E120 – Employee Wellbeing (w/ Bob Merberg)

Hello, Mr. James, and this is Jane, and here we are again with another episode of a world work podcast. What have we got today? Jane,

well, today we are talking to Bob Merberg from jazzito, which and Bob is a specialist in employee well being, and he consults with a number of significant companies to support them with their employee well being offer. So we're going to be talking all things employee well being today, brilliant.

Looking forward to it. Let's get into that conversation. Okay, so here we are on the main body of today's podcast conversation, and we've got another great conversation lined up for you. We're going to be speaking with Bob Merberg from New York, and we're going to be exploring the subject of employee well being, which is a really big subject, but it's really important as well. So we'll be exploring it broadly and then diving into a few issues as we have our conversation before we start that. Though, Bob, would you be able to introduce yourself and say a little bit more about your background and what you're working on to the audience? Please, sure. I'd be,

I'd be happy to and James and Jane. I want to thank you for having me here today. I'm a consultant in the fields of employee well being through my consultancy, which is called josito, and folks can learn more about that@joseto.com my experience in the corporate world includes more than 20 years creating and leading employee wellness programs, including more than 10 years leading a fairly prestigious wellness program for a Fortune 1000 company. And maybe part of our conversation we might get into these distinctions between wellness and well being and and different ways of understanding them. But for now, I'd say that, you know, most of my time is leading health promotion programs, supporting employees with with goals like getting fit and eating healthier and managing stress and things like that. And over time, I became a little less interested in in like health behavior change and more interested in how employers can shape work so that it supports well being. And I've often been fond of saying, change the work, not the worker. My clients are mostly medium and large employers. I prefer to work with only one or two at a time, and I help them with, you know, assessment surveys and focus groups, planning, vendor selection and management, communications, really anything. And just quickly, I'd say that most employers really are still interested in the health promotion approach to well being most of the employers I encounter, so I'm happy to do that, and increasingly, I find that that work has a strong element of mental health to it. So I'm working with a lot of employers with EAPs and other aspects of mental health strategies, including mental health first aid, which I'm just getting into, training employees and managers on Mental Health First Aid and and I do a lot of content marketing. I do work with some wellness vendors. I do blogs, white papers, ebooks, some content creation for new products. So James, the short answer, that was the long answer. The short answer is, I do a little of everything, which is not the best elevator pitch in the world. But I've sort of, you know, I've sort of come to accept that it's the truth.

Yeah, well, you know what? And the truth is good and, and I love the background that you've got and the, I guess we're starting at the Health Promotion side of things, and then moving a little bit more towards changing the work, not changing the worker. I like that phrase, um, and I guess I want to start with a pretty high level question. As you were speaking there, you talked a little bit about well being and about wellness, and I guess it would just be good to start thinking about that. You know, if we think about employee well being, what is it that you have come to your mind? What does employee well being mean to you?

That's a great question. I appreciate you putting it that way, James, what does it mean to me? Because, because there are so many different definitions of well being and wellness, and different ways of initiating them or differentiating them and and different ways of understanding them. So for me, I. Um, I think that the simplest way of putting it is that employee well being means basically happiness. I mean, if I really had to distill it down, and then, you know, you could ask, well, what is happiness and and I think then I'd sort of say, go back to you, say, like, if you would ask me that question, well, what is happiness to you? Because that's really what I think happiness and well being are. It's sort of in the eyes of the beholder. It's whatever it is to to the individual. You know, I do. I mean, I think it's important. And you could stop me if this starts getting a little too academic or pedantic, but like in my experience, I think well being is understood differently in the United States compared to Europe and other parts of the world. Because I think just based, I haven't worked in Europe, but there's so much research and writing that comes out of Europe and great podcasts like yours and other thought leadership and well being, excuse me, I think it's pretty well understood as sort of like a psychological construct that has something to do with happiness, that might be like happiness as a fleeting emotion, or happiness like a sense of purpose throughout one's life.

