Creating a Well-Being Culture with Dr. Richard Safeer
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“By just sharing your wellbeing practice, you serve as a role model, and that's really important because you know what the boss says and what the boss does greatly impacts what the team does.”
— Dr. Richard Safeer
Embracing Well-Being& Leadership's Role in Well-being
Wellbeing is a state of mind, body, soul, and spirit that changes throughout our lifetime and day.
Leaders should care about employee wellbeing because it impacts the success of the organization and their own wellbeing.
Unwellness is contagious, and being around stressed or unhealthy individuals can affect leaders' own wellbeing.
A wellbeing culture in the workplace consists of shared behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes that prioritize employee wellbeing.
Establishing New Norms
Norms are expected behaviors in a group, and they can be workplace-wide or team-based.
Leaders can shape norms by initiating conversations and creating a safe space for open discussions.
It's important to listen, show vulnerability, and build trust with the team before discussing norms.
Implementing culture connection points, creating a pledge, and measuring progress are important steps in transitioning to healthier norms.
Social Climate
Social climate refers to how individuals feel and interact with their coworkers.
It can be shaped intentionally by creating a sense of belonging and community.
Building relationships and getting to know each other as individuals is crucial for a positive social climate.
The Surgeon General's report highlights the issue of loneliness in the workplace.
In hybrid or remote work environments, it's important to find ways to facilitate informal interactions and maintain a social climate, such as scheduled online coffee breaks or celebrations.
Culture Connection
Culture connection points are tools that can be used to encourage healthier choices and positive thinking.
Marketing communications, such as posters or campaigns, are commonly used culture connection points, but their effectiveness may vary.
Multiple culture connection points should be used together to shape a desired norm.
Examples of culture connection points include incentives, policies, symbols, and communication platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams.
Shared Values
Shared values refer to the values that are mutually held by both the executive team and the general employee population.
Companies often have values, but they may not necessarily be shared values.
Shared values that support health and wellbeing are important for employee satisfaction and retention.
Crafting core values should include consideration for the health and wellness of employees, rather than solely focusing on profitability or external marketing.
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Mike:
Dr. Safeer is the Chief Medical Director of Employee Health and Wellbeing at Johns Hopkins Medicine. He's also the author of a Cure for the Common Company, a Wellbeing Prescription for a happier, healthier, and more resilient workforce.
He's an internationally recognized expert and keynote speaker on employee health. And wellbeing. Really excited to have Rich with us. In fact, I think trying to remember Rich, I think we met because you heard me on another podcast and we
Richard: That's right
Mike: got in touch. Is that right? Am I remembering that right?
Richard: That is right. I heard you being interviewed on another podcast and then I went and listened to your podcast and I'm like, I gotta meet Mike Goldman.
Mike: That's why you know, to me, two biggest benefits of podcasting, number one is all the stuff I learned that I could steal from my guests and then go use with my clients. Although I heard something interesting a speaker said to me, if you steal from one person, that's plagiarism. If you steal from 10 people, that's research.
Richard: Very good.
Mike: So steal all the time. I just try to steal from 10 people. But best part about podcasting is all the great stuff I learned from my guests. Second best thing is the networking. And I I wanna start with kind of a basic background question, which is as a doctor, why you decide, and when did you decide to focus on employee wellbeing versus maybe some of the more typical routes?
Richard: I've got so many different answers for that, Mike, but I'm gonna give you an answer I've never shared on any other podcasts. When I was in middle school, my father worked for a industrial company. They produced different plastics and they had a poster contest.
It was a employee safety poster contest, and my posterwhich had to do with with wearing safety glasses to protect the eyes of the workers. I won first place. And so part of me thinks that early artistic success in my childhood had something to do with where I am today.
Now, the more likely answer is that in college when I studied nutrition, I learned not just that apples were healthier than donuts. But that food and the way we eat is influenced by a much bigger system around us, our communities, the people we live with. And really that parlays nicely into the fact that we spend most of our waking hours, in the workplace.
And so after being in practice, family medicine for two years and realizing that my patients were coming to me from work and running back to work, I was like, I'm in the wrong place. I should be working inside a company where they're spending the whole day, not just 15 minutes in the doctor's office.
