Taking breaks is all well and good. However, if you aren’t using that time in a healthy way, it won’t be as beneficial as it could be. I want the best for you.
The pandemic pause brought us to a moment of collective reckoning about what it means to live well and to work well. As a result, employees are sending employers an urgent signal that they are no longer willing to choose one — life or work — at the cost of the other. Working from home brought life literally into our work. And as the world now goes hybrid, employees are drawing firmer boundaries about how much of their work comes into their life. Where does this leave employers? And which perspectives and programs contribute most to progress? In our newest interview series, Working Well: How Companies Are Creating Cultures That Support & Sustain Mental, Emotional, Social, Physical & Financial Wellness, we are talking to successful executives, entrepreneurs, managers, leaders, and thought leaders across all industries to share ideas about how to shift company cultures in light of this new expectation. We’re discovering strategies and steps employers and employees can take together to live well and to work well.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Jerry Brook, The Good Together Guru.
Speaker and Author Jerry Brook, the Good Together Guru, fuses his relationship experience with a background in analytics to help others maintain better relationships. As an Industrial Computer Controls Specialist, Jerry’s experience in problem solving and analytical thinking inspired him to look at relationships in a new and unique way. In addition, he also draws on his own personal relationships to offer practical, intelligent, and sometimes funny relationship stories and advice. He currently lives in Houston, Texas.
Thank you for making time to visit with us about the topic of our time. Our readers would like to get to know you better. Tell us about a formative experience that prompted you to change your relationship with work and how work shows up in your life.
Just as so many others before me have done, I foolishly placed work above all else. As is all too common, ignoring or taking for granted non-work relationships to the point of losing them.
One only needs to lose a few relationships, or get divorced once, to begin to notice the pattern of an unhealthy lifestyle.
That said, the opposite has also been true. After losing relationships that were not in my best interest, work became a place to be, with something to do while there. Work provided a consistent and grounded environment, which allowed me to gather my thoughts and move on, which helped my social wellness.
The thought that work and life are somehow entirely separable is a false concept. Humans are social creatures. We find or create social circles wherever we go, in whatever we do. Work is one of many situations that we find ourselves in. It should come as no surprise that humans, not being inanimate machines, have a high degree of difficulty in separating their work and home lives, since they are both a part of life.
There is a wedge that is driven between life and work. This stems from both employers and employees not having or appreciating that there are certain limits and boundaries in all healthy relationships.
What I mean by that, is that even in good relationships where there is a confluence of entities, there are always areas which are off limits, zones where respect ceases to exist.
In addition, people have been wrongly advised to chase their passion. The problem with this is that most people don’t know what it is that they are passionate about. Organizations tend to try to thrust their passion onto others, the employees.
When it comes to passion, there are two types of people, those who believe that their passion exists outside of them, and are therefore looking for it, or asking others to provide it; and those who believe that their passion is what they themselves make of it.
I myself did not have a passion and did not know where to find it. News Flash: Passion isn’t a buried treasure, to be dug up. I finally realized that I have many passions, and that it was entirely up to me, my choice, which one I committed to and devoted my time and effort on.
Harvard Business Review predicts that wellness will become the newest metric employers will use to analyze and to assess their employees’ mental, physical and financial health. How does your organization define wellness, and how does your organization measure wellness?
What used to be seen as a “work life balance” has progressed into “wellness”. Wellness is about the individual, not the place that the individual finds themself in. The fact of the matter is that people don’t necessarily have a good life with which to balance work against. As a matter of fact, in recent years there has been an explosion of loneliness and feelings of disconnection in people’s personal lives.
Your work persona is a direct product of your social persona. You can’t be something that you are not, and you cannot act one way at work and diametrically different in your social life. We as humans are incapable of turning “off” or “on” our emotions or our consciousness. Therefore, there is a great deal of you that must exist and be shared between your work and your social life. I would go so far as to say, that it is you as a person who is desired in the work environment, otherwise they would simply hire someone else.
You are a combination of both skills and attitude, I would place the emphasis on the attitude rather than the skills. Skills can be taught in a short time. Attitude is molded over the course of a lifetime.
Although Wellness has elements of happiness it isn’t some magic euphoria, nothing is. In my article “Happiness and Joy During Turbulent Times” I discuss the importance of social connections as well as a sense of purpose.
Wellness is therefore defined as an amalgam of an individual’s positive attitude towards life, work, and the people around them. It also includes a generous helping of the elements of desire and or willingness to explore and accept one’s own passion.
