centric organizations? And that has been a conversation that John and I have had for many, many years. And so when John struck out on his own and created Healthy Place to Work, he was like, "Listen, there is something here and we need to really dig in and try and understand this more." And prior to this book, I've coauthored two other books around workplaces and workplace culture. And I am not an academic per se, but I'm really curious, right? I actually am very curious and I want to understand organizations and people systems and how organizations can be more effective. And as a result of that, how people can be more productive and effective, and to John's point, thrive. And so part of the equation around this was like, "Okay. So there's something here that we need to understand and explore."
And I think what readers of the book would find out very quickly is that there's a little bit of data, a little bit of research, but a lot of storytelling. There's a lot of examples from organizations across the globe about what organizational health and wellbeing looks like. And that was the central piece. John spent many, many, many hours interviewing. And so there's tons of podcasts that are out there about this book, but that was part of the research that we did to figure out like, what are the key components? What does that look like? John's company did the data and the research behind it to actually arrive in assessment. But all that created this interesting model and framework around how to think about the book. So that for me is like, why John and why this book and why now?
The pandemic is still not totally in the rear-view mirror, right? We're still kind of living with it. We're certainly living with the after effects of that. And now we're dealing with an economy that doesn't even know what it is, right? We're in this moment where we're not in a recession, but you go to a grocery store and there's not as many service workers. And there's more still in the U.S. there's more jobs than there are people to fill them. So we're in a complicated, weird moment, and I think organizations are really struggling to figure out like, "How do I retain my best and brightest? How do I create a high performing workplace? How do I make sure that we're sustainable and in it for the long term?" And I think that this book helps to focus in on that very question, and I think that's what really drew me to it and of course John's energy too.
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Tamara Fox:
What you were writing it, was there a targeting in mind or a target type of business, public private size? Is there a certain demographic that you are targeting with the book, or who is the book for?
Dr. Michael Burchell:
Yeah. So John and I had lots of wide-ranging conversations, and John, I'm sure you'll jump in here in a second. But I think one of the things about about where this book is supposed to focus is on the leadership team. And I think John would agree with this, that if you actually don't have the executive team, the leadership team, the CEO kind of involve, invested, engaged, then you're just not going to make a lot of progress. And at the same time, what we know is that where the rubber hits the road, where the experience matters is with a manager, right? Because people, as they commonly say, join organizations, but they leave their managers. And I think what you find about this book and about the work and the model and the framework is it's about the individual, right? How do I show up and how am I healthy?
It's about managers, what can they do in a day in and day out way? And it's also about organizational leaders at the highest level. What do they do in terms of shaping the culture, shaping the organization? The industry, again, I think if the listeners in this webinar have a chance to read the book, I think what they'll find is that there are examples from all across the world and all kinds of industries. So location, country, industry, size, it all matters. And so the book is really directed at a fairly large base of folks. I'll give you one quick example. Lincoln Plating is a small company in Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, and they do chrome plating, right? But this organization has a real focus around wellbeing in the workplace, and they've really created their entire system, their architecture, their whole talent system. So whether it's how you recruit and retain, or how you promote, or how you manage performance is all done around the sense of wellbeing in the workplace.
And so they have spent a lot of time, but you have wellness coordinators or wellbeing coordinators, but you also have the CEO out there every week talking about this. You have HR that has created the practices, and you have managers that have been really well-trained because what they want to do is they want to create an organization where rather than you fit the people around the work in this organization, you fit the work around the people, right? It's a different mindset. And how you then engage as a manager to create the space so people can actually thrive is a totally different question. And so I think that's what we talk about in the book.
Tamara Fox:
And then as you and John have both mentioned, there's an assessment that goes with the book that's part of John's company, Healthy Place to Work, which after I got to spend time with the assessment in John, I walked away and I was like, "This is the future of engagement surveys." Having an HR background, we've always been tasked with engagement surveys, we're told to go find out how engage is our workforce, understand different metrics, benchmark them against best practices. But when I saw this assessment, and I'll let you both explain the assessment in more detail for our audiences. This is what employers should be doing and this is how they should be measuring engagement moving forward and measuring the health of our organization holistically. So how is this assessment different from an engagement survey or a wellbeing initiative?