in businesses, not really the academic world, but in businesses and corporations, for employers, well being was really sort of, it's sort of been like an evolution of wellness. So whereas, you know, first there were health programs, and then we called them wellness programs because we wanted them to be a little bit more holistic, and then we decided wellness programs looked too much like health programs, and so we called them well being programs, because we thought that made it more holistic. And it's been very, very much influenced by, you know, Gallup and you know, their book and their vision, which is the five essential elements of well being. And there's been a lot of focus on what are the components of well being, and not as much thought given to, like, what do those components add up to? So for employers, and you'll, you'll see that, you know, I can be, oh, I can be a little critical sometimes, but also optimistic. But, you know, a lot of employers, I think that their well being program in the US, it's still actually just a glorified health program with maybe with like mindfulness and financial wellness thrown in so that people could check those boxes. But I like the one big distinction, I would say is what I find in the US, and I'm afraid that maybe this is getting imported to other countries, is we don't think about well being as related to the work itself at all. There's very little attention to given to, you know, how the job itself, how the work influences well being, because we're still thinking about it as like, how can employees change? And how can we help them change?

So yeah, that's really interesting, and that distinction and the insights and the difference in how this is interpreted in different locations is helpful, and it reminds me of some stuff I've read about, things like empowerment and some of the dangers of empowerment, which are to which, I bet in some ways, if you if you think that everyone can simply empower themselves to success, then the accountability for achievement sits with an individual, not with an organization, and all those types of things. And then we shift our balance of roles and responsibilities and the sort of agreements we have with each other. And it seems like some of the things that you're describing there are that organizations do not see beyond some of the basics from a health perspective, maybe that they have an obligation or a role to play in changing and structuring their creation of work and the environments and the other aspects of work to support the well being that employees have, what's your what's your view on maybe what the role of a responsible organization would be in this do you think that responsible organizations should be thinking about the impact they have on well being, and if, if so, what might some of the benefits of taking that approach be for them?

So I think, I do think that employers actually have some some responsibility for well being and but what I think the employers priorities should be is healthy work. How does the work in the organization support employee well being or minimally? Actually making sure that the work doesn't isn't deleterious to well being. And I think that by the I think that supporting health and health promotion and walk in programs and healthy nutrition, I think that those are nice too. What you know, as long as they're voluntary, they're nice to have employees, employees like those, but for the employer, I think, like, you know, really, like an employer doesn't really, in the end, have that much influence over your health habits, but what the employer can influence is the work. And so there are certain aspects to answer your question more directly, James, things that employers should focus on, and you know these, these are fairly well defined. So like, one is job demands, and that includes, like, a whole lot of things, and we tend to think about workload, but it also means our hours. You know, scheduling is a big one. Another one is autonomy or job control. And that also means that that also is fairly broad, because that ranges from, you know, giving allowing employees, when possible, some flexibility in their schedule to some a voice in organizational decisions and feedback on how the work is done and and then there's also social support. So I mean, the job demands autonomy and social support in the workplace, and that includes support from co workers and from from managers, from the organization, all important recognition and rewards, feeling valued, fairness, organizational justice. So what that can mean to an employer is one, you know, treating people equitably. And that's, you know, we don't always call it like like fairness. We don't always call it like organizational justice, but if you just think about like gender pay gap, that undermines employee well being, and that's the type of thing that the employer can influence. And oh, and then the really big one is role so like, because what I find is this is what I find when I go to employers and I talk to employees about their well being. And sometimes this is voiced like in terms of stress, but it's like big stress. It's not like little stress. What I find is that blue collar workers will usually say that the most important thing that their employer can do for their well being, it's going to be something related to schedule less over time. More notice about scheduling changes, less on call work, things like that. White collar employees will almost always talk about role. So what I mean by that is, what, and this is sort of like incredible if you don't hear it, but like, the most common thing I hear is like, I don't know what my job is, you know, I don't know what's expected of me. Or sometimes that means I had one man role, like I had one manager telling me to do one thing, and another manager telling me to do something that contradicted that. So those are big sources of stress that undermine the employee. And I think it should be fairly apparent how that that can undermine the organization as well. But there is also evidence to support that getting those things worked out is good for business results.

