Your organisation would never launch a product without a strategy. So why is wellbeing still a two hour workshop and a meditation app?
I was recording an episode of the NeuroCollective podcast with Dr Marie-Hélène Pelletier recently, and I found myself describing a pattern I have watched play out for years. Someone decides we need to build resilience in our people, so we bring in a speaker for a two hour workshop, perhaps add a mindfulness session, and tick the box. I told her I didn’t think it was a good spend of money, because I don’t believe it leads to lasting change.
MH is a psychologist, executive coach and author of The Resilience Plan, and she knew exactly what I was describing. Some people call them random acts of wellness.
However, what she said next surprised me.
THE RANDOM ACT IS NOT THE PROBLEM
MH pointed out that a random act can be a useful starting point, because people attend, they say they liked it but it wasn’t enough, and suddenly a conversation has started. The problem is when the workshop quietly becomes the strategy.
Think about how your organisation treats a promising new product idea. Nobody simply runs with it, we look at the context, who else is doing it, what people will pay and what barriers might get in the way. And yet when it comes to our people’s wellbeing, we skip every one of those steps and go straight to booking a workshop.
Picture the person in your organisation who organised the last wellbeing session. They probably fought hard for that budget, they probably knew it wasn’t enough, and in six months someone will ask them why nothing has changed.
WE HAVE SPLIT WHAT THE BRAIN KEEPS TOGETHER
Here in Australia, work health and safety usually owns physical safety while HR owns psychological safety and wellbeing. The brain doesn’t make that distinction. Moment by moment it is assessing our physical safety and our social safety at the same time, and Naomi Eisenberger’s research at UCLA shows social pain and physical pain share overlapping neural systems. We have built two departments around one brain.
WHAT A STRATEGY ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
MH’s advice was refreshingly practical. Don’t make it a five year project that never gets off the ground. Start with a first version of three pillars, a few actions within each and at least one pillar built around dialogue, then reassess in six to twelve months and build from there. Her “Olympic version” is a health strategy that sits alongside the business strategy, covering physical, mental and financial health, and shaped through conversations right across the business.
It is not rocket science, but it does ask us to treat our people’s health with the same discipline we give everything else.
If you looked back at your organisation’s wellbeing activity over the last twelve months, would you find a strategy, or a collection of random acts?
#Wellbeing #PsychosocialSafety #Leadership #HumanResources #Neuroscience
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If you would like to hear the full conversation with Dr Marie-Hélène Pelletier, including her thinking on building a resilience plan for yourself as well as your organisation, you can listen to the NeuroCollective episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7v4wgi2gShGuIbMipgzLxo?si=IeJYGUNTTmal8cnA_e6mlA