John Ryan:
Yeah. I mean, I think people run engagement surveys and then they're shocked when the results come back that it's really low and they shouldn't be. Because engagement is normally low in most organizations, and particularly ones that haven't actually focused on the systems, and the processes, and the culture, and the leadership and the like to get it right. Because sometimes people think, "Sure. It's obvious, you just put an organization together and it's fine because works work." Well. No, it's not. The art of bringing people together into a system and a culture and a process is an art and a science. And you have to think really carefully about how you're actually doing that so that you make sure that the system works so that it makes it more efficient and effective for people to do that. One of the things we've clearly said as a philosophy is that you actually can't be a healthy person if you're going into an unhealthy environment every single day.
And equally, you can't be a healthy organization if you're full of unhealthy individuals. So it seems obvious that what you should be focused on is actually creating healthy individuals in a healthy organization. And that's essentially what we're doing here. And one of the things that stands out for me is that the world at a particular moment in time is obsessed with people, been happy and engaged. And honestly, what I'm more interested in is being healthy and resilient because life is tough. Life is going to hit you right between the eyes several times and hopefully not too hard. But for some people it's very unfair and it hits them very, very hard. Now the question is, if you've built up a sense of resilience and if you're part of an organization, and that organization is there to support you during those really tough times, you actually give that back in spades to the organization. And that's what this is all about.
So I suppose what is interesting to me is that when you share the data, when organizations see that actually half of the statements that we survey people are actually not the responsibility of the organization at all. So they're about people, whether or not they're fit, whether or not they're eating the right foods, whether or not they're getting the right amount of sleep and recovery and the like. The organization oftentimes goes something, "That's not my responsibility." And you go, "No, you're absolutely right. It's not your responsibility, but it should be your concern." Because these are the people who are turning into work. You know yourself, if you haven't slept well last night, you as an individual person, sometimes it takes somebody to tap you on the shoulder during the day and go, "Are you okay?" Because sometimes you can just be a little bit short with people and that's one night not getting a good amount of sleep. Just extrapolate that across the whole organization and all those different things can actually affect the performance of people and your organization.
So if the organization gets data back and it clearly states that these are presenting issues, and the organization provides some support in those areas to help people and equip them with the skills to get better in those areas, well that makes a whole heap of a difference to the organization itself. But on the other side, there's a bunch of stuff that is really important that the organization does own, and that's around the culture, that's around the leadership, that's around the practices, that's around the environment, the safety, diversity, all of those factors are really important. And they need to own that and realize the impact that that's having on the individuals because there's a symbiotic relationship here. The workforce or the workplace really affects the workforce, but equally the workforce affects the workplace. So there's two sides of this coin, and you need to get data on both sides and actually support both sides to actually be the best that they can possibly be.
That's what building a sustainable resilient organization is all about. And honestly, I don't know how you actually can deliver work in a workplace if it's not sustainable. And unfortunately there's too many workplaces that we see that are actually not sustainable and they're hurting people, and there's a bit of a duty of care here. I'm not saying it's all landing with the organization because I don't think it is, there's two sides to this. The people have to step up and, "I have to turn up for work ready to go. I have to look after my own health and make sure it's a mature thing. It's not a paternalistic thing." And I think that's really important. One organization, I just think it's really interesting is futurists in Finland where they actually looked at what were the things affecting the health and wellbeing of their people, and number one was clients.
So they fired a lot of their clients because the clients were just had ridiculous expectations and thought they could ring people day or night at the weekends, anytime. And so that organization turned around and said, "There's some clients who are just bad clients and they're hurting our people. So we're just going to say, 'Listen, thanks a million, but bye-bye.'" And what they did, and when they're actually recruiting new clients, I think this is brilliant. They give them a rule book and they say, "This is actually how we want you to deal with our people because we respect them and we want them to be refreshed and ready to go every single day. So that means you've got to do this. Now if you're up for that, fantastic. If you're not, great." But it's a mature conversation that actually happens and it's rules of engagement. And the last thing they did, which I think is interesting, they assessed everybody in the organization and said, "What kind of work do you really love doing? And what kind of work can you do, but you don't really love?"