Just just just that conversation alone. I've got so many questions, and I'm trying to think is, and I guess, I guess the one I'm going to put to you first is, so we're big fans of the job, job demands, resources, model we've talked about before the show, and some stuff that you alluding to there. And I guess one of the conversations that comes up quite a lot is, How often do we see organizations doing what we would term over here as secondary interventions, so the yoga practice and the well being and the exercises and the better opportunities, rather than dealing with the underlying challenges that might exist within the demands of the Job, for example, consistent under resourcing of people, or consistent over time, like you talk about and how, how you I'm really interested in how you approach that conversation with a with a an organization of saying, you know, yes, it's lovely that you want to do these shiny things, like give people yoga and head massage and all of these things, but we have to get kind. I'm sort of come to terms with and get to grips with the underlying challenges that aren't going away, and that is that the way that you're structuring the roles, or explaining the roles, or the way you're allocating resources is creating consistent demands. And I just I wondered, is that conversation you have? Is that conversation you've you've managed to navigate at all?

Yes, it's, it's a, it's a brilliant question, and my, my process with that has really evolved over the years, Jane, because what your point is is, it's very true that employers, you know, we think about like the different levels of prevention, you know, primary, secondary and, and tertiary and, and, you know, things like yoga. I don't know if I'd really even call that prevention, but you could, you know, and that would be, oh, you know, I didn't, maybe, maybe I should have chosen, chose, chosen that example. But, but to your to your point, I think that employers, in my experience, will almost never look at at at at at these aspects of job demands, job resources might come a little bit more naturally to them. I mean, in that model, I actually find that there's so much wiggle room and what counts as a job resource, it's a little bit hard to work with sometimes, but, but I think that, you know, your original question, Jane was like, how often are employers, you know, willing to look at things like, you know, resourcing and and schedules and things like that. And I'd say almost never.

you know, how can employees change? I mean, that's how they view well being. How can employees change? And they're very, very reluctant to sort of say, like, how can we change? It's,

it's just about. It, right?

Yes, although, you know, it's, well, it is, although I sort of, I sometimes think about, like, you know, just sort of human relationships in general. That's certainly not something I'm an, I'm an expert on, but it's sort of like in marriages and sort of couple of relationships and stuff, you know, there's often that inclination, I think, to like, oh, you know, we have this problem. This isn't working. This other person has to change, as opposed to, what might I do differently?

I think, you know, I think there is a lot to be had in talking about employee relations in terms of, like, our reflections on our own relationships at home. I think it would help. Can I ask you one more question about that? Because I think, I think that you raise a really good point, and you mentioned when you first started talking about role clarity for those that are in what we would call like knowledge work. And I kind of, I kind of wanted to ask you about that, because one of the challenges we've experienced, and I've experienced when talking to clients is it feels too simple a solution for them and they want something sometimes a little bit shinier. And actually, my experience is that that that really amazing ability to get total clarity on what your role is and how it shapes and fits the business and supports it can do wonders for a workers understanding of how to prioritize, structure their work, but also feel good about it. And I just I wondered if that was something that you experienced over

there too. Yes. Yeah, it is. And I think it ties in with what I was thinking about your first question about how I navigated and and, you know what I have found is, I mean, I think that honestly, 20 years ago, my objective was to transform work, you know, actually sort of like, you know, globally, and then sort of like, okay, maybe in this company or that company. And because employers are so unresponsive to that idea, what I do increasingly is, I mean, employers, do they come to me for wellness programs, you know, they come to me for health programs. Maybe increasingly, because mental health is so hot now, there's more and more of that. And I can introduce some of this stuff a little bit at the time, like, I don't quite want to say stealthily, because that doesn't quite sound ethical. But like I could think of an employer that I worked with, manufacturing company about about 1200 employees that wanted help a really, really good company wanted help with with their wellness program, you know, their health promotion program, and because their goals were a little bit fuzzy, one of the things that I did for them was a survey as and a bunch of focus groups and a bunch of manager interviews and. The survey asked questions about physical health and mental health taken from taken from validated surveys. And so, you know, it was sort of like, you know, do you want to walk in program? Do you like yoga? What's your favorite, you know, you know, what other kinds of things do you want? How's your mental health been over the last four weeks? And you know, one of the things that came out with this company was that there was this very, very severe problem with scheduling, that there was, you know, in the United States, we don't have any regulatory limits on overtime, you know, and employees at this place were being were working up to 22 consecutive days and