Mike: So it's not home that's making us sick, it's work that's making us sick.
Richard: I will tell you that most people say that their job is a number one stressor in their life, which is heartwarming. At least they're not saying their wife or their kids.
Mike: Yeah. So, so what does, again, kind of starting with the basics, when we talk about employee wellbeing and you talk about a wellbeing culture at work, what do we mean by that? What does wellbeing mean?
Richard: Wellbeing is a journey and everybody's wellbeing can be defined individually, but wellbeing is a state, it's a state of mind, body, soul, spirit, however you wanna define it. And our wellbeing changes throughout our lifetime, throughout our day even. I'm not giving you the Webster's dictionary answer. I'm giving you the much more philosophical perspective of wellbeing.
Mike: And, why as leaders, right? The focus of this show is better leadership teams.
So that's the lens we're gonna take. Why do we care about that, isn't that that's our employees jobs to make sure they're healthy and mentally, physically, spiritually, they're, isn't that their jobs? Why as leaders, should we care about that?
Richard: I think historically, yes, that's what leaders used to think, and then we all started to appreciate that, the health and wellbeing of the people we work with is fundamental to the success of the organization. It's actually also fundamental to our own wellbeing. Mike, if you go surround yourself with a bunch of unwell people, guess what's gonna happen.
You are gonna absorb some unwellness, and you too will soon be not feeling at your best. So, it's in leader's best interests for their own wellbeing as well as the success of their company to see their employees be happy, healthy, and more resilient.
Mike: Unwellness is contagious.
Richard: Thank you for playing with me on that word it is. Now, if you've ever been around someone who is stressed, you can feel that stress. And if you've ever been around someone who's angry, you're not around them very long. You find a way to move away from that person. It is the way we connect as humans.
Mike: Yeah, I what's important I'm sure we'll talk a lot on the show about as leaders what we do to create that culture of wellbeing and we'll get down to some real specifics
Richard: Yeah
Mike: and pragmatic answers. But my thought, I wanna see Rich, if you agree, is that that as a leader, gotta start with you. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah,
Richard: I was just gonna ask, we overlap, Mike in the context that, my guess is that, in your role as a leadership coach, you are helping your clients with many of the skills that when they perfect is going to positively impact. Not only their success as a leader in the context of getting the job done, but they're gonna be better leaders for the employees to be around, which is gonna help their health and wellbeing. That's where our world's, intersect, Mike
Mike: Absolutely, and I will tell you I have never seen a leader who is stressed out, burnt out, eating horribly, not exercising, biting everybody's head off. Yeah. Because they're not gonna do that and somehow be a great leader, they're not gonna do that and be a model for others. So I wanna make sure, just as we have this conversation, let's take it from two standpoints. How do we as leaders stay healthy
Richard: Yeah
Mike: ourselves and then how do we make sure we are providing, we're building the right culture, building the right environment. So our team is that way. But before we get into the specifics, and I wanna get into specifics. As leaders,a lot of us us tend to think in dollars and cents and ROI, is there a cost of an unhealthy workplace workplace?
Richard: Absolutely. We've just been talking about how leaders can impact. Let's say. Let's just stick with mental health. We know that leaders can impact our physical health as well. But if we're around a leader who's grumpy, stressed, angry, and it causes us to internalize some of those emotions, then we may not sleep well that night.
And because we're not sleeping well that night, the next day we're at bigger risk for a car accident, most employers in the US are paying for the health insurance, the disability insurance, the worker's compensation insurance, for their workforce. So there is absolutely a connection between leadership behavior and the cost of the health and wellbeing of the workforce.
Mike: Yeah. And some of it is that cost of the health insurance and all that. And some of it's the cost of initiatives not getting done on time or done well
Richard: Yeah
Mike: and either because people are out or because people are stressed, which makes them less productive or less creative. Yeah, there's absolutely a cost. Understanding what wellbeing is.
So when you talk about in your book, the idea of of a wellbeing culture. What is that we know what wellbeing is. What's a a wellbeing culture?
