… Ways workplaces would benefits from investing in the ideas I’ve list above is through: employee retention and satisfaction, and a faster time to hire. When employees feel supported and cared for, they’re more likely to be willing to work at the company for a longer period of time. They’re also more inclined to share with past colleagues or friends about how wonderful a company is to work for, and perspective candidates for your company will see that your company is committed to taking care of them and more willing to accept a role if offered the opportunity.
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 Jessica Green, SVP of Customer Success at Lever, a talent acquisition suite.
Jessica Green leads the customer success team at Lever. At Lever, she is passionate about curating an environment that allows people to have exceptional experiences — within our team and for our customers. She continues to cultivate a culture that is both deeply empathetic and delivers results alongside our customers. She brings over 10 years of sales and customer experience, by way of Bullhorn, ToutApp, and Marketo. Jess attended the University of Connecticut and specialized in professional selling.
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.
My relationship with work and how it shows up in my life changed drastically once I became a mother five years ago, and not in the way I had anticipated it changing me. I, unfortunately, had a traumatic experience during the birth and early postpartum period with my first daughter. This led to living with anxiety. After my second child joined our family and I returned to work, my anxiety far surpassed my personal health and safety and into work. There was no denying that I struggled with anxiety prior to becoming a mother, but now I was under more pressure to address my anxiety head on as it became debilitating at times.
While dealing with this anxiety on maternity leave, I was teetering between if I would be more fulfilled working at home, being a full time mother, or working out of my home. Once my leave ended, I knew I wanted to go back to the workforce. This was a challenging transition as while everyone around my was supportive of my decisions, I felt lonely. There was this constant battle between work and life, and I felt like I was losing in both sides of this battle, leaving me feeling demoralized and empty. When I went on my second maternity leave, I knew more about what to expect as a mother, but I had progressed in my career with a job that had higher expectations of me by the business, and I had unrealistic expectations of myself.
This is when I realized — the perception that you could ultimately find a “balance” for all the different parts of your life was a facade that was perpetuating this unrealistic picture of life — especially for myself as a caretaker. I then vowed to throw out “balance” and embrace a concept of “blending” my life. There will be pulls in different areas of your life with bigger urgency, requiring more energy, and time needed for family, myself, work, will all need my attention, but it will be okay. By coming to this realization, it didn’t change things overnight, but I was on a healthier path towards a more fulfilling life. Being able to share what I have struggled with, the more relief and support I’ve felt from others because they, at most times, felt more comfortable opening up to me as well about situations they’ve dealt with. I no longer felt lonely or isolated in what I was experiencing.
I am now very passionate about infusing my realization in my interactions with my team, peers, clients — we are human first, and work must recognize that.
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?
Wellness overall for Lever focuses on protecting mental health and wellbeing. One thing we’ve done specifically over the past few years is “listening tours” in which our People team speaks with randomly selected employees from different backgrounds and various teams within our organization to inform business decisions we’ve made, such as benefits and perks that matter most to our current employee base. This has led to unlimited PTO, more corporate holidays, re-allocating funds towards mental health and wellbeing through our “Be Well Perk,” and supporting our employees to live a successful remote work life. This lessens the pressures at work, showing employees that they can take time away from their work and unplug to come back more energized and productive, and have funds to support how they take care of themselves and their wellbeing.
We additionally encourage all of our employees to bring their whole selves to work. We have been intentional about creating a safe space at Lever since day one, for employees to share struggles, wellness tips, etc. and has become increasingly more important to hold this space over the last two years. Through doing so, we’ve created a culture with an increased sense of community, engagement, and connection.
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?
Through personal experience, I believe that it is difficult for anyone to do their best work whenever they’re not feeling well — whether this be mentally, physically, socially, emotionally, or financially. In looking like that inversely, when people are feeling strong and supported, the more likely they are to thrive. Because of this experience I believe it’s extremely important for companies to be hyperfocused on the wellness of their employees.
Employee attrition and being able to make the qualify of hires you need on time, are two of the biggest risks to any business plan. Taking wellness seriously to both attract and retain the team is beyond worth it and can directly impact your ability to achieve revenue, efficiency, growth targets. Diving deeper into engineers for example — an engineering team at a software company could be pushing towards a critical release that can reduce customer churn or allow the company to add additional value to customers and revenue for the company. If they are burnt out, or that team can’t hire additional talent because the focus on wellness is simply not there, it could result in a missed product release, then leading to potential customer churn or loss of revenue. Looking directly at sales — if you aren’t able to make key hires and team members are burnt out, it has a direct impact on your company’s revenue.