and sometimes what would happen is they'd come in on Monday, they'd be told that they didn't have to work over the weekend, And then on Friday, they'd be told, sorry, you know, you do have to work over the weekend. And you know, they would have had kids birthday parties and stuff. And so, you know, when you sort of think here those stories, you get an idea, you really sort of get a feeling of, like, how relevant this is to well being. So when I presented the findings, I presented the findings to the company leadership, and they're highly engaged. And basically what I said is, I didn't put it quite this way, but forget about your health promotion program. It doesn't matter what kind of food you have cafeteria or how often people are exercising. And the idea of trying to get them to do any of these things in their free time is ridiculous, because that all they're doing is working. They're extremely demoralized about it. And and, and some of them are starting, you know, I are acknowledging calling in sick, because that's the only way they could get a day off. And you know, this company, in this example, they heard that. They totally heard it, and they did both things, they addressed the scheduling, and they went on with their health promotion program as they should have. I didn't really mean that they should forget about it. So Jane, I think to your question, I think I don't go into companies I have and no one's asked me to, sort of like, change the way they do work, and I will go in with whatever they want me to do, maybe it's evaluate the Employee Assistance Program, or do a little gap analysis. And then these items, these things that we're talking about around role clarity and and job demands, they come up, and I present them, and I emphasize the importance of them. And then, to a certain extent, you know, it's up to them, but, but a lot of them like, what's great about podcasts like yours is, I think we still need to educate employers a lot about these things. They just, you know, I could go to like, a Sherm conference. I think maybe in the UK, it'd be CIPD, I don't really know, like an HR conference, and I'm just going to hear about all the other stuff. You know, the wellness and maybe culture and engagement, the products that are available, and job design and demands resources isn't even going to come up.

Yeah, you know what's interesting when you were speaking there and you were you were talking and you explained, well, with that story, what it feels like to have that uncertainty and unconsistency within the scheduling work, it struck me. But that feels exactly like, I guess, a hygiene factor within the workplace, and, you know, to draw on another, you know, another model here, if we're, you know, offering people meditation classes in one hand, but we're not giving them these hygiene factors around consistency and certainty around their work so that they can pound their lives so as other factors aren't going to be important. So breaking it down and exploring these hygiene factors from that sentence of fulfillment or well being and workplace seems like a great place to start. We've talked about the scheduling and work allocation within more blue collar work, and we've talked about the clarity of description and role description in the white collar space, and it feels like those are both potentially fairly hygienic factors when it comes to employee well being. Are there any others that pop into your mind that you'd put into that category of, I guess, foundational or hygiene? Yeah.

And, you know, and I think I mentioned some of them, you know, organizational justice, which maybe is best under understood, just as you know, fairness, rewards and recognition. And you know, rewards and recognition, I think. Is, is another one where I think that employers and HR people get this idea that like recognition means saying thank you, or publicly saying thank you, or like a gift card, an Amazon gift card. And those are, those are nice actually, and people like them, so I'm not against those. I don't know if this is true in Europe, in the US, there are recognition platforms so people can get public accolades in their company. But, you know, I think, I think employers would do well to be thinking about rewards and recognition in terms of advancement, in terms of developmental opportunities. And, you know, I can remember talking to an employee who was, like, so upset with his job, and and, and he actually, and he just sort of said, I didn't evoke this from him. He said, You know, he just didn't feel valued. He just didn't feel valued. And I said, Well, what would make you feel valued? And he said, I just want someone to listen to my ideas. And this was a guy who actually had a head full of ideas, some of them good, some of them bad, like all of us. But I guess maybe that was a piece that I didn't mention when it comes to autonomy, or I think I referred to it, you know, participation in the process being heard, I think, is almost an underpinning of a lot of a lot of this stuff, you know, including, like demands, demands resources and job design. It's one of the reasons why, for a lot of these things, I was thinking, Jane about, what you said earlier about simplistic versus shiny is it's very, I can't say like, here's, what like to you guys right now, what, here's what you should do about this job or that job. Because if I were to give, if I were to give any one answer that I thought could be applied in most situations, it would be ask the employees, you know, ask them what would work and and that's even true, and I do think that that's even true in a lot of cases for products and services too. Employees have an understanding of the products and services that their company markets, that sometimes the leaders don't,