Richard: Yeah, culture is the shared behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes of a group of people. So in the workplace, in the context of wellbeing, a wellbeing culture is the shared behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes of the workforce around wellbeing. And so there are some companies that embrace wellbeing and the way they go through the day, the way they make their decisions. The way they treat each other is all in the context of what's gonna be good for each other's wellbeing. In other companies, it's just not even part of their dialogue. It's not even part of their thought process. And as a result, they've really never taken the time to make those fundamental changes that help support a wellbeing culture in the workplace.
Mike: So what are some of those? and I'm sure we can't talk about all of them. But we'll talk about a number of them. What are some of the changes we could make to create that culture?
Richard: I'd like to think of it in six building blocks, and so the building blocks aren't a specific change, but the building blocks are a collection of changes. And, for the sake of, your work leadership engagement is one of those building blocks. Now, even though leaders are responsible for the other five building blocks as well, there are some specific things that leaders can do to support a wellbeing culture on their teams and in their workplace.
And so one of 'em we've already talked about, and that's practicing self-care. Because if the leader's not we talked about the emotional state that they could be, coming to work with, but let's talk about their physical state. If leaders aren't exercising and they're not eating well, they're not gonna be able to do their best work. And part of their work is being a good leader. It's very cyclical. It's all connected.
Mike: So first one is leadership engagement, self-care. As part of that, let's go through the other five fairly quickly. Yeah And then maybe we can dive into some of them. What's number two?
Richard: So I'm gonna give you all six. They're not in any particular order. I don't want our listeners to think that one's more important than the
other but since the leaders, and the listeners, excuse me, on this podcast very well may be leaders. I brought that one up first. The second is peer support. The third is norms. Those are the expected behaviors of a group of people. The fourth is social climate, the fifth culture connection points, and the sixth shared values.
Mike: Oh, got
Self-care is that what leadership engagement is? Is it self-care or is it about more than just self-care?
Richard: No, it's about more than self-care. I can give you a couple other examples. Self-care is great and it's even better when you use it to role model. So if I, meditate Mike at work because it helps lower my stress and I do that in a closet with the door shut, that's fine. However, that's not really optimizing the opportunity to role model stress reduction.
And I'm not suggesting leaders go get into a lotus position in the middle of the hallway, but if you do meditate in your office, maybe leave the door open. Or the blinds open, if you have a glass window, or maybe you mention it in the team meeting that, I was really stressed this morning and I meditated and it really helped me a lot.
It's not like you're beating your team over the head. You must meditate, but by just sharing your wellbeing practice, you serve as a role model, and that's really important because you know what the boss says and what the boss does greatly impacts what the team does.
Mike: Love that and I automatically think of the other side, you could be a negative role model. And one of the things I see is a leader that is sending and answering emails at midnight.
Richard: Absolutely. That's definitely a problem in a lot of workplaces, and I use that example a lot myself and what's not gonna work is a leader who says, hey, I really need you to unplug at five o'clock cause I need you to spend time with your family and coming well rested. And then the leader goes and send emails that night.
I heard some crazy statistic, Mike, about the percentage of employees who check, not only check their emails in the evening, but who actually checked their email in the middle of the night. That's really some sickness almost about our inability to separate our work and our home life.
Mike: Yeah. And I actually have, this is a little bit of a cheat, but I had a client who was worried that she wanted to stop sending emails late at night. Yeah and all that stuff
Richard: Yeah
Mike: but she did have a tendency to have ideas in the evening. And she wanted to get those ideas out. So she would actually create the email.
Richard: Yeah.
Mike: But schedule it to be sent at 9:15 the next morning.
Richard: You know what? That's great. And I love that strategy because just because she has the problem doesn't mean she should make it other people's problems. Some people put pad of paper on their nightstand and just scribble it down with a pen or pencil during the night, whatever it takes. But just recognize.
That you are struggling with your own wellbeing. Don't make it worse by creating wellbeing problems for other people.
Mike: Love it. Let's move on to actually, another question. Jumped in my head that I think's an important one. I was gonna move on to peer support, but let's stick to leadership engagement for a minute. So I was in a meeting this morning with a group of CEOs, and part of what we were talking about is vulnerability. The idea as a leader, it's so easy to put our superhero cape on. Yeah. And we're Perfect. We have no problems. And the problem with that is now your the team thinks they need to be perfect too, there's no psychological safety there and things break down. So when it comes to this, think it's an interesting may, maybe it's a conflict, maybe it's not , well when you talk about modeling healthy behaviors, but if you as a leader are feeling stressed or overwhelmed or burnt out, should you share that with your team? Should you not share that with your team, Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Richard: So I do include, vulnerability and trust as leadership engagement responsibilities. So Mike, you and I are lockstep together. And you remember that example of the leader who was doing, meditation in the closet?