So they got a clear understanding of that and then they went to their salespeople and said, "Hey, would you mind selling more of this work than that work?" Oh, they did. It made a huge difference because those people got into flow doing work that they loved that really gave them a sense of purpose and meaning, and they were much more aligned to the organization. So that's just one simple example of how clients can actually negatively affect the health of employees. So I think this is engagement two plus 0, or whatever way you'd like to call that. It is the future. It starts looking healthy and resilient because if you're healthy and resilient, there's some chance that you're going to be happy and engaged. But I tell you, if you're not healthy and resilient, you'll never be happy and engaged. So you can measure that all you like. This is the foundational and fundamental aspect.
“I’m sure every organization takes a different path to health, but does the assessment have benchmarking?”
John Ryan: Yeah. It certainly does. Yeah. And thankfully we're working with organizations all over the world and interesting, I'm not sure what the makeup of the people on the call are, but public sector has really engaged with a healthy place to work. And that's interesting because that gives a whole new set of data and benchmarks to us. And I think they're particularly interested in measuring the mental health of people because a lot of them are tasked with strategies around mental health, which is really, really important. So been able to give people... And one of the things I think that's interesting is just even the language around this that changes slightly that we're seeing organizations not maybe talking about mental health as much as mental fitness. Because you see, when you talk about mental health, oftentimes people go mental illness for some reason, but if you talk about mental fitness, now that's something most people can buy into.
And they go, "Yeah, yeah, I want to be mentally fit. I want to be able to handle all that's thrown at me during our lifetime." So from that point of view, there's a real significant difference there. But we provide benchmarks from all over the world, and it's great to be able to compare yourself to the organizations who've achieved the levels so that they can say they're a healthy place to work. And I honestly think those organizations tell us that it's the proudest moment in their lives where they, as a CEO, as an organization, you can turn around and say, "Actually, you know something? This is a healthy place to work. This is an okay place to send your kids to work if you want." And that's really important.
“Are there some questions that might be too invasive for asking employees, or is there anything in the assessment that could potentially violate those laws?”
John Ryan: So what's in the assessment is universal. They're the basic things that around control and autonomy and work demands and the like. There are some questions purely about demographics where we just ask people to tell us their own health, how they feel their health is and the like. But everything universally, and we've launched a survey across the globe now, everything's come back. Nobody's actually said, "We can't ask that here." So that's very reassuring. But we're not drilling down into specific medical records of individuals, I think it's important to say that. Some organizations actually do that, particularly in Latin America. One organization actually, they pay for their employees to be, the ones over 40 get a medical check every year, the ones under 40 get it every two years. And if those employees are happy enough, they can sign a waiver to say that the organization can use that data.
And that's been incredible to see the data that they get there, the data they get from the survey, and then the data that the organization has around performance metrics, retention levels, and like. And when you use all those data sources, what it tells you is quite phenomenal. And it's positively that if the work is good and healthy, it can have a huge effect, but equally, work can be negative and can have a negative effect on people. And I think it's the conversation as Michael said earlier, between a manager who's oftentimes the touchpoint for people. If that conversation is starting with a real case of like, "How are you? I really care," not just, "How are you? And now let's get onto the results," everything starts with that. And I think if you get that right, you're on the right approach. I'm sure, do you agree with that, Michael?
Dr. Michael Burchell: I do. I think one of the things, and this may be a question that you might have asked or we're going to ask, Tamara. But in organizations really thinking about aligning executives around this project is step number one. And I think that is part of the value of the model, the framework, the thinking, and I'm sure John will go into the model in a second here. But beyond and above that, then creating a fact base, getting data, right? You can't really move very far, very fast as an organization unless you have really good solid data that you can benchmark against and understand the conditions of where you are and what's important and how to think about it, right? So I think that the model, the framework, all of this works together to think about how organizations can position workplace health, organizational health squarely at the center.
And then you can think about what are the presenting issues, how do you address them, what's the plan around that, then how do you actually manage around metrics and KPIs to enact change? And so the book also I think does a nice job of articulating like, what is that process? What does that flow to make that happen? And I know that there are lots of people that can jump in and support that effort, but I think that four, five step process of really thinking about how you manage change in that context is central to all the questions that you're getting here.