Investing in wellness is worth it, and not just for the financial component. What certain companies are able to do at different stages will be different, but worth it in the long run.
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?
It’s challenging to create change within an organization, especially within one that has not yet acknowledged the value of investing in wellness. I have two suggestions for leaders struggling with this:
- Take the first step. It can be paralyzing when you have big ideas for change and are met with apathy or resistance. Break down your big ideas and start small. Ask yourself, “What is one thing I can propose to make progress,” and, “How can I quantify impact of that change to advocate for more?”
- Investing in wellness doesn’t have to start with money. It starts with listening to your people. Ask them questions about more than just work. Create a space where they can share the real answers. From there you will be amazed by what you learn and can start to take action in areas that are going to mean the most to help.
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?
One way we incorporate wellness into our recruiting process is through our benefits offerings. Lever evaluates our holistic benefits approach and offerings each year to ensure we’re staying in tune with what our employees unique needs are. This year, we put a larger emphasis on the “Be Well” perk for each employee. We provided a larger budget allocated towards this that is more flexible to an employees discretion each month, within our guidelines.
During our interview process, we intentionally infuse our company and personal values within each touchpoint with a candidate. When I think about wellness, I consider how I am spending my time doing work that aligns with my values. If I feel like I am, there’s more natural momentum and drive into work each day. Alternatively, if I’m not feeling in line with my values, there is more drain on the work done day-to-day and the culture is no longer a fit. I want to help the candidate identify this throughout our interview process to ensure they’re aligned with where Lever is heading and know the values present in our culture.
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.
We have the following new programs that support mental, physical, emotional, social, and financial wellness:
- The “Be Well” perk mentioned earlier supports employees in discovering and affording mental and physical wellness applications, therapy, gym memberships, learning and development for outside of work passions and interests.
- Every Lever employee has a voice to be heard. For emotional wellbeing and support, we offer Town Hall discussions and group events, such as, ‘Finding Success through Adversity’ that allows for an open forum of discussion among our employees.
- We have a distributed workforce across North America and the EU, and have begun offering “Team Connectedness Budget,” allotted towards team virtual and in-person activities for opportunities to connect as a team and come together.
- Twice a year, our People team reviews market data for each of our roles to ensure our roles remain competitive with in all of the location our employees live. We want people to feel confident that they are being valued for the work that they do. We also review compensation with a diversity and equity lens to ensure there are no individuals being unfairly treated when it comes to compensation. While we do not understand everyone’s unique needs from a financial perspective, we can strive for fair, equitable, and competitive practices.
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?
Ways workplaces would benefits from investing in the ideas I’ve list above is through: employee retention and satisfaction, and a faster time to hire. When employees feel supported and cared for, they’re more likely to be willing to work at the company for a longer period of time. They’re also more inclined to share with past colleagues or friends about how wonderful a company is to work for, and perspective candidates for your company will see that your company is committed to taking care of them and more willing to accept a role if offered the opportunity.
How are you reskilling leaders in your organization to support a “Work Well” culture?
We are reskilling leaders in our organization to support a “Work Well” culture by launching a leadership development program. We announced the program at the start of this year, and it covers a wide range of topics to better support our senior leadership and employees overall. A more personalized approach to leadership supports working well together and betters the manager and direct report relationship throughout the organization.
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?
As I mentioned earlier, one small step you can do is ask “What is one thing I can propose to make progress?” If individuals ask this to themselves and share with their manager, their manager shares with the team, and their leader shares even more broadly — it’s a positive ripple effect to make change that matters and every employee has the space to make the change they want to see.
What are your “Top 5 Trends To Track In the Future of Workplace Wellness?”
- Benefits Offerings.
- More Open Forums for Discussions.
- Value Alignment.
- Fluctuation in Employee Retention/Attrition Numbers.
- Altered Recruiting Processes.
What is your greatest source of optimism about the future of workplace wellness?
As challenging as the last 2 years have been, a positive is that it has shined a spotlight on many kinds of wellness. It reminded people that even at work, we are all humans first. The pressure candidates and employees are under is extremely challenging and with external factors impacting day-to-day experiences, companies need to figure out how to best support the unique needs being presented to today’s employees — and companies are finally starting to listen to employees through changing their offerings for the better.
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?
- Readers are welcome to follow or connect with me on LinkedIn, here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicagreen4/.
Thank you for sharing your insights and predictions. We appreciate the gift of your time and wish you continued success and wellness.