Mike: Yeah.
Richard: I also followed it up with, if they're not seeing you meditate, tell 'em at the meeting that, hey, I was really stressed this morning.
I'm a big believer of vulnerability so much I share with the world. My problem with chocolate addiction in my book, A Cure for the Common Company. Because you know what when you all see these wellbeing people on LinkedIn or wherever they are, guess what? They have challenges too. They may not be willing to show them, but everybody's human.
We all put one leg of our pants on at a time. And if you wanna be a great leader, you need to show that that you're human
Mike: Hey if I knew you had a chocolate addiction,
I'm not sure I would've invited you on the show, but I'm gonna keep this going anyway.
because I think it's adding value.go. So number one was leadership engagement. Number two is peer support. Talk about that.
Richard: So peer support is how we are either helped or harmed by the people that we spend most of our time with. And in the workplace, those are our coworkers. So now if you're leading a team, the people you lead, they're not your peers. Your peers are the people who report to the same, institutional leader and peer support starts at a very young age, Mike, when we're kids, our habits and our way of thinking is influenced by our friends. And so if our friends are going out eat pizza and we go out with them, guess what we're eating. We're eating pizza. And if you play um outside , uh kick the can. This is now aging me.
Mike: Wow You're old. as old as I am.
Richard: Yeah, kick the can. That's right. It's the mere cost of an empty can. Then that's what you did. You grew up and knowing that, we're gonna run and we're gonna play out in nature. Now kids spend a lot of time on their cell phones, and this is what their peers do.
So in the workplace, we can be very intentional to shape opportunities so that peers can be helping each other's health and wellbeing and not harming each other's health and wellbeing. So Mike, when companies have steps, challenges, they can design them. So they do that in teams, not as individuals. Let's help each other get up from our desks and get some walking in during the day.
Mike: Love it. Let's go to number three, you said is norms.
Richard: Yeah. So norms are the expected behaviors of a group of people. And there could be workplace wide norms. Like in company x, everybody shuts their computer down at noon, gets up and eats lunch outside together at picnic benches. Or norms can be individual team based, and this is more likely some teams take a lunch break, some teams work through lunch break, and you pick the behavior.
There's usually a consensus with a team, so most people on the team are not emailing at night. It is is against the norm to be sending emails outside of work hours. Now, Mike, you may be caught up in norms in your home. Okay. If most people at your home are watching TV after dinner, then guess what you're probably doing.
But if most people after dinner are gonna walk the dog, it is easier to go with them. So norms, don't have to be accepted. Leaders can help shape the norms on their teams and across their organization.
Mike: So how might a a leader do that? Is it go and have a meeting with their teams and say, hey let's create some norms. What do you think the next step a leader can take to start identifying what those norms should be?
Richard: Right, So I do lead a workshop on this actually, and there's some prerequisites, for example, you have to have already mastered being a good listener. Showing vulnerability and have created trust on your team. So Mike, this is actually a budding, relationship between you and I, cause I'm sure those are things that you're working on with the executives that you coach, and then you get to the point where you're capable of.
Initiating that conversation with your team. So when you go into that conversation, you should already have on your mind things that you've heard people on your team say, and things that you've observed. If you've observed people never taking a break at lunch, you know that could be a potential norm that you wanna change.
Or if you have heard people complain about working on the weekends, and again, go into the meeting with some ideas. But don't put your ideas on the table first. Ask the team, make sure that they feel like they're going to be heard, and have an open forum. Show some vulnerability because you want them to know that you are challenged as well, and you're gonna facilitate a discussion where ultimately you land on a norm that everyone desires. It's achievable because you don't wanna pick the hardest norm to start with, cause you want an easy first win.
And then you need to put in place what I call culture connection points. These are the nudges, the tools that make it easier to maintain. The desired norm. You mentioned a culture connection point, the physical email and using the timed release of the message.