Tamara Fox: For those viewers who are listening that are concerned about any type of privacy or asking things that are too invasive. From what I saw again on the assessment when I reviewed everything with John and have spent time in it is it's not asking an employee, do you have a mental illness? Do you have anything of that nature? It's asking the questions that you spoke to earlier, John, on how healthy are you on a broad scale. It's not asking, "What are you eating for breakfast? Or, "What's your exercise routine?" But then it does, it's completely anonymous like engagement surveys are today, but it allows you to really drill down data like the larger engagement surveys do as well. So which department? Is it male or female or non-binary? That's answering that is it a certain population, like generation wise, is it a certain manager? So it allows you to really see the data too as well in the assessment, John, for people, again, not getting too invasive or too into the details, but showing what is actually going on within the workforce from that health perspective.
John Ryan: Tamara, you're absolutely right. I don't know if you have the slide which shows the model because I can very quickly talk through the model just to give people a sense of what we measure and why we measure what we measure. So there's four key pillars. Number one is purpose number, two is mental resilience, connection is really all about social health, and the final one is physical health. So the purpose one, we call it purpose, but it takes in everything from the culture, whether or not there's a culture of wellbeing in the organization. Is it easier to be healthy or not healthy in this organization? That's important. We have Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work on flow. I think people probably are aware of this is the level of intensity of work that you lose track of time because you're doing something that's really pulling on all your skillset.
And there's a degree of challenge in there. And the question is, how often are you hitting flow on a regular basis? Some people don't hit it at all because they're in a really distracted environment and that can be very difficult for them. The gratitude is something that's very aligned with wellbeing. If you feel that your skills and the environment you're in are matching, and then congruence is the alignment between you and the organization and the work you're doing, and then the organization of values, we're looking here at leadership whether or not the leaders are actually... People really believe that they care about them and they're role models for healthy behaviors, and whether or not the organization is living its values. Mental resilience is everything, and oftentimes people see the first one there and they go learning mindset. Sure, why are you testing for learning when this is all about wellbeing and health?
It's one of the biggest factors because there's so much change going through organizations on a constant basis. If you don't believe that you can actually learn and adapt and grow, you're going to fight the change. And that means you're going to go in disharmony with the organization or conflict with the organization and all sorts of bad stuff come out of that. Financial wellbeing, obviously worry about their finances is big time. That's benchmark data coming across that people all across the world are concerned about that. Self-efficacy is Albert Bandura's work here about people having agency and believing that their decisions really, really matter. It's so clear when Salesforce did this at first, they were really surprised with this, and they actually saw that the people with highest levels of self-efficacy were their top performers. So basically they said, "Something we should include this in our recruitment process because let's be clear, it matters," but you can also teach this stuff.
So the beautiful thing here is everything is actionable. This isn't just getting data for the sake of, "Oh, isn't that interesting?" It's, "Oh, let's action and make a difference here." Work control obviously is a huge area now since the pandemic and the. People want, they've always wanted autonomy to a level. Some people want it incredibly so. I know Michael, there's an absolute control freak.
But the truth of it is, we see job crafting being very in vogue right now. Where people sit down with their leaders and their managers and with the organization and say, "You know something, can I have some say over what I do, where I do it, when I do it, how I do it, who I work with, what projects I'm working on?" So you're shaping and you're having some say about the work you're doing on a constant basis. And that's really important to some people more than others. Work demands, obviously, are you overwhelmed, are equally bad? Are you underwhelmed? Are you bored? Because it's right in between. And the manager is so important here to get the right level of demand that is challenging and keeping your skills sharp and you really delivering. Because this isn't a holiday camp, we're not talking about that.
Work is stressful. Work can be hard, but if the right environment is there, you get a sense of achievement from the work you do. Connection is, as I said, it is really social health. This is about the support you get from your manager. This is whether or not there's a sense of belonging or is it just all down to whoever's going to pay me the biggest paycheck that I'll run to? Or is there a sense of, "Actually you know something, I don't think I'd lead this organization because I really enjoy working with Tamara and Lindsay and Michael and the like, they're going to keep me here."
