The most obvious trend is that wellness is being widely recognized as a required part of culture rather than an add on. The fact that it’s obvious is a big deal, though. I particularly notice how it’s integrated into overall compensation and benefits packages, like one company that matches pre-hire candidates with a wellness coach during the recruitment process.
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 Dr. Sara Murdock.
Dr. Sara Murdock is a globally renowned expert in power dynamics and leadership. Founder of The Moirai Group, Dr. Murdock serves as a pioneer in the fields of Environmental Social Governance (ESG) and DEI&B (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) with a 20+ year track record in catalyzing profound and necessary cultural shifts in the workplace. Sara cements her mantra, “Change isn’t hard, it’s human” into every thread of her proven methodology, responsible for helping hundreds of companies and organizations set the standard in DEI and ESG. With a Ph.D. in Social Impact from the University of California Los Angeles and an MA in Organizational Development from Seattle University, Sara is frequently sought after as a keynote speaker, author, and panelist for leading international conferences, publications, and podcasts.
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.
I previously worked for a professional services firm that paid me well… or so I thought. I was raised to play it safe and go for a steady paycheck. But when I started really articulating the value that I create, I noticed that many companies wanted to pay me considerably more to create and lead entire projects rather than follow other people’s directions. At first I didn’t get why, until I realized that companies get 1,000x or 10,000x more value than what I charge, so we’re both getting a great deal. I now see professional relationships as truly symbiotic, where everyone is adding value to everyone else. I was fortunate to learn through the awkwardness of the situation that a career is really about adding value and pioneering new ground — and that that’s when the money flows, too.
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?
We measure wellness by amount of meaningfulness. We found that measurements like number of hours worked or number of mental health sessions was too abstract to translate into entire human experiences. So, for us, we focus on the degree to which we experience meaning. Of course, we arrived at this definition because it aligns with our culture — we expect the opportunity to pioneer new methods and products, not just go through the motions of a work day. Prioritizing meaning helps us minimize busy work and ensure that anything we don’t enjoy doing is only there if it’s a must. That way, even though we work hard, we don’t burn out and even enjoy the work process.
The other thing we measure and consider part of health is psychological safety, which we primarily achieve through candid dialogue. We see immediate decreases in our mental health once authenticity diminishes, so we track the quality of our interactions. Letting go of performing nice-ness and instead achieving respectful yet candid conversation has the added benefit of making us respect each other more while coming up with better solutions and doing better work.
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?
I see the wellness of the workforce as the inner workings of a beautiful car — no matter how gorgeous the facade, if the inside isn’t humming, you’re not going to get where you want to go. I see many of my colleagues like the idea of wellness, but don’t necessarily understand the direct influence on company innovation, product excellence, and market leadership — all of which are the keys to consistent profitability. I came up with a scoring system that tracks work from “with ease” to “forced” so we can see the degree to which we retain our humanity, sense of self, and overall health throughout a project’s lifecycle. Then, we also track “simple” vs “challenging” to see whether we’re working on market-leading products or replicating the same methods from 15 years ago. We’re able to achieve more wins and excel at challenging projects when we mostly work “with ease.”
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?
I used to think that executives were confused about the relationship between employee health and profitability because they hadn’t seen enough research showing the unmistakable link. But now I see that the confusion is not about logic — many executives have emotionally-based associations between sacrifice and deservedness. The truth is that executives are just people with assumptions and pre-existing worldviews, and many of us were taught “no pain no gain” or “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” It’s not that executives want people to struggle, it’s that wellness is associated with luxury that you only deserve to access once things are already good. This couldn’t be less accurate. Wellness is like food — the hungrier you are, the more you will benefit from a delicious meal. That’s why de-prioritizing wellness isn’t just misguided, it’s dangerous for our companies.
My first recommendation is for decision makers to train our minds differently. Decisions about what to fund and support are not accidental. Our decisions reflect our belief systems and priorities. Many company decisions are far more emotional than logical, as much as we’d like to think otherwise. In the advisory portion of my work, I walk boards and C-suite folks through meticulous processes for understanding and improving their decision-making. We consistently find that top executives are making decisions that are antithetical to their own objectives because they don’t really understand what’s governing what they think and why they think it.
The other piece of advice that I cannot emphasize enough is to develop a high quality feedback and listening system so that employees across the organization understand one another. I’ve worked on so many company surveys and employee listening sessions that I’m confident they’re too surface level to create deep understanding of what employees actually need. Feel free to reach out if you’d like a referral or recommendations and I’ll connect you with a top-tier colleague who specializes in expert qualitative research or facilitation of inter-group dialogue: [email protected]
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?
We have an unusual way of ensuring wellness — we focus on “fit” because being on the right team is non-negotiable when it comes to wellbeing. Think of it like a romantic relationship. You might think the person is kind and attractive and they may be interested in you, too. But if your chemistry together isn’t right for dating or marriage, then it’s simply not the right fit romantically. You might be wonderful people or even great friends, but just not right as a couple. Work teams are more similar to that than we might think, just with innovation and product/service delivery, rather than with romance.
With hiring, promotions, and creating new positions, I focus on character traits over skills because smart people with growth mindsets can learn new skills but (usually) can’t change “who” we are as people. With wellness throughout talent recruitment, we focus first on who we are and who they are and why they might be a great fit. Then we get to “what” — once we’ve determined potential fit based on character, we determine receptivity to coaching, plus meditation and focusing methods, because talking about wellness isn’t the same as practicing it. Plus, who wouldn’t want a more focused and higher quality recruitment process?