Although such esoteric items as, positive attitude, and happiness, seem impossible to measure, there may be some signals or signs that can be used indirectly to infer Wellness.
For me, I find that an interest in the task at hand, more so an enthusiasm for the objective, is a good indicator for how I will perform. I don’t always relish what needs to be done, but as long as I feel connected to the goal, I will find ways to work towards achieving it. The commitment to the goal is what amplifies my focus and my drive. My focus and drive then motivate me to keep pushing forward.
In other words, I measure wellness in others, just as I measure it in myself. It is measured through enthusiasm for our shared objective. It is participation, or the willingness to participate, in the tasks necessary to appreciate our goals. It is a focus on the aspects of the process that are additive to the realization of our aim.
By the same token then, the lack of Wellness would be indicated by a lack of, eagerness, contribution, or distraction away from, our imperative. In other words, if you don’t want to be here, we have a problem.
In the end, if your passion aligns with or complements mine, then we can be “Good Together”.
Based on your experience or research, how do you correlate and quantify the impact of a well workforce on your organization’s productivity and profitability?
As William Bruce Cameron is attributed as saying, “It would be nice if all of the data which sociologists require could be enumerated because then we could run them through IBM machines and draw charts as the economists do. However, not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
Therein lies the fallacy of using a single metric, quantity, as an entire process for determining efficiency and success. You would think that business professionals, of all people, would know better than to use such a simplistic method to gauge such an important, and compound, element.
We need to know, and understand, the difference between quantify and qualify. Quantity is the amount, whereas quality is the value. It is easy to count, any second grader can do it, it is much more difficult to assign worth.
Using only one or the other is an oversimplification of the impact that wellness has on an organization.
Due to the fact that these two entities, quantity and quality, are closely coupled, and in a circular feedback loop, it is not possible to separate or clearly differentiate which comes first. Which means that it is impossible to get a true and accurate reading of one without the other.
A Risk Matrix is essentially the combinational measure of quality and quantity. We can think of Wellness as either contributing to the organization or detracting from the organization. The more that, one or the other occurs, the greater the impact.
Studies have shown that, contrary to popular belief, the proverbial “win-win” is a real, and tangible, phenomenon. A rising tide raises all boats, true too in society, what benefits the employees benefits the employers, and vice versa.
It should come as no surprise that, people, employees, who are invested, mentally, physically, and financially, are much more likely to take responsibility for, and contribute positively to, an organization.
When Sears introduced “Profit Sharing” for its’ employees the company realized the benefits. By the same token when they ended the practice the company suffered the consequences. This isn’t a new or unique phenomenon.
There is the age-old understanding that, the ways in which a person treats some of those around them will eventually be the very same ways in which they treat all of those around them. In other words, if you treat your employees poorly, it is only a matter of time before you treat your customers that way also. In relationships I suggest that people take notice of how their intimate interest treats the wait staff at a restaurant. I have learned firsthand, that this is a clear indication of how that person will treat you at some time in the future.
Treat your children well, and they will look after you in your old age. Treat your children poorly and they will abandon you.
Even though most leaders have good intentions when it comes to employee wellness, programs that require funding are beholden to business cases like any other initiative. The World Health Organization estimates for every $1 invested into treatment for common mental health disorders, there is a return of $4 in improved health and productivity. That sounds like a great ROI. And, yet many employers struggle to fund wellness programs that seem to come “at the cost of the business.” What advice do you have to offer to other organizations and leaders who feel stuck between intention and impact?
This is a failing of creativity within an organizations management. To judge all items using the same metrics or as being the same, shows a clear lack of imagination on the part of leadership. This is precisely where start-ups succeed, often in part due to a novel approach to a preexisting paradigm.
To simply this down to a mere dollars and cents type calculation shows an absence of understanding, an immaturity, of the world in which we live. If it were that easy, it would be mastered in grade school, and everyone would be doing it. The fact that they are not should tell us something about the issue. And this is supposed to be why “you get paid the big bucks”, if you can’t see this you don’t deserve your position in leadership.
This is where and when the innovators not the bean counters need to be involved. Not to disparage the economists, as they are most certainly needed, however, they need to stay in their lane. There is an ongoing power struggle between the risk takers and the risk evaders. If what you are doing isn’t working, an astute person would know to try something different. These two groups would benefit from the Wellness of Collaboration over the Illness of Competition.
Many organizations feel as though their hands are tied, that their fiduciary duty is in the short term with no regard for the long term. It isn’t a question of, what is financially responsible, it is a question of, when is it financially relevant? It is a case of IBGYBG, I’ll be gone, You’ll be gone, leave it to the next poor fool to sort through.