If your relationships are broken, you're broken. Let's be honest. And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you can run a marathon, you might have to run a marathon if your relationships are broken, right? Because you've been running away from life. Peer support, social well-being, just understanding that the organization has huge power to influence outside and the likes of volunteering is all the data is there to say how important that is to your health. Diversity and inclusion, emotional expression, can you be your authentic self? And then the physical health piece, the work environment and the safety of that, energy, rest, recovery, fitness, and diet. So it's really interesting because we talk to organizations and they say, "Oh, this year we're looking at sustainability," and then others are saying, "Oh, we're looking at DE&I," and others are saying, "Oh, we're looking at," and you're saying, "It's all health, so put it all here and do it all together. That's what we're about."
And the next slide I think is very clear about, we separate them then into the individual health factors which roll up into workforce health factors. And as you can see here, energy, rest, physical exercise, diet, and all that. And what we've got here is the heart scale. We're running from left to right here. So you're trying to move these data points from being the ones and the twos and the threes over to being the fours and the fives. So the more you can get to the center, the better. The next slide shows you the things that the organization definitely controls. Everything from culture, value, support, safety, environment, demands, and the like. And here we're going in the opposite direction. We're saying, "Let's move those ones to twos and twos to threes and threes to fours and fives."
And the next slide shows you that the lens that we actually use when we're going back to an organization and we say, "This is you. This is what the data is saying. This is where your data points are." Those data points are people. So it's really important. And the art of this is to say the destination is to get to that center point because that's where a sustainable organization is, that's where a resilient organization, and that's where hype performance lives. That's a healthy place to work.
Tamara Fox:
Wonderful. So then your assessment in the book is what the tools the organizations can use to measure where they're at today, both from the employee standpoint, the organization standpoint, and then have conversations with consultants to understand where do they want to be in the future? What do they want that to look like? And what action do they truly need to take to get there? Not, "Oh, this one-off initiative run by HR, but the CEO and executive leadership team has defined, these are our initiatives for the year and here's what we're going to carry forward because here are the goals we want to meet." Is that fair to say?
John Ryan:
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. It's about embedding it into the organization, make systematic changes. It can be org design, it can be culture, it can be leadership behaviors. It's a whole range of things. And organizations oftentimes will employ good people like yourselves to direct them on how to make that change. And Michael, you're an expert on this area too.
“Is empathy measured in the assessment either at the individual level or organizational level?”
John Ryan: Well, I think empathy comes through in terms of relationships, and we're seeing from the manager, we're seeing from the belonging, we're seeing from the relationships piece. And then we're also seeing generally whether or not the organization actually is empathetic towards the individual, whether or not they care for them, whether or not if you have a mental health episode, that the organization is there to support you. So I think it's really important that we don't oftentimes ask a very direct question like, "Is the organization empathetic? Are other people empathetic?" For example, we don't ask whether or not people are anxious or depressed. However, there's five statements in there that when you bring them all together, they clearly identify whether people are anxious or depressed, that's around your appetite.
If you're losing your appetite, if you're losing a sense of optimism for the future, if you're not sleeping well, all those factors come together and the data then transfers into a figure for anxiety and depression. And that's really, really important because people oftentimes maybe won't answer the other questions quite upfront, whereas in the other way, we're seeing what the indicators are and people then can actually act on that.
“What’s the single most important thing I and others on the call can do to immediately start the process of making our work healthy?”
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Besides buy the book? So I think that there are three things, right? So first, I do think it's important to have a framework and to align leaders and managers around that framework, right? So when you say workplace health or a healthy organization, what actually do you mean? And that's where I think the model and the book and the framework are very handy, right? So let's be super clear about what it is and what it's not, right? I think the second thing is to actually, like I said before, have a fact base, right? Let's make sure we have good data about what the experience is. You can't make change unless you actually know where you're standing. So have that fact base. And then third, I think for me, the other piece of this in making change is to focus on the vital view. Don't boil the ocean.
But there are some things about the model that in terms of how you think about it and the context, there are other leverage points that the data will speak to, focus on those high leverage points first and move on those, right? So think about where it's going to give you the biggest, I don't want to say payoff, but for lack of a better word, payoff, right? So think about what that looks like, and then focus on the vital few things. I think those are three things that organizations need to be able to do effectively and efficiently, and can do this within the framework of all the stuff that John has been talking about. John, what would you add?
