Designing a Culture of Well-being
A human-centered revolution from hustle culture and burn-out to flexibility, creative growth, and belonging.
Stepping into a new era of flexibility, freedom, and individual agency.
In a recent internal culture and future of work client project, with the goal to connect the community, create a dialogue, and learning and collaboration opportunities across a collective of best-in-class creative companies, I interviewed a range of company culture thought leaders. And what became clear is that the now of work is not about returning to the office (or not), but about seeing the wholeness of our people, identifying their needs, and designing a work experience that works for all.
What’s clear is that we’re in a period of profound transformation, where everything about the way we work, and the place of work in our lives, is being redefined. We can see the marks of this shift in the Great Resignation, in the trend of Quiet Quitting. With the past 2 years leaving many of us rethinking the role of work in our lives, we are shifting to a model that includes work but also includes nurturing our physical and mental health, our relationships and communities, our hobbies, and our desire to slow down, explore and kindle creativity and wonder.
As Arianna Huffington writes, rejecting hustle culture and burnout are just the first steps.
What we need is a radical collective shift — a human-centered revolution.
- How might we find a way of working that makes us engaged and energized, without getting depleted by it?
- How might we be able to find joy in our work without having our lives revolve around it?
- How might we shift our mindset, acknowledging that we’re more productive, and more creative when we’re recharged, and have time to explore and play?
In recent years, companies have started to put a higher emphasis on “workplace well-being”. By introducing different “wellness initiatives”, such as “Wellness Weeks” — giving employees a week off, Recharge programs (employees getting a number of weeks off after reaching a certain milestone of having worked at the company), Pause days — a few days off after an intense project period. And as previously mentioned in this newsletter, many of us, including a handful of friends and collaborators, have taken their personal initiatives and taken a sabbatical.
While these are important building blocks for us to be well (sleep, rest, our health, and emotional well-being are some of our basic human needs — see my 21st-century interpretation of these needs below), I also believe that in order to make work sustainable and not burn out again right after returning from our Wellness Week, Sabbatical or Pause Day, we need to find more sustainable systems and build a culture of work, that put a focus on us as holistic human beings.
A multi-dimensional approach to well-being
As different models of well-being highlight, in order to be well, it’s not enough to just take care of our bodies and see well-being as a one-off intervention or bandage. What we need is a multi-dimensional approach.
Pulling from positive psychology and my work in internal culture, community, and employee experience design within the creative industries, my hypothesis is that for us to stay well — stay creatively inspired, energized, and engaged — we need to fill our different cups and create an interplay between the different dimensions in our lives. That’s where my concept of work-play balance (or harmony) stems from.
While well-being starts personally — we need to first figure out how we can nourish ourselves every day — only by shifting our systems and culture to truly putting human needs at the center, can we truly thrive. That’s where workplace culture design comes in. Scaling and providing the system for flourishing.
The recently published framework for Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being by the U.S. Surgeon General highlights five components for addressing workplace well-being based on human needs. It states that when people thrive at work, they are more likely to feel physically and mentally healthy, and to contribute positively to their workplace, therefore workplace well-being can affect productivity and organizational performance.
This creates both a responsibility and a unique opportunity for us to create workplace environments that support the health and well-being of workers. As Dr. Vivek Murthy puts it:
“If we don’t do that, workers suffer, and so does workplace productivity, creativity, and retention.”
Inspired by this framework, I believe that by building organizational cultures based on these pillars, and designing programs and practices shaping our day-to-day experiences we can lead this revolution and create the conditions for flourishment:
Flexibility and autonomy to allow for different ways of living.
Flexibility and autonomy in how we design our work enable us to integrate different parts of our lives, do things outside of work and allow for different ways of living. As Future Forum’s Sheela Subramanian puts it “… we’ve seen that scheduled flexibility helps a lot with burnout. It helps with giving people autonomy, the trust, feeling like they have more choice in how they work.” Organizations that increase worker autonomy, or how much control one has over how they do their work, and whose workplaces provide greater flexibility, or the ability to work when and where is best for them, see workers who are more likely to succeed and retain staff for longer.
Empowered to Explore.
Exploration is the creative engine that makes us see things in a new light, fuels joy, and expands what we believe is possible. Exploration is not a distraction, it is a source of energy and empowerment. I believe exploration and play are catalysts for growth, and with that personal, collective, and organizational flourishing. Without opportunities to explore and with that, learn and grow, we start to feel stagnant, frustrated, and ineffective. When organizations create more opportunities for learning, accomplishment, and growth, workers become more optimistic about their abilities and more enthusiastic about contributing to the organization.
Built to Belong.
Belonging is innate to human well-being. It allows us to create a safe place for exploration and growth. We need to intentionally create the layers and a network for people to create connections and build trusted teams, where people feel like they belong, and feel emotionally safe and included. Gallup’s engagement research shows that one of the strongest drivers for whether we feel engaged at work is the degree of social connection among people at work. And as research shows, by building supportive work relationships we can improve performance, worker engagement, and innovation.
At its best, work provides us the ability to support ourselves and our loved ones, and can provide us with opportunities for growth, doing work that matters, and a community and network to learn, grow, and get inspired.
You can have great “wellness” initiatives, great benefits, and cafeteria areas with free taco lunches in your new, fancy office buildings trying to do that, but ultimately, what we have to ask is: Do people have the flexibility and autonomy to make work work for them? Do they feel like they belong? Do they have opportunities to explore, learn and grow? And do they have a network that keeps them inspired?
Thank you for reading! This article was originally published in my newsletter
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