Masawa Minute 55
5 ideas to help your team thrive | Why do we work too much? | More!
This is the Masawa Minute — mental wellness, social impact, and impact investing snippets from what we’ve read and created the last two weeks + where you can get active.
It’s been a while since we’ve talked about the relationship between the workplace and wellbeing more extensively (although it’s always on our minds!), so this newsletter is all about that. Here you’ll find our latest article on thriving in the workplace in collaboration with Stillpoint, startup updates, new ideas and much more!
Masawa Thoughts
Workplace wellness is becoming a more topical issue, especially as the number of people quitting their jobs increases. According to MIT Sloan last month, toxic workplaces contribute to The Great Resignation more (3x) than other factors like job insecurity or lack of performance recognition. Do you think the mass employee exodus will be a big enough shock to the system that leads to capital allocators focusing more on managing human capital risk, including workplace wellbeing? We don’t, but it sure would be great! ☺
In Masawa Land, we are happy that more investors are starting to take note of the need to focus on nurturing their capital + we’re getting more clients and inquiries for our Nurture Capital as a Service (NCaaS) approach. By working towards maximizing human flourishing inside the organization while maximizing human flourishing because of the organization, a lot of systemic value can be unlocked!
Startup Spotlight
Wazi is a Kenyan digital mental health company aiming to bridge the gap between mental health providers and patients in Africa. It provides anonymous mental health support through its application, helping to tackle the stigma surrounding mental health support, which is provided as part of employers’ workplace wellness plans. Wazi’s second offering, an end-to-end mental health tech platform provides NGOs, healthcare organizations, and mental health groups with tools that help them serve their clients and employees at scale.
Attend
This webinar, featuring a range of speakers from companies like Headspace Health and McKinsey & Company, will focus on the intersection of mental wellbeing and our workplaces. The speakers will explore the current trends around mental health and wellbeing, analyze their connections to our workplaces and provide an overview of innovative solutions that can address mental ill-health. If this sounds interesting to you, mark February 10th on your calendars and sign up!
This Week’s Story
Masawa + Stillpoint Special: Creating workplaces that support our wellbeing
We spend the majority of our waking hours at work — for many, the workplace is quite literally the second home. This makes it particularly important that the places where we work meet our needs. For a long time, job security, fair wages, and safe working conditions were considered the most critical indicators of their ability to do so. But things are changing — according to research, millennials and Gen Z-ers also look for more flexibility and autonomy at work, and prefer employers that prioritize wellbeing and work-life balance. They search for workplaces where they can thrive.
And that is important because only when people are thriving can the organizations do well. Mental ill-health at work negatively affects every aspect of business, from performance to sales, and costs employers billions of euros each year. It also affects employees’ relationships with their coworkers, creativity, and ability to find purpose in their work. Mental wellbeing is the foundation of any healthy and successful organization and therefore must be addressed at the organizational level. If you’d like to know how to help your workplace become a source of wellbeing, read the article to find out!
5 essential ideas to help your people thrive
What else we’re reading…
📝 We’re living in the times of the Great Resignation, but we might as well call it the times of the Great Disconnection. Many workers worldwide report feeling less connected to their colleagues and exhibit low levels of belonging, which costs companies billions of dollars each year. How can you help your team build stronger relationships at work?
🌼 Lyra Health, a startup providing mental health benefits to employees and dependents, just secured $235 million in series F funding, boosting its valuation to $5.58 billion. Lyra Health plans to accelerate its operations to meet the growing demand and continue its global expansion.
🔥 Burnout is a modern condition brought about by the promise of a good life of social dignity and purpose available to us if only we work hard enough. We work for our bosses’ profit, assuring ourselves it’s for the highest good. In reality, however, we’re following a myth deeply ingrained into the fabric of the capitalist system. Can we escape it?
👯♂️ In the last couple of years, workplace wellness has been at the forefront of many workplace initiatives, with programs tackling everything from low fitness levels to burnout popping up all over the place. But data shows that the most significant impact on people’s health doesn’t come from genetics or personal choices but rather from the social, economic, and environmental factors. Is it time to embrace community health as the key business strategy?
💼 Employee ownership is the word of the day — or at least should be. It increases financial security for workers, as well as productivity and stability of business, which has positive implications for workers’ wellbeing and organizations’ success. If investors were to catalyze conversions to employee ownership at scale, it would result in transformative impact for millions of people.
Gabija works as a Communications Coordinator at Masawa. She lets her vision of a more just, sustainable, equitable world guide Masawa’s story and inform the work towards transforming global mental wellness to make it accessible and accepted.