That's a culture connection point that can keep people on task. And then you need to have a pledge. Everyone's gotta sign off on this, and then you're
gonna need to have a measurement to see if it's actually working. You know It's not as easy or quick as I just rattled off, but there is a process to going from one norm to a healthier norm.
Mike: Yeah, and one way to think about, it is I've gotta have this meeting to figure out what all of our norms are. That might seem overwhelming and my guess is may or may not do a great job of it. If it's this
Richard: Yeah.
Mike: What I've seen is, it can be more specific than that. It could be, let's create some norms around after hours email. Yep. Let's create a norm around how we're gonna enter into a debate during a meeting and the level of respect we have for each other in that debate.
Let's create a norm around work over the weekends, or I think there could be different situations. That may right for creating norms versus thinking, I've gotta have this meeting and create all the norms for my team which is probably not realistic.
Richard: No. Mike, tell me what do you think is an average expectation for a leader to change or transform as you go through coaching them? Is it a week? Is it a year or is somewhere in between?
Mike: Do you wanna give me a more specific question or do you want me to answer it big picture? Well
Richard: I think it speaks to the idea that different norms will take a different amount of time, but to your point you don't wanna go into a meeting thinking I'm gonna solve all the norms today. Culture building on teams takes a long time and I would hardly believe it would take only a week and we're talking at least a couple of months and probably safely within a year. And again I would really just choose one to start with and one that you think is achievable because you want to build the confidence with the team that this can actually work.
Mike: Yeah I would also say that if you are a VP of sales or whoever you are listening. Yes do this for your team, but I'm a big believer, Rich, that culture cascades top down, Mm-hmm.
It's not bottoms up. So that, if you are not modeling, these
Norms, values all the, if you are not modeling a healthy culture as an executive team, it's not getting better. As you cascade down, it's getting worse. So if you are someone who is on that executive team and you wanna do some of this with your team, absolutely go do that. But also look around to your peers and to the CEO and do these things as an executive team because there's a much better chance you're all then gonna model that behavior and cascade it down.
Richard: That's gonna make it much easier for you as an individual leader when you know your peers are doing it as well.
Mike: Excellent. So we talked about leadership engagement. We've talked about peer support, norms and then, the fourth is social climate.
Richard: You write like a doctor Mike.
Mike: I write worse I write like a three-year-old doctor, so yes. So you're a pediatrician then
Richard: So social climate. Social climate is the way we feel with the people that we work with the people on our team. So these could be the people that you feel like you belong like like you're part of the club, the people that you know you can turn to when you're having a really bad day.
Or these could be the people that you feel like you're left out, like you don't fit in, and this is not the group that you would ever turn to if you're having a struggle at home or something else outside of work. And we can intentionally shape the social climate on our teams by focusing on the sense of community, using positive outlook and creating shared goals so that we're all rolling in the same direction.
Mike: So what would be in addition to shared goals would be another example of an action someone can take to improve that or create that social climate.
Richard: Yeah. This is gonna sound old school. People don't really know each other as a individual. Their life outside of work the way they might have a decade ago. We've gotten caught up in the fast paced, work world and the, use of electronics that we haven't slowed down. The water cooler break has certainly gone away for remote workers.
And so just being able to know an individual for who they live with, whether they have pets. Again, this is not rocket science, but it's something that we've overlooked and as a result, I'm not sure how many of your listeners realize this. But the Surgeon General just put out a report on The Loneliness Pandemic.
We don't know each other. We are like two ships that pass in the night working on the same team. So building that sense of community may sound very simple, but it's very powerful once you've achieved that state,
Mike: That phrase is stick with me, The Loneliness Pandemic. And it's such a, it's a much tougher challenge given that most teams I work with these days not all, but most, are either hybrid or or fully remote. Some are totally back together these days days, but many are and remote and I think to your point, Rich, what people miss is when you build relationships sometimesit's walking down the the hallway the way to the meeting. It's the conversation after the meeting. I was talking with a client last month and they happened to have a gentleman on the team who was in his seventies and close to retirement. And for many years he was, if you wanted to know the history of the company, this the guy you talked to.
