Is Employee Well-Being a Top Priority at Your Organization?
Slalom’s future-of-work incubator, HabLab, shares insights on how to build a culture of well-being.
By Rene Putz and Lindsay Lynch
Various factors, including a recent pandemic and increased technological capability, have influenced our working norms and habits — both of which have evolved incredibly quickly over the last few years. Through COVID-19, we learned to navigate high levels of uncertainty, adapt to rapid changes, and establish new routines. The future of work is changing constantly and will continue to do so.
At Slalom, we believe the companies that will lead the way in the future of work are those investing in their greatest asset: their people.
Looking at external research and thought leadership spanning across industries, findings point to an important evolution in the workplace: organizational outcomes are correlated to employee well-being and human performance at work.
Looking inward, we know our fiercely human approach to supporting our employees and clients at Slalom is the driving force behind our success. To help employees thrive in today’s workforce, we began exploring and experimenting with well-being initiatives, outside traditional HR benefits such as insurance, to further understand impacts on employee experience and overall well-being.
These experiments are run within HabLab, an internal laboratory focused on studying the habits and habitats of our employees. Since its founding in 2021, HabLab has conducted multiple experiments focused on employee experience — ranging from connection in a hybrid work model to understanding the neuroscience of teaming. Experiments are conducted with the Slalom 300 — a group of over 300 Slalom volunteers dedicated to a yearlong journey of helping the HabLab team test out ideas. The Slalom 300 is made up of team members with various titles, tenure, geography, backgrounds, and perspectives.
Well-being: Forming an experiment
With a focus on well-being, we started with a hypothesis: “Slalom can create a Culture of Well-being with a personalized approach to offerings and support. If Slalom provides equitable well-being opportunities for employees, we will better foster the skills and support needed to function as our best selves individually and collectively as an organization.”
Next, we reviewed external research to inform our understanding of well-being trends and interventions. What we found wasn’t very reassuring.
We learned that 79% of workers are burned out, according to the American Psychological Association’s Work and Well-Being survey in 2021. Additionally, nearly three in five employees reported negative impacts of work-related stress, which may include a lack of interest, challenges with motivation, or lack of energy. On top of that, 32% of employees surveyed reported emotional exhaustion.
Yet there is room for optimism. We learned employee well-being and mental health is a top priority for 68% of senior HR leaders. Additionally, employees are more than twice as likely to say they love their job when employers create a culture that supports mental health. We also learned that in one study, participants reported their overall well-being increased by 76% after at least one session with a certified coach.
We focused an experiment on coaching — we wanted to see for ourselves if coaching could help improve employee well-being at Slalom.
We partnered with the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy (FMCA), an organization with over 4,000 certified coaches worldwide. We designed the experiment to consist of five individual coaching sessions over an eight-week period with 100 members of the Slalom 300. Participants chose a primary focus in a modifiable lifestyle factor, involving the building blocks of physical and mental health. These focus areas included stress, relationships, nutrition, movement, and sleep.
FMCA provided independent measurement of the experiment via three different pre- and post-assessments. Data pairings were run through statistical analysis giving a p-value score. P-values are a highly credible, statistical measurement used to validate a hypothesis against observed data. A p-value of 0.05 or lower is generally considered statistically significant.
The data analyzed resulted in a major conclusion:
To a statistically significant and clinically meaningful degree, Slalom employees who received coaching in a modifiable lifestyle area not only reported fewer physical and mental health symptoms but also perceived their physical and mental health to be improved after the health coaching sessions.
Throughout the experiment, the HabLab team also collected quantitative and qualitative data through surveys and focus groups. When comparing Slalom 300 members who participated in the coaching experiment against those who did not, we had the following three key takeaways:
1. Health and wellness coaching increased Slalom employees’ comfort, raising their mental health and well-being status.
Participants were more likely to feel comfortable communicating to their colleagues when they were feeling:
· physically exhausted (11.9 points more likely)
· emotionally exhausted (11 points more likely)
· cognitively exhausted (8.7 points more likely)
2. Health and wellness coaching increased Slalom employees’ confidence that Slalom cares.
Participants were more likely to agree with the statements:
- At this time, Slalom cares about me as a whole person (9.1 points more likely)
- At this time, my health and wellness goals are supported by Slalom (5.5 points more likely)
One focus group participant summarized the impact of the well-being experiment as having personal and professional impacts, saying:
As a participant of this experiment, I would have to say that having a wellness coach has been the single biggest thing Slalom has ever done to show me they care about me — not just my work — but ME.
3. Employees with a health and wellness coach are better able to manage their mood, are less distracted and more energized to start their workday.
Participants were less likely to report:
- Becoming irritable when things don’t go their way (6.4 points less likely)
- Being forgetful and distracted at work (3.9 points less likely)
- Agreement with the statement “When I get up in the morning, I lack the energy to start a new day at work” (3.2 points less likely)
One focus group participant shared they were able to better manage their well-being in various aspects of their life, stating:
The progress I achieved with [my coach’s] support in areas of sleep hygiene, breathing, and mindful eating generated huge unlocks in other areas of my professional/personal life.
What’s next?
As an outcome of this experiment, we also created the HabLab Well-Being Index. It is a survey that consists of eight questions to specifically measure employee feedback regarding their well-being and Slalom’s support of it. We track it monthly with the Slalom 300 to correlate trends over time, gain further insights into well-being needs, and inform design of future experiments.
The health and wellness coaching experiment proved that well-being initiatives in the workplace make a difference. We look forward to expanding our experiments in the well-being space and sharing the results with our employees and clients as we continue to build and foster a culture of well-being.
Slalom is a global consulting firm that helps people and organizations dream bigger, move faster, and build better tomorrows for all. Learn more and reach out today.