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One of the things I often see organizations do in this space is they just go with their gut and they're often talking to the loudest voices. And I think that's a dangerous thing because you might go one direction, which may not be where everybody's head is at, and it may not be the greatest needs. Another thing that I see organizations do, which is they want to show action. So they go for quick wins, I hate quick wins, right? Because it's like as if you're missing the point, because I've had organizations where somebody's complaining about the air conditioning, and then other people are complaining about been bullied, and the organization says, "Okay. So listen, how are we going to fix this air conditioning?" And you're going, "Hold on a second. Let's deal with the biggest, hardest issues first, because these are the ones that are really causing pain to people and causing people to be sick.
And we need to take them on and show that to everybody that there's no sacred cows here, that we're going after the things that really are wrong and we're going to put them right." And I think that's really, really important. But also, this isn't the case of it all sits with the leadership to fix it. That's absolutely not. This is we're all going on a journey, all of us, because by the way, some of the sickest people in the organization are sitting at the C-suite table, right? That can be a horrible place to be. That can be a very politically charged place. That can be a lot of negative party politics can be played around that table, and those people could be struggling. So just be clear, this is everybody's journey. Okay? And I think what's really good is if you actually can put a team together across the whole organization and let people actually pull forward their own ideas as to how we can resolve together the issues that we face in the organization.
And I've seen teams have absolutely brilliant ideas that if it was left up to the leaders or HR, they would've never thought of them. And you can just unleash this positive energy where people can actually really flourish by actually being part of solving this so that everybody's going on a journey to get healthier, get better, and the organization is transformed by doing that.
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Yeah. And to go back to our viewers, our audience members' question is the single most important thing from what you've both shared, and correct me if I'm wrong, we need to understand the data. We need to know what is even the current state of the workforce today and where are we at and what does that look like. Instead of, as you were saying, John, one person asking for air conditioning, other people say bullying. Let's look at the full picture. Let's understand what's truly going on at a whole, the holistic level and determine what's the best path forward. Because what might be right for Organization A could be completely wrong for Organization B. Is that fair for our audience? So it's not, as you said you, it's by the book, of course, the assessment. We'd love to get to help businesses with that to truly dig into the details, get to the root cause, but we need data in order to understand what's going on, and we need to know what has happened in the organization that's led us to where we are today.
Dr. Michael Burchell:
If I could just kind of add here, I think it could be as simple as here's the model, right? I mean, John presented them all before, and there's a conversation that we had with a group of employees. I mean, start somewhere, right? I mean, I think doing a broad-based assessment is probably the best option, right? But start somewhere, wherever you are, have the conversation, use the model, use the framework. Begin to think about, "What do I need to do?" And talk with employees about what their experience is. And then to John's point, really understand to the degree that you can, it's not about address the most important things, but those are the things that you want to be able to leverage to make the impact in the organization. So I think the most valuable thing for listeners in this webinar is to start somewhere. Do not start, right?
If you're waiting for that moment to do something, start something today by having the right conversations. Look at the model, think about it, have conversations and get going. Because the more that data you can collect to understand, then you can figure out where you need to go and how you need to get there, right? So I think that's part of the thing, I see a lot of organizations saying, "Well, we're going to put this off onto the fourth quarter because," fill in the blank. No, start the conversation now. Use the model now, right? Use the practices that are in the book or the examples of the stories, right? Think about what does that mean? What does that look like? And how do you create workplace health now? I think that's an important piece.
John Ryan:
Yeah. I mean, just to back up what Michael's saying there. One of the things, Tamara, at the start you did was you asked two questions. One was, how healthy are you right now? We ask people one to 10, but the real question is, what was the definition of the word healthy that you were using when you were answering that question? Because for most people, they have a really narrow definition, and it's like, "Am I fit? Am sort of able to run a mile without keeling over." And as you'll see that we've completely changed the definition of what health is into a much more holistic thing, and all of the factors that actually play a part in determining whether you are really healthy. And remember, your health matters to your family too, because you don't suddenly operate in an unhealthy environment, and then come home and be joy to everybody around you.