you know, I think that something really, really that resonates with me in there that you were saying about the, you know, the seeing of people and having people be seen and heard, that such a validation in itself, and incorporating them into those processes does that, which, of course, has those, you know, that virtuous cycle of creating better products and creating through that recognition and all those, all those good things. So, um, I teach the advocate that, um, I wanted to ask a question, which is, when we think about this, we've talked about this topic pretty well. If it was somebody listening who thinks, Well, this is interesting working in an organization thinking, Well, I'd like to sort of advocate for my team. And I'd like to start that conversation about, what can we do to initiate some of these changes, be it to scheduling, be it to job description, be it to contribution or recognition, reward, how do you think they should frame that? Or what should somebody in a team say they're a manager to to start those conversations in the organization? How can they put forward a case for this internally?

Well, so you know, there are business cases to be to be made, which I think maybe is part of what goes to your question like, yeah. I'm thinking about a study that was done by Oxford's Business School. Said business school, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right, yeah. And they studied like they looked. They did a meta analysis 339 studies covering 230 organizations, 49 industries, and they were looking at like different aspects of well being and happiness, personal, emotional well being, job satisfaction, and they found that it leads to better business results based on turnover, productivity, profitability, customer loyalty. And they said, Yeah, you know, the evidence definitely says there's a business case for promoting the well being of workers. But you know, a lot of it will depend on on if a manager is going to his or her leader, you know what? What speaks to that person? Um, because, again, one of my learnings in my career is that, is that leaners aren't always very persuaded by evidence. I mean, I guess that's true of. A parent that appears to be traction a lot, actually, almost everyone, I guess, you know. And in fact, I think that there's some, I've said that to some psychologists, and they said, Well, no one's persuaded by evidence. We don't make decisions based on evidence. We make decisions based on emotion and and sometimes, in certain circles, we that we look for evidence to support that emotion, but, but I think that I could think about like an example where I went to a company. It was the chief operating officer of a large company, and he had, you know, 2000 employees doing sort of frontline, frontline work. It was sort of call center ish, and we had done an assessment and found that employees in that leader's division had much, much higher level, self reported levels of stress than employees in any other division. And it stood out in a way that, like I sort of felt like, well, there's no denying this. I mean, employees in the jobs you oversee, have like 33% more stress than others. And the 33% I don't really remember the exact number, and I remember him saying to me, and I'll never forget he said, Well, I think that stress is really in, you know, the hands of the individual, and what they do with it, which is a very, very popular notion, really sort of a hot notion, that has sold a lot of self help books, but I don't really think it's true, and he wasn't that concerned. And it was actually maybe probably took about three years to see a very high level of disability people going out on disability for mental health related issues in this person's organization, and a very high level of turnover. I mean, it was well over 20% and at that point, there was this grand awakening about about stress, because they could see the effect it was having on the business. It was very measurable. So, I mean, I do think, you know, I mean, businesses are motivated by profit, and I think that

it's, I do think it's generally, as you get higher in the organization, it's important to be able to make that case as best you can. And sometimes that is only something you could say based on theory and, like I said, evidence, but sometimes you actually have the data and that sometimes means looking for it, including things like turnover and I mean customer loyalty, if you can measure that. I mean, there's a lot to be told in the data, and a lot of I think good cases for well being that could be found in data. I think that relying on goodwill will only work in a very few organizations.

