Work-life balance. It has been talked what feels like to death in recent years, especially as employees moved from in-person to virtual during the pandemic and are now back in-person full- or part-time. However, the risk factors that come into play when a healthy work-life balance is not maintained are shocking: unhealthy stress levels for prolonged periods of time. The effects? Poor mental and physical health, which are two essential components not only for maintaining productivity in the office but also for simply living a full life.
So, what is a business to do?
Stop talking and get to work on helping employees go from saying they are “just fine” when asked to knowing they are doing and feeling “well.” Put pen to paper on a true health and wellness initiative and put it into action and get the entire team involved.
Where to start? It is as easy as 1-2-3.
Find internal advocates. There are three core pillars to health: food and nutrition, movement and exercise, and mental and behavioral health. It’s important to create time and space within the workweek to address each of these critical components. Once they are established, the next step is to create a call to action to the team by asking each person where they have a passion. Business should try to find the people within the company who are already doing just one of these verticals and put them together on a committee with like-minded teammates.
Provide clear resources. Businesses should give each committee dedicated time during the normal course of the workdays to dream up all of the events, games, speakers and other ideas to support their pillar of wellness. It’s important that leaders actively listen to each committee, gauging each team’s level of passion for each programmatic element, and then create a fiscal budget as well as paid time during the workday to move the ideas forward that the internal committees are most excited about.
Set dates and times. Once all budgets and programmatic elements are approved, it’s important business leaders work with each committee to set dates and times for recurring activities for the quarter or even entire year. They should develop a system for announcing each event and key messaging that clearly states each event has no cost to the employee and will take place during the normal workday (unless it’s something truly outside the box like an overnight event), and reasons why the company supports the activity. After each event, it’s important to get feedback from each committee as well as participants and record it, evolving the plan and events as needed.
Sound like too much? In bite-sized chunks, a business or organization is entirely capable of moving something like this from white board to real life. Over the past year, CHASSE Building Team used this process to create CHASSE-ing Healthy, which is focused on CHASSE Eats, CHASSE Gains, and CHASSE Headspace.
Proven in Practice
By creating a system and empowering each committee to think big, CHASSE has successfully completed more than a dozen programs and projects in the past 12 months alone, including some outside-the-box ideas:
- The Wheel of Challenges, which is an actual wheel each department within the company spins each month, agreeing to take part in the health-based challenge based on where the wheel lands. Those who complete it are entered to win prizes.
- Healthy Owner Bingo, a multi-week program where teammates complete tasks as it relates to nutrition, movement and mental health over time, working toward getting Bingo on said card, which was then turned in for prizes.
- 12 Days of CHASSE-ing Healthy, a themed challenge to promote daily wellness concepts during the workdays leading up to the holidays.
- Lunch-n-Learn, a series of lunches hosted by the organization during which teammates had complimentary access to a personal trainer to ask questions tailored to their particular needs.
- CHASSE Headspace Bingo, similar concept to Healthy Owner Bingo, where teammates complete tasks as it relates to mental health over the course of May, Mental Health Awareness Month.
Other examples include team yoga, paddleboarding, an anonymous idea submission box and even a four-month golf tournament.
To date, the program is netting positive results as well as critical feedback it never had before, which is being used by the human resources department to enhance support where it is directly requested, including reviewing and increasing the company’s Employee Assistance Program to provide additional financial support for counseling assistance and other nontraditional benefits that support a healthy lifestyle.
The Toll of Burnout
Workplace burnout can create an increased risk of mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, mood disturbances, substance abuse, workplace injuries and interpersonal conflict between co-workers. Overworking can take a toll on individuals’ physical health as well, with 745,000 people dying each year from heart-related diseases due to overworking, according to a global study from the World Health Organization.
Jim Gmelich is Culture Champion at CHASSE Building Team, an employee-owned local general contractor with more than $450 million in Arizona projects annually. A former client and both a former education and nonprofit leader, Gmelich directs professional and leadership development and career progression while cultivating, promoting and celebrating CHASSE’s extraordinary culture.