It does actually affect everybody around you. So from that point of view, it's really important. And then being able to turn around and say, "How healthy is your organization?" Just the very fact of actually sharing with people the model and the framework that even in itself straightaway changes things and makes people go, "Well, what is optimism and why is that important?" A learning mindset, "What's that? Why is that important? What's alignment? What's salutogenic?" And all of those factors, because honestly, they really, really matter. And even just that area of self-efficacy and congruence and understanding these things and thinking differently about the fact that nobody out there is just having this wonderful Facebook, Instagram life. Everybody's struggling, right?
Let's be honest about it. Everybody's struggling. The only question is, how hard is life for you compared to life for other people? And are you equipped and do you have a network of resilience around you that can see you through the really, really tough times? And I think it's really important to ask yourself, who am I providing a network of resilience to? Because that's part of this, right? Is that we've got to all help each other through this thing called life to make it possible and hopefully so that we can actually flourish.
Tamara Fox:
Yeah. Absolutely. The better that an employed, any organization can feel that support and have that healthy organization that work, the better they're showing up personally, the better they're going to show up professionally. It always blends together. I do want to make sure we have one other question from the audience that I want to make sure we ask, which I can relate to because my background's in hr. So oftentimes these initiatives get tossed to HR and it's HR's "problem" or HR needs to figure it out. "So for our HR folks on the webinar, how would they convince their executive leadership team or the CEO or anyone that this is a business initiative? Or this is a business goal or milestone or rock, whatever they may call it in their organization, and it's a journey. It's a thing that they're going to need to evolve through throughout the years." It's not, "Hey, we're going to do this in Q2 and we're complete with it after Q2. How would they really get that buy-in and support to embark on this journey with their leadership team and for the leadership team to drive it?"
“So for our HR folks on the webinar, how would they convince their executive leadership team or the CEO or anyone that this is a business initiative? Or this is a business goal or milestone or rock, whatever they may call it in their organization, and it’s a journey. It’s a thing that they’re going to need to evolve through throughout the years.” It’s not, “Hey, we’re going to do this in Q2 and we’re complete with it after Q2. How would they really get that buy-in and support to embark on this journey with their leadership team and for the leadership team to drive it?””
John Ryan:
Well, I mean, just one quick thing I'll say, and then over to Michael. But we've been blessed that Dave Ulrich has endorsed the book and he's been such a support to us, and he keeps saying, "At the end of the day, the business has to perform and the CEOs will basically listen and the C-suite will listen." If you can align this to business performance, and this is the ultimate for business performance. If your business is people dependent, having your people... If it's a machine in the organization, are you going to make sure to have that machine well oiled and make sure that it's operating? If you're going to fly on an airplane, you're going to make sure the engines are serviced. I mean, these are the people in your organization that are going to be the factors that are going to make success or failure. And when they go wrong, failure is really tough. Sorry, Michael, over to you.
Dr. Michael Burchell:
No, no. I'm glad that you mentioned that because I think one of the things that I'm super keen on is actually, because I get to work with Loeb leadership, is the level of energy and effort that law firms need to be able to put into thinking about these issues comprehensively and clearly, right? But what I think is super important to hear is there is a ton of data and research that's out there. So I'm thinking of I will... Even different associations in the legal space or legal industry talk about the impact of absenteeism, alcoholism, drug addiction to attorneys, to counsel. The data is super clear that basically people that law firms are pulling in their best and brightest and because of the conditions, because it's an unhealthy work environment and individuals health is not supported, people burn out.
Tamara Fox:
Yeah.
Dr. Michael Burchell:
People actually are dying in law firms, literally, right? But you don't have to go all the way to Japan and Korea and China that John was talking about, right? The karoshi, right? You can just look at the legal industry here in the U.S. and you can see examples of where there's just a lot of unhealthy behavior that's actually impacting not just individuals health but firm performance. And if you want some research, just reach out to, I mean you, Tamara or me, as part of Loeb Leadership, happy to send you the stats. I would actually put together a little business case for the leadership, for the managing partner and the leadership.