And the conversations around the quote on quote water cooler with this gentleman were some of the most rewarding conversations that would have. Now, they're hybrid, people don't out of their way to call this guy to have the conversations because you just happened be, Walking down the hallway or you happen to be at the vending machine or in the dining area and you'd have these conversations and in a remote environment, in a hybrid environment. We miss that.
So are there things you've seen that maybe you've done at Johns Hopkins or you've seen in other organizations to force, sounds like a bad word, but I'm gonna use it anyway, given that those interactions don't happen as naturally as they used to. What can What could companies do to make sure they happen so you're building that social climate?
Richard: Yeah. I mean some companies, I don't know if this feels forced or not, cause this is the holder of the individual, but scheduled coffee breaks online, these celebrations online. Personally, that wouldn't meet my wellbeing needs, maybe it works for some people. I think that, this is a very tough topic for leaders and employees to navigate.
But I do think it needs to be navigated together. I don't think either one person or the other wins and having, a day of the week where people go in and so they're all working in the same physical space. Is really good for our wellbeing and it's good for collaboration and creativity.
It will really help the team's effectiveness overall, obviously that's a little bit more difficult if you've got teams working remotely from around the country and not remotely in the same community. But I would encourage, leaders think creatively for how the teams can be physically together at least part of the week or part of the month, because whether we realize it or not, we are not the same people when we're disconnected or not socially connected to the people we work with. And there's a loss. The screen is a
Mike: loss. Yeah, and this, what I'm about to say is certainly not enough, but I just had a a conversation with a client this morning who went remote when Covid happened.
Richard: Yeah.
Mike: And they have stayed remote. decided they didn't need their office anymore, they stayed remote and they've been talking for a while and haven't done it and finally did it about doing company retreat, now this is a small company with.
With about a dozen employees. So this is not A big group.
Richard: Yeah
Yeah
Mike: but they did a retreat where they spent a couple days together. It was a little bit of of work. And more fun and just
Richard: Yeah
Mike: Getting to know each other and I could not get the CEO to stop talking about what an amazing time they had, and even the work discussion when they said, let's spend a a little time solving some issues we've got, talking about some opportunities have at work. Said it was the best conversations they've ever had because they were just in a different environment and it happened in between doing some social things and getting to know each other. Now I don't think having a once a retreat
Richard: Yeah
Mike: solves the problem of social climate but it is something to think about. These guys just could not stop gushing about how powerful it was. So that's something to think about.
Richard: No, that's good. And I think that some brainstorming is in order. Let's figure out, maybe it's not a two day retreat, but it's gotta be something.
Mike: Yeah. Okay, so the next one, number is culture connection points. Say more about what you mean by that and give us some examples.
Richard: These are the tools that we can deploy to help nudge our employees towards healthier choices and more positive thinking. And so you know one of the major or most often use culture connection points is marketing communications.
For example, the poster that says take a lunch break. It's very easy to put up a marketing communications campaign, but it's questionable how effective they are.
See you wanna use more than one culture connection point to help shape a norm. And, you know there's incentives, there's policies, there's symbols. So if you walk up to a vending machine and you see a green leaf on one of the sleeves, you know that's the healthiest choice in the machine and make it really easy.
We can use, financial incentives. Maybe you make the fruit less expensive than the candy bars. So there's about a dozen of these, Mike. And they're really helpful because you can't just all of a sudden say, hey, we're all gonna log off our emails at five o'clock. We gotta have a strategy in place.
And it can't just be, a poster that says, people who don't look at email at night sleep better. That's true, but that's not enough to change the way we do business.
Mike: One example might be, so one, one of, a number of my clients use Slack and, or or they might use Microsoft Teams and they've got different
Richard: Yeah.
Mike: Conversations going on or in it's different channels that they have. And some one of those channels are just for people to share what's going on in their personal life, some good news from their family, you know, things that aren't necessarily work related.
Yeah. But they are about building a stronger culture, of people who are getting, is that an example of a culture connection point?
Richard: That is a tool. I would count that under marketing communications and you know, leaders and companies can intentionally shape the the tools. So even within marketing communications, if we purposefully highlight stories, that we would like to see other have those same stories.