If an unsophisticated and crude tool such as the immediate ROI is all that we have, then what was the measure of the United States sending a man to the moon in 1969? What exactly was the ROI expected to be? Even after the fact it is difficult to quantify the benefits and effects of all of the technological rewards and advances that have been produced. In this way the notion of immediate ROI works against innovation and progress.
There is another perspective to the issue that goes unnoticed. We can’t measure what didn’t happen. That is to say, we lose sight of the effects of mitigators. We know that steel toed shoes prevent foot damage. However, we fail to capture and appreciate all of the times that the shoes averted less obvious incidents. Therefore, we underestimate the true benefit of our state. The same can be said for, seatbelts, vaccines, and diplomacy. We can’t measure what didn’t happen due to our forethought. We hope, and assume, that we have avoided incidences, but we can’t actually measure the impact of these exertions.
All things come at a cost. The question is “how much will it cost us NOT to do this?”
The fear, however, is that no one will ever fault you for betting on a “sure thing” and losing, but they will crucify you for taking a risk and making a good decision, based on good information, and not getting the desired result.
Speaking of money matters, a recent Gallup study reveals employees of all generations rank wellbeing as one of their top three employer search criteria. How are you incorporating wellness programs into your talent recruitment and hiring processes?
There is a distinct dichotomy between the current trend of automation, robotization, and human interactions. People are not robots, and they shouldn’t be. We can’t treat people as if they are autonomous, inanimate, objects. Computers excel at mindless, repetitive, tasks. Computers do not care about, people, their image, the company, the company’s reputation, the bottom line, other computers, et cetera. That is where people come into play. Computers are assistants to people. They are not a replacement for people. As complex as computers are, they don’t hold a candle to humans.
I begin by making clear my goals and my expectations. I can’t expect others to buy into, or show an interest in, goals that haven’t been set, or that they aren’t aware of. People are able to thrive when they are given clear directions, and without them there is chaos. Don’t misunderstand, clear directions are not necessarily rigid step by step processes or procedures, in many cases a well-defined destination will suffice.
Once we both understand the objectives, I then look for those who show an interest in the subject matter. I ask people to explain to me, in their own words, how they would characterize the objective. Through this I am able to ascertain a multitude of attributes. How does this person communicate? Do they seem inspired? Are they imaginative? Will they contribute?
For me, although I do want those who are skilled, what I don’t want is people brining their bad habits or preconceived notions, into my domain.
I look for people who I can empower and trust with those controls. In some regard they are the experts in their field, otherwise I wouldn’t be hiring them.
I use a relatively weighted scale for items such as, desire or interest in the task, communication skills, and lastly technical expertise. Again, it is fairly easy to teach a person, any person, the technical aspects of a task, but there is no substitute for a healthy determination.
Many organizations promote themselves as a “team”. Teams are built with the knowledge that each player is a valued contributor. The Wellness of the team is directly affected by the Wellness of the individual players.
We’ve all heard of the four-day work week, unlimited PTO, mental health days, and on demand mental health services. What innovative new programs and pilots are you launching to address employee wellness? And, what are you discovering? We would benefit from an example in each of these areas.
- Mental Wellness:
- Emotional Wellness:
- Social Wellness:
- Physical Wellness:
- Financial Wellness:
Wellness isn’t a new concept; it may only be new to you.
The first thing that I do, is that I don’t see these items as mutually exclusive. I can’t for the life of me imagine a person who is emotionally well and not at the same time mentally well. I would question anyone who deliberately and continuously treats these as mutually exclusive items. The human condition encapsulates all of these facets simultaneously. I am reminded of the poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant” by John Godfrey Saxe, where six blind men each explores a different part of an elephant’s body and are then asked to define what an elephant is. Of course, their answers are far from correct as “the whole is something besides the parts” Aristotle. Wellness is about treating the individual as a whole, and not as parts which can be deconstructed.
These are all so interrelated that they are a package deal. Improving one improves the others, and vice versa. Emotional Wellness and Mental Wellness are subsets of the larger Social Wellness. Those who are socially well adjusted, which isn’t necessarily socially outgoing, tend to also be emotionally and mentally, well adjusted.
If all it takes is a four-day work week to solve the problem, that would already be implemented. The problem goes much deeper. People aren’t motivated. You can’t artificially motivate someone. They must want what you’re selling. It’s funny that so many businesses whose primary business model is selling don’t realize that they have to sell themselves to their employees.