Yeah, I think, I think that makes total sense. And I think I always, I always used to talk, when I was working with my teams about like they were going in to try and convince someone of anything. I said, you have to go at it both. Both ways, right? You always have to build your case from both an emotional and a factor of perspective, depending on who's sitting. I think that's a useful skill. I guess. I just wanted to come back to something that you mentioned earlier, that I think is a really interesting question you mentioned, and it's all kind of linked together. But the first thing I wanted to pick up on is you mentioned early on about autonomy, control, predictability of hours, scheduling, and one of the places that we see people able to control that much more and have much more ability to shape their own timescales is in self managed teams, which I don't know if you've seen any of what's going on in healthcare, in in Europe, there's some, some models of it, and I know that there's kind of a trend, if you like, coming around. And I'm not sure how I feel about some of the research that's coming out of it. Some of it's really helpful. Maybe some of it's a little bit more anecdotal. But I wondered if that's something that you think can help organizations think about and conceive of improved well being. Or do you think that? Do you think there's not enough for us to sort of know about yet to see if that might help?

Yeah, you know, honestly, Jane, it's not enough of something that I know enough about. Um, I, you know, I've heard of self managed teams. It's in the job design literature. But I haven't, I don't, I haven't seen it. I'm not that familiar with the literature and and I haven't seen it in action. I mean, you know, generally, as you could tell, I mean, I think autonomy is really important now, to what extent are, is there autonomy versus compromise in a self managed team? I don't know. I mean, it may. Is there do, if you don't mind, do you have anything else maybe that, can you, like, educate me a little bit regarding your

thoughts? Yeah, so, I mean, I absolutely don't know a lot about it from a lived experience, like I haven't spent, I haven't spent time in self management teams a lot, but I I'm interested in the research because I think, I think it's particularly with the workers. I mean, you mentioned blue collar. I was thinking very much about sort of technical experts. So there's something called the Burt model, which is the nursing and healthcare model in the Scandinavian, one of the Scandic countries. And it's where sort of small groups of community nurses self organize and have total control over their own schedules and the way that they do the work and and I just, yeah, I understand you can't lift a model like that for a job that is so community focused, involves travel, involves, you know, fitting around consumers, or what would be patients in this case. But I just, I wonder, how much if, if organizations were to challenge themselves a bit more and say, How can we shape an environment for some of our workers, particularly, you know, when we talk about sort of blue collar workers, manufacturing workers, workers that have got sort of, you know, that kind of environment, if we allowed them some control of how to organize themselves within limits, whether we would see that being something that could both increase productivity, but also, you know, make help help with some of the significant well being issues. And I don't know the answer

I'm gonna jump in with. I'm gonna jump in with a little bit of sort of thinking on this as well. Not so much thinking, but I guess, you know, telling a story a little bit. I do have a friend who works for a large pharmaceutical company that has started to fairly progressively, I believe, move towards a very self managed model. And this person works in sales, particular oncology drug sales, and they now are in a situation where they can basically choose their job in theory. So a new product owner, roughly, will be working on a new thing, and at the start of that process, people say, Well, I want to go and do that now. And, you know, again, in theory, they are very self directed in terms of their specialisms and where they use their skills in the organization. And they are fluid, and they're running effectively, you know, a cube, not quite a matrix, but a cube type model, where they've got a geographical focus, they've got a product focus, and they've got a specialist focus, sorry, a functional focus, and they should be able to move within that cube and self direct the areas of interest to them. Now my sense is that in theory, this is practice. Sorry, in theory, this is fantastic, but in practice, there are still some teething problems about being let go. So while you might want that fluidity and that creation and shaping of your own space, the organization still has friction and rigidity that makes it hard for people to let go. And I think my sense is that there are, there are at the minute, negative aspects or challenges in terms of job satisfaction based on that friction that exists. But theoretically, it sounds really interesting to me. So anyway, I was just talking about n, is my two cents worth on the subject?