Then let's highlight the employees who are sharing, something about their break and how great it was that they turned off their computer and turned off their cell phones. They literally took a full break and that kinda reinforces the desired state. Slack and Teams, they have their purpose, and we can leverage those kind of communication vehicles to support messages that promote health and wellbeing as well.
Mike: Excellent. Let's go to the last of the six , building blocks, shared values.
Richard: Now, shared values are the values that are shared both between the executive team or the board of directors and the general employee population. Companies have values, but it's not necessarily, that those values are shared values. It's not uncommon for the board of directors or the C-Suite to create or collect or call the values that the whole company's gonna follow.
These are the guideposts that we use, which could be okay if those values support health and wellbeing, but often those values won't support health and wellbeing, and they could even go contrary to health and wellbeing. If the values all point towards profitability, that company's gonna have a problem.
They're gonna have a challenge because a lot of people recognize that if their values don't align with the company's values, they're out of there, they're gonna go find another company that does have a shared value. I'll tell you, even if the
values do align
with health and wellbeing, if the company doesn't live them, then it's a farce again. You're gonna lose your employees. They're gonna not feel well, and they're gonna look for a a job elsewhere.
Mike: A couple things there. Number one, you just taught me something really important that I, I haven't done I'm gonna start doing, cause one of the things I do with my clients, with a lot of of my clients, is I help craft what those core values are.
And one thing I've never done is said, when we're crafting these core values, how we make sure that something related to the health and wellness of our employees is somewhere in here?
here.
Richard: Yeah.
Mike: That's something I've never done and it's something I wanna start to do because I do think that's important. And and so that's number one. Number two is a lot of my clients, when they start thinking about their core values, they're thinking, what's gonna look nice on the website? Their core values, they think it as a marketing tool.
And not a marketing tool. If it it happen to look good on your website, go crazy, put it on your website but should be what's gonna build the right culture within your organization. And stuff may not look great on a website, but internally. But I think the idea of making sure that health and wellness is taken into account when you're crafting your core values is critical.
Because to say, these are our core values, and they're all related to profit, taking care of our clients, taking care of our shareholders, but nothing's about taking care of ourselves. I don't think it's okay. To just let's, It's not a core value, but let's tag something on at the end. I think that's a key point you're bringing
up.
Richard: You could ask your clients, Mike, as you're going through the exercise, just ask them how do you think this core value impacts the health and wellbeing of the people that you lead
the people
inside this company? They can answer it. It's almost like a barometer of whether or not we've gone too far off course.
If the answer yeah, you know what? I think accountability, if that's the core value that might be interpreted by our employees as being, we're gonna be scrutinizing you and if you screw up, you know you're gonna be penalized. That's not the message that they may be trying to send, but it could unfortunately be the outcome of a value that's accountability.
Mike: And I would say you there, there needs to be a balance, right? And Rich push back on this if you disagree. That if every core let, Let's say a company has five core values.
If every core value you look and go, we gotta make sure this core value is promoting health and wellness, then you could wind up with a bunch of feel good health and wellness core values, but maybe you're not gonna be a very profitable company and do the right things. so, and again, push back. But I would think, I'm going to think that when you look and, yeah, but I'm gonna finish the thought and then absolutely. Push back. Because my thought is when you look at those five core values, we have to make sure when we're looking at all five, that somehow we are promoting health and wellness within that. But maybe not every single one needs to promote health and wellness. But call BS on what I just said. Well,
Richard: FIrst I'd say, this is just one of six building blocks, so you know if this isn't optimized, you still have five other building that you could really hit out of the ballpark. But Mike, there's a bit of research around the impact of values on profitability of companies that you probably realize.
One book is called the Values Driven Organization by Richard Barrett, and it's quite the collection of how those companies that that have values, that rest on this concept of caring for employees, they're much more successful, much more profitable than the companies whose values do not resonate with this caring concept.
And so it's not one or the other. It's actually all together. And this is the same concept that some people feel like if we take breaks, it's going to impact our productivity. Guess what? That's just the opposite. When we take breaks, it allows us to reset our head. And when we come back, we're more creative. We're less likely to make mistakes, and we have the energy to be efficient the of the day instead of dragging making mistakes and being stale.