There is really solid data about how you can create a healthy law firm that actually is able to thrive. And it's going to have a huge impact in terms of collaboration, performance, and then equity partners and how they're able to perform as a result of that, right? So it's all part of what John was saying at the very get-go, like if you focus on these issues, they're foundational. And if you are able to focus on them in a useful way and to sustain health at the firm, it's going to have exponential impact in terms of the firm's value. So it's there and I actually would start with the business case because it's there, and this actually is a really important sync.
John Ryan:
Michael wrote a book called No Excuses. And for me it's for our business, our industry, or whatever. It's not, it's the same for everybody. And this should be on the risk register for an organization because this is about managing risk. And I've been there when I get the phone call from the HR director to say, "Somebody's died in our organization because they've taken their life." And that can be shocking and even worse is when it's the HR director who's taken their life. So this can be horrible. And I really think from a leadership point of view, we've got to think about duty of care, but we've also got to think about legacy and what legacy do you want to leave for your organization. And to me, the idea that something, I transformed the organization along with everybody else to make it a place where people can be healthy, they can be safe, and they can be building sustainable careers and going home to their children and family in the evenings safe and healthy and well. To me that's-
Tamara Fox:
And one thing I would just add is someone whose had to fight for or ask for initiatives like this as an HR professional in the past, that if what I've said to leaders is I don't manage the team. I am not the one who has the most touchpoints. Our leaders, our executive team, and our leaders and our managers are the ones who have this influence and this power. So if our executive team is not driving this journey forward, it's not going to make an impact because HR doesn't have the power to make that change that the executive team does since the executive team is the one managing the people, managing the organization. And Michael, you have a quick thought and then unfortunately we'll have to wrap up because we're almost at time.
Dr. Michael Burchell:
30 seconds before we wrap up. So this law firm thing, I want to be super clear about this. You don't have to have partners that can fall out because of alcoholism, right? But the very fact that there's, I don't know how many law firms I'm in, where there is some toxic culture that's been created because there's a bully in the office who could be an equity partner, or there's an issue where people are just feeling very exhausted. They go away and their vacations are like, "I can't even wait to get away for vacation." That has an impact on law firm productivity. And so I was focused on, again, I want to say, "How do you actually then attend to creating a healthy law firm?" Focus on the foundational aspects. And if you're able to do that, again, the rising tide will rise these boats for certain, for certain, certain.
Tamara Fox:
Thank you. Well, I would love, I know I truly could talk about this for days with both of you, but I do want to wrap it up with a quick poll. For those questions that we didn't answer, I'm happy to reach out to you and have a further conversation and make sure we get those questions answered one-on-one together. Let me just quickly share. We'll launch our final poll. So has your definition of a healthy workplace changed as a result of this webinar? As our first question. And then our second question is, would you like to have an exploratory call with us at Loeb Leadership to discuss how we can integrate healthy best practices into your organization? I know there were a few questions that came through that we can't answer, so I'll make sure to reach out to those attendees. If your name, if it was not anonymous, I won't be able to reach out. But if your name was listed, I'll make sure to reach out and get your questions answered for you.
And then for those that don't know, we can help further. We'd love to discuss more with you. We do have two more Loeb events coming up that will be two webinars. One is Reframing Mental Health and Attorney Wellness. I know Michael shared some information on attorney wellness and wellbeing. Michael will be on that webinar on May 3rd if you'd like to see him again. And then on May 22nd, we have our DE&I real talk webinars. So feel free to reach out to me directly or email our team and we're happy to talk with you more. And if you do buy books, at least 12 books, you'll get a free hour with Michael for your executive team. And if you buy a hundred books, you can get a free mini workshop with Michael. So take advantage of those opportunities there.
Tamara Fox:
Well, again, Michael and John, I could truly talk to you both for days and hours about this. So I appreciate both of your time. It's been wonderful. John, I know its end of day for you, so I hope you enjoy your evening. And then we are offering a special for any companies that do want to take advantage of this quickly. So please reach out to me. My email's on the screen or it's also on our website and would love to connect with you and talk further.
Dr. Michael Burchell:
Thank you everybody.
John Ryan:
Thanks a million.
Dr. Michael Burchell:
Cheers.
Tamara Fox:
Have a wonderful day.