Yeah, yeah. Well, it was interesting. I mean, I You had me thinking now. I mean, I think I've seen variations of that, maybe that, maybe that's not even a fair characterization, but that might give me some thoughts about it. Now you've probably, and I'm sure you both know more about this than I do, but there was a whole idea. There was the whole holacracy thing that was implemented at Zappos a few years ago. Did you guys ever do an episode about holacracy? Yeah, we

spoke to one of the one of the partners at holacracy, one at some point, but please, well, you know,

I don't want to, I don't. I'm glad you told me you know your connection, but I would just say that I think in the early years of Zappos, I know that it, it led to a deterioration of of employee morale,

an increased incidence of employee stress. And I mean, I don't know to what extent that parallels self man. Inch teams, but it's certainly the absence of a hierarchy, or a different look at a hierarchy. And the only reason I feel like I can say that about Zappos is because it's because they presented it at a conference, you know, they talked about about that and, you know, and you both, you both know so much about this stuff. I don't know if you've ever heard of health health circles, which was, it was a German concept. Grew up in Germany in the late 1990s early 2000s and what that had to do with was it was sort of like quality circles, where employees would go through structured workshops and they would address these factors that we've been talking about. Um, so they were facilitated. And, you know, the thing things like, you know, uh, well, they weren't really looking at at demands and resources yet, but autonomy, job demands, autonomy, social support, rewards, recognition, participation and and they got some education on those things and how that affected Health. And they put ideas forward. And there was quite a bit of research showing positive results on that for business and for and certain for health. And I saw one published model there was, there was a healthcare organization in Canada that did that and got really good results, and made a lot of it was mostly health circles conducted with nurses and medical technicians, and that led to a lot of improvements in efficiency, because they did see inefficiencies. There was bullying taking place from physicians and transportation problems, communication problems, and they addressed all that had very nicely documented improvements in in mental health, better patient satisfaction scores, so on and so forth. So that is not a self directed team, but, but, you know, I wonder if that's maybe somewhere in between, where you're just,

you know, you're where the team is. To use the word you use earlier, James empowered to to look at the structure and the health and and to make changes, because that has to be, that has to be part of it. The last thing you want to do is collect feedback and not do anything with it. So I wonder if that might be a halfway meeting. I'm always you know, regarding things that see a lot of approaches, that see a lot of success in Scandinavian countries. You know, I was, I was once presenting on on some of this, like demand, control, social support stuff, at a conference, and I was talking about how much the research had been spearheaded in Scandinavian countries. I'd never been to a Scandinavian country, but that didn't stop me from talking about how great they were, and, and, and a very, a very, a researcher, who was is very well known in the United States, raised his hand at the end, and he said, Well, Bob, you know, Scandinavian countries have much greater commitment, and it's and to collective consciousness. They they are much more collective societies. So the types of things you're saying fit in more naturally. And I've thought about that a lot. I mean, I've even thought about it in relation to things going on in the world outside of work, because there's always this. There's, I think, since then, really increased interest in Scandinavian approaches. But one of the questions I always ask myself, is like, you know, especially you know, in the United States, like we're nothing like Scandinavian countries. You know, we really don't believe in collectivism. We believe in individualism. You know, every man for himself, unfortunately, and so you know what works one place won't necessarily work someplace else.

Yeah, it's really interesting, actually, because they're trying to implement that model from the one I was referring to in a part of England at the moment, down south. And so I'm watching with bated breath to see how the societal, sort of very different approach might affect it. I guess Bob, I've just got, I know we're. We have time. And any second now, James is going to jump in and tell me we're out of time. So I just want to ask one question before he does, which is, have you got any favorite examples of organizations who have done this well done? You know, who are taking a really great approach towards employee well being, and whether you've got either calling out those organizations or just examples of what they've done that you think are really great examples of stuff they've done.

Sure, you know, the the not a lot, but one of the companies that stands out to me is a company called base camp, founded in the CEO's name is Jason freed, and I can call him out because, because they've been out there in public, and in fact, their employee handbook is on the web, and I would encourage anyone to look at it. And you know, their entire culture is different. They're very autonomous. They are pretty serious about whenever possible, limiting themselves to a 40 hour work week, 32 hours in the summer. And one of the things they believe is that keeping their hours at work limited forces them to prioritize the work that really matters. And their handbook says, I have a quote, a healthy amount of sleep in a rich and rewarding life outside of work should not be squandered for a few more hours at work. They've got, they offer sabbaticals, profit sharing and and they believe, you know, they'll, they'll talk about, sort of growing slowly. And their belief is say no to meetings. I mean, I don't necessarily think that's universally a good thing, but, but with base camp, what I would what really captures my imagination about them is they don't really talk about, well being that much, or any of these things that we've discussed. They give allowances for for wellness related things, and they give allowances for mental health and for share of a farm share. But what I think they get right is they just understand the connection between employee well being and treating employees well and allowing them autonomy and respecting them, and productivity and results and and health. They get how all those things connect, and they just do it. They do it more than they talk about it. Yeah, that's