Mike: Got it so, so challenge is that balance should be throughout all of the core values, not, we have four core values that are focused on profitability and accountability, and we get the job done and then we have a fifth core value that says, and we promote health and wellness. It may not be the right way to think of it.
Richard: If the leadership team and the board of directors is doing great job of making sure that value is lived, that's great. But if it's not, the will realize this is window dressing. So I don't wanna overemphasize this area. There are five other building blocks, but, I also want leaders to a look at their values and don't sweep it under the rug.
Mike, if any time, any,three year period, at least during my lifetime, the last three years have shown that when employees don't feel well, when they don't feel cared for, they're gonna get up and they're gonna and there's gonna be a seismic shift and we just through think it's slowing down now but it doesn't mean it can't happen again
Mike: It's only slowing down because people are fearful about the economy
Richard: Yeah.
Mike: It's not slowing down because people's attitudes so I'm with you.
Richard:
Mike: So love this stuff. So we've got these six building blocks.
None of this is rocket science.
Richard: No
Mike: but. most companies are not doing these things or not doing them at the level they could. Yeah What have you seen are some of the big obstacles in the way to implementing this culture and these building
blocks?
Richard: Yeah,
Mike I have worked at several other places prior to coming to Hopkins. One of them was a Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliate where I worked with more than a hundred self-insured employers. And I have researched this, pretty thoroughly. One of the many challenges that companies face is that they outsource their strategy.
They get into a contract with a vendor and they think, you know what? The vendor's got it. And our responsibility is done cause we just wrote the check. Most leaders at all levels from the CEO to the frontline manager don't recognize the role that they play health and wellbeing of the people they lead. This is a huge problem and this is why I wrote the book. The book was actually written for leaders and and human resource professionals. Mike, I'm a scientist and I'm a physician, but I'm not talking to the doctors and scientists. I'm talking to you because we can only do so much and the leaders need to get on board and do their part.
Mike: And, related to that, one of the things I've seen is, a CEO or business owner who says, this is great. We're gonna do this, we gotta do some more health and wellness stuff. Then they at their VP of HR
Richard: Yes.
Mike: Go do this stuff. Yeah It's the job of the VP of HR. Now, I'm not saying VP of HR may have a pretty big role in something like this, but I'm interested in your feedback, Rich, the challenge I've seen is that the CEO says let's do it. I love it. That's an HR thing.
thing. But because the CEO believes it's an a HR thing and they're not living it. And back to our earlier examples, they're still doing emails at midnight. They're stressed and they're biting people's heads off. It doesn't work. It doesn't permeate
through the through the organization because they're not modeling it well.
Richard: There we go back to the leadership building
Self-care
role modeling. And you can't contract with the vendor and call yourself done. And you can't just point to one person like the chief human resource source and say, you got this. This is everybody's responsibility.
Could you imagine if you only made finance, responsible for the financial health of the organization? No. You make every part of the organization recognize you have a budget. You can't just go spending your money willy-nilly, and you do have to bring in income. It's not just the finance department's responsibility, it's everyone's responsibility.
Mike: Love it. Last question before we wrap up is there there anything in your role at Johns Hopkins, is there one particular tactic or strategy, one particular thing that you've implemented that you've seen significant results from that maybe we haven't talked about, probably fits within one of the six building blocks, but is there something specific you've implemented that you've gotten more value than maybe you even thought you would?
Richard: Yeah, and I don't know where to start. We've been very intentional and a lot of things have worked. We've really moved the ball in a great direction in the past decade since I've been there, so I'm gonna pick one, but, I don't know if this is the best
example, mike. A few years ago before the pandemic I started to make the case that we should bring in a certified mindfulness instructor to have inside as our own resource. And, it took a couple years and wouldn't you know it, six months into the pandemic, it was approved. And now, Jen is one of our best assets. We have, hundreds of people joining us on Mindful Monday at noon to do a group 15 minute mindfulness exercise.
And she is busy going from one team to another, including executive teams, at their retreats to help them better understand what mindfulness is, how to bring mindfulness into the workday, and doing a mindfulness exercise to make it real. And I'm very grateful both that the institution has supported us by giving us the budget.
For our certified mindfulness instructor, and I'm grateful for Jen's talents and I'm grateful for the openness that