In educating people about intimate relationships, I make the point that you cannot make a bad relationship good. Therefore, it behooves you, and your relationships, to pick the best partner from the outset. The same is true of business relationships. Begin by picking people who are already interested in your company mission. Also, develop a company mission that appeals to employees and not just investors or customers. Companies have lost sight of their vision. Company mission statements have become nothing more than shallow platitudes. There was a time when companies were socially aware of their impact, but that has given way to strictly financial concerns. Any time we see an organization react positively to a social concern we see an increase in both employee and customer appreciation, that should tell us something.
People want to be associated with me because they believe in what I am doing and what I stand for, but if they didn’t, I wouldn’t partner with them.
I am so serious about Wellness that I have created the Good Together Game app as a way to bring people together and to support their bonds. The app enhances Social Wellness by removing the stresses of building interpersonal connections. As social creatures’ humans require interpersonal connections in order to survive, “No Man is an Island” John Donne. These social connections go well beyond the office, proving my sincerity. If you are only practicing Wellness for your bottom line, you aren’t practicing Wellness at all; you’re just going through the motions of the next flavor of the month business improvement fad, and everyone will know it.
With that, I partner with others, to further improve the app, adding in Physical Wellness activities and interactions.
So, there you have it. I am honestly concerned about the people that I deal with, and I make it a point to deal with people who are also concerned about me.
Can you please tell us more about a couple of specific ways workplaces would benefit from investing in your ideas above to improve employee wellness?
Improved creativity
Wellness is the comingling of social and business practices. We can’t be well in one and not the other. Both areas benefit from healthy creativity, originality, and imagination. People are most creative after being well rested. Some reasons for that are that we aren’t anchored or overly focused yet and we have our full energy at our disposal. For me, many new and novel thoughts come when I am in my morning shower. Studies show that periodic breaks can facilitate a rejuvenation of energy as well as an alternative perspective.
Creativity isn’t limited to a place or time, it happens anyplace anytime, limiting yourself to an office environment between the hours of fast start and full stop, isn’t rational.
Some management underestimates the amount or degree of creativity that many tasks require, whether dealing with internal or external work processes or internal or external personalities. There are always exceptions to the established work procedures that must be dealt with, and they all require creativity.
Improved interactions
Positive interactions are more likely to elicit additional positive interactions, just as negative interactions are more likely to bring about additional negative interactions. We have studies that show, when people are treated positively, they are far more likely to in turn treat the next person that they encounter is a positive manner.
I believe that a significant characteristic of the problem is that people aren’t being taught how to positively interact with one another, but quite the opposite. Sarcasm, depictions of dysfunctional or adversarial scenarios, and social media trolls, would indicate that society is being bombarded with all of the wrong interactions. And negative interactions are stressful, often by design.
I created my app, The Good Together Game, with this very thing in mind. By having people interact with one another for short periods, 3, 5, or 7, minutes, using predefined, appropriate, activity lists, people will learn proper collaboration skills. Better interactions skills lead to more and greater confidence. When we do something repeatedly, we become comfortable with it.
Better interactions lead to less stress, and less stress leads to greater Wellness.
Improved commitment
The key to healthy relationships is reciprocity. Reciprocity builds trust and trust encourages commitment. One good turn deserves another. An honest concern for the Wellness of another is much more likely to provoke a concern for your own Wellness. An excellent way in which to help yourself is to help others.
How are you reskilling leaders in your organization to support a “Work Well” culture?
We are on the precipice of change. Hopefully we don’t either, overdo it and swing like a pendulum, or move in the wrong direction all together.
It is less a reskilling and more a selecting the correct person for the task to begin with. It is more difficult to reshape preexisting incorrect habits than it is to instill the correct habits from the start.
And by “correct person” I do not mean the person that most closely matches the supposed qualifications. In mathematics there is concept of overfitting, which is the effect of so closely matching the data that you have as to then anticipate future patterns unreliably. So too there is a problem of overfitting in the selection process of most organizations. If you hire only those people who have the exact skills that you need today, they may not fill the needs that you have in the future.
Business processes need to be somewhat fluid and flexible, although viscous and mellifluous, more like honey than either like water, loose and runny, or tar, thick and unwavering.
With that said, the best selected individuals still cannot accomplish a goal without the proper preparation, tools and support.
Just as teams coach their players, organization members need to be taught your specific business process and preferences. It seems to me, that the current trend is to expect that people just know. It is what is equated to “mind reading” in relationships. Managers just know how to manage, and employees just know what is expected of them. The recruitment process is to get people who already know, people who have already been taught by someone else, so you don’t have to. Of course, you don’t know what kind of things people have been taught, or if any of it actually applies or agrees with what you need them to know. You aren’t creating a culture of your own, you are inheriting, or hiring, someone else’s culture, many different cultures.