brilliant. And I'm really glad you brought up Basecamp, because though we've not spoken to anybody in Basecamp, we've spoken to people in other organizations that are aiming to be similar to Basecamp. So specifically, we've spoken to the CTO of an organization called duist about their culture, and they're, you know, a fully remote software organization. And they, in some ways, look to emulate the approach for Basecamp pass. And they talk about their approach to organizations as being calm organizations so they want to be asynchronous. They want to be fully remote. They want to focus on those factors. They want to have reasonable working hours and and they seem to be thriving in that space. One thing they did say is they're they're waiting for a global winner when it comes to calm organizations. They're waiting for, you know, that real breakthrough organization, to be that ongoing champion of his way of working, which they fully believe in. So it's excellent. You brought up Basecamp anyway. I am afraid that we are pretty much out of time just before we finish up. Would you be able to let the listeners know how they can learn more about you and the work that you were working on at the minute, or get in touch, or anything else?

Absolutely, my website, again, is josito.com that's J, O, Z, i, t, o.com I can be reached there, and the contact form comes straight to me, and also anyone can reach me via LinkedIn, and I'm happy to chat with anyone about support that they are looking for in their organization, around employee well being, whether it's Health Promotion or more of an organizational effectiveness approach, content creation, Mental Health First Aid, we didn't really talk too much about mental health, even though that's that's really what's exploding right now, mental health and approaches to it and or if anyone just sort of has any questions about anything we talked about, you know, I would Be more than happy to to chat with them. Brilliant.

Okay, well, thanks, Bob. It's just time for us to wrap up. So last thing for me, it's just a really big thank you. I really enjoyed that conversation. We spanned a wide range of really interesting and important things, so I really appreciate it. So thank you. Thank you, James and Jane, it's been a pleasure. You.

Okay, so you are back in the room with us. That was our conversation with Bob, all about workplace well being and employee well being and wellness and all those good things that shape our experiences and help define how we experience the workplace. Um, Jane, did anything stand out for you in that conversation that you'd like to reflect on?

Yeah, I think, I think, um, couple of things stood out, and they're kind of connected. So as you may know, and as the listeners may know, I'm a big fan of the job demands resources model. So the idea that by by keeping an employee in balance, the best way to do it is to make sure that they as an individual, can balance the demands of the roles and their experience with the resources that are provided to them to draw from. And I really like that, but I also it got me thinking about how the political situation in different countries and what is paid for affects what organizations see as the resources they're able to give them so and what I mean specifically about that is the idea that in the US, a lot of employees, employers provide health care, and that would be one of the resources that would allow for well being to be focused on. And I guess because we have an NHS here in the UK, I just has got me thinking about what the difference that means, and whether organizations still see that as as resources that they can add to improve on in order to support an employee. And I got me thinking, I guess there's no more.

Yeah, the JDR pops up a lot, doesn't it? And it's another great podcast where that theory and the concepts behind it are really well brought to life by the guest. I enjoyed a lot of our conversation that we had. One of the things that stood out for me was kind of a journey to do with employee well being, that that Bob described, you know, starting with his history working in effectively, employee health and physical well being, and how that gradually is broadened out to become more than just our physical well being, but, you know, increasingly encompassing our mental well being and our more holistic well being. And I really like that journey and his description of how he thinks different countries are in different stages of that journey. So that was a nice bit of history, but like you got me thinking about that, so that was a big takeaway for me. So yeah, so let's end that show there. So that was fantastic. Thank you very much for listening to us, and it is goodbye for me, and it's goodbye from me. Hi everyone. This is James. Thank you very much for listening to that podcast, and please do share it and review it if you enjoyed it. And don't forget you can learn more about our coaching, workshops, courses and development programs on our website, that's www, dot World of work.io, again, www, dot World of work.io, you