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.
I love this question but haven’t found separating forms of wellness to be useful because there is no one correct way to be well. In fact, we can create problems by assuming that wellness should look a certain way precisely because one size does not fit all. Instead, I take teams through a discovery process to identify what they’re creating, reinforcing, and/or ignoring through their actions. By seeing what we’re emphasizing or de-prioritizing, we create better team strategies based on real-time need. This also saves a lot of time and money because we don’t buy into trends and instead rely on immediate feedback.
- Mental Wellness:
- Emotional Wellness:
- Social Wellness:
- Physical Wellness:
- Financial Wellness:
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?
For one, “giving” services is useless — unless there are clear instructions and support to use the services well. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen companies purchase an app or wellness service because it’s popular when there’s very little to suggest the team wants it or knows how to use it or is excited about it. Parents often understand this because many have purchased some kind of class or toy for their kid when that’s not really what the child wants. Maybe the child will show up out of guilt or pressure or boredom, but that’s hardly what the parents had in mind.
There are 3 benefits I’ve seen to using an intensive discovery process: 1) when executives get more honest with ourselves about our behaviors and the motivation behind them, the whole team benefits from increased focus and better use of resources 2) because thorough discovery processes promote honest and transparent communication, company strategies are often empty and essentially ineffective unless they’re built on thorough discovery processes 3) companies repeat the same mistakes when we don’t see the patterns we’re creating.
How are you reskilling leaders in your organization to support a “Work Well” culture?
Many executives have impressive skills in a few areas — say, finance for a CFO or engineering for a CTO — but have very little experience with designing for superior decision-making or company culture. The confusion is that you can produce a leading product or service without being a leader within your own company. That’s an uncomfortable realization for many high powered and ambitious people who are accustomed to thinking that we are in charge. I began noticing this in the mid 2000s, which stimulated my PhD research — I created a whole system for decision-making within business strategy and began piloting it, not even knowing whether it would work. I developed a simple yet wildly effective method based on asking a series of questions that help us differentiate between intention and impact. The process helps executives become “bosses people want to work for” and companies to have “cultures you can’t pay people to leave.”
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?
Change isn’t necessarily hard, so much as change is very human… and humans can be awkward or messy or stubborn sometimes. Change works when it’s a process of learning to be better humans rather than simply inserting a new policy or protocol. This is why it’s imperative to insist that the C-suite, board, and other decision-makers at a company are held to the highest standards of all. It’s easy to talk about this, but I’ve seen considerable success tying compensation to leadership development and team health. Without accountable leadership, the team can be working incredibly hard while the company as a whole remains stagnant and suffers.
What are your “Top 5 Trends To Track In the Future of Workplace Wellness?”
- The most obvious trend is that wellness is being widely recognized as a required part of culture rather than an add on. The fact that it’s obvious is a big deal, though. I particularly notice how it’s integrated into overall compensation and benefits packages, like one company that matches pre-hire candidates with a wellness coach during the recruitment process.
- Another trend is public thanks and congratulations when colleagues enjoy success, not just verbally, but through days off, compensation, and additional benefits. I’ve seen this translate to cash bonuses, PTO, and doubling a wellness stipend as a way to say thank you for great work.
- This trend is rare but is a real differentiator — more bosses are waking up to the fact that just because something is new to them or seems unlikely, it may be their own limiting belief. I created a whole “reverse mentor” program where senior executives were taught by new hires and junior staff. There were also stipends offered to cover the additional labor and time. A few of the junior staff who really loved the process were then offered the chance to take adult education/learning and development classes, thereby upskilling them as individuals and benefiting the whole team.
- Anonymous feedback mechanisms aren’t new, but seem to be enjoying more emphasis. While it’s best to have psychologically safe environments where employees feel equipped to speak up, it takes a while to get there and bosses need a way to receive feedback even when people don’t yet believe they won’t experience retaliation if they disagree with something. This is where I cannot overstate the benefit to expertly lead group dialogue and curated conversations. I’ve seen these unusual yet immediately effective methods work so many times I’ve lost count! For example, I helped a tech startup sort through some major team misunderstandings that were about to jeopardize their next round of funding.
- A move away from demographic-based DEIB and toward employee experience. This trend works because there’s not much evidence that single-identity (example: female or Asian) advocacy works but that designing for complex and intersectional experiences does work. For example, in my own experience with a learning disability, at a company early in my career, many colleagues and I did not experience benefit from single-issue resources, but loved working with coaches to create an entire, nuanced system that gave us much higher quality support overall.
What is your greatest source of optimism about the future of workplace wellness?
Two things. For one, some companies understand wellness is about the entire workplace culture and experience of working somewhere rather than a few isolated policies or perks. Also, asking employees what they need is becoming more common as bosses realize that leadership comes from actions not from titles. The overarching theme is that intentions don’t matter but that human-centered design does. That’s a major improvement from chasing a perfect equation like numbers of days in the office or where to do a volunteer day. Another way of phrasing this is that it’s a move away from the idea of wellness and a move toward the fact that wellness is a symptom of better communication.
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?
I invite you to check out my website www.drsaramurdock.com, LinkedIn (/saraevamurdock), and Instagram (@drsaramurdock). I frequently share new resources, teaching highly unusual executive education courses (some are business school accredited!), and will be opening the previously closed-door Create Your Culture program to more companies soon. I look forward to seeing you there!
Thank you for sharing your insights and predictions. We appreciate the gift of your time and wish you continued success and wellness.