I see my organization as somewhat unique; I defy the conventional. I therefore don’t want what everyone else has. I believe that I have, clear, reasonable, and practical, expectations. I incorporate people into my culture. I infuse them with my view of the future. From there I set them loose so that they can show me what I don’t already know.
Every marketing person will ask, “what makes you, your product, your brand, unique and why should someone choose you over anyone else?” We all must see ourselves as different in some way, otherwise what would be the point of doing what we do? You and your organization are unique in some way. Don’t settle for doing what everyone else is doing.
Ideas take time to implement. What is one small step every individual, team or organization can take to get started on these ideas — to get well?
I would recommend that every person download and try my free Good Together Game app. The app is meant to help people to build and maintain healthy relationships, in all parts of their lives.
The app is designed with the philosophy that life happens a little at a time. We really don’t need lengthy interactions to make a meaningful change. However, we are constantly missing out on the benefit that these little interactions could bring because we don’t know how best to initiate them. The app times interactions to, 3, 5, or 7, minute intervals.
The analogy is physical exercise. Just a few minutes a day consistently, brings about a noticeable improvement. Throughout any given day we have numerous periods that we could fit in a quick activity, but we don’t. These are all missed opportunities.
The app is fully customizable, allowing the user to create their own social circles as well as their personal lists of interactions to perform together. Human Resource departments could easily define company supported activities lists for employees to partake in.
What are your “Top 5 Trends To Track In the Future of Workplace Wellness?”
1. Naps and breaks and distractions, oh my.
It is long understood both in other cultures and in the agrarian community that mid-day naps or breaks are beneficial to the individual. With the ability to work from home, these breaks will become more easily implemented and more acceptable. The rewards of which will be an improvement to productivity and efficiency while at the same time decreasing the stress that typically accompanies the former.
2. Adding meaning and value to your breaks and distractions.
Taking breaks is all well and good. However, if you aren’t using that time in a healthy way, it won’t be as beneficial as it could be. I want the best for you.
Moving around more, get up and away from your work area.
Mingle with your coworkers. There is more to life than work, and more to work than drudgery.
Use the Good Together Game app to assist you with valuable activities and interactions to occupy your breaks.
3. More independence.
More local, lower-level, decision making. Problem solving closer to the problem. Less micromanagement, due to remote work. People can’t look over your shoulder, or pop into your office to check up on you, if you aren’t in an office. A little bit of trust goes a long way.
The Professional Management Class (PMC) was the first, and hardest, hit by the COVID downsizing. The extent that this group was vital to the day-to-day organizational operations was called into question. The more self-sufficient employees showed their worth.
4. Fewer worthless marathon meetings.
The reduction of wasteful lengthy meetings. How are these justifiable? If you want to question efficiency, productivity, profitability, start here.
Pop up meetings in remote locations where people gather at a centralized location with a casual setting to informally discuss business issues. These areas could include coffee shops or eateries. Soft drinks and appetizers are on the company.
5. New employee metrics.
If as is pointed out in a previous question, Harvard Predicts Wellness will be the new metric on which employers analyze their employees, then it stands to reason the yearly reviews will end. Wellness is year-round, it isn’t a “one and done” once a year doctors visit.
When more people are doing the tasks that are desirable to the organization there are either fewer people needed to keep those people on task, or the people who used to be needed to keep people on task can be redirect to other tasks themselves.
What is your greatest source of optimism about the future of workplace wellness?
My source of optimism is the people themselves. The only reason that we are even having this discussion is due to people who believe in the concept, and understand the significance, of wellness.
Humans form society as a whole, which forms communities and organizations. We are all interconnected in some way. Wellness affects all of us, either our own wellness directly, or the wellness of others indirectly. What that means is that your wellness is associated with the wellness of others. It is a benefit to you yourself for others to be well, as their wellness, or illness, will eventually impact you.
Our readers often like to continue the conversation with our featured interviewees. How can they best connect with you and stay current on what you’re discovering?
On the internet my website is GoodTogether.com, on Facebook and Instagram you can find me engaging with my followers as “GoodTogetherGuru”, and on Twitter I can be found as “Good2getherGuru”.
And of course, you can download my app “The Good Together Game”, from the Apple App Store and from Google Play.
Thank you for sharing your insights and predictions. We appreciate the gift of your time and wish you continued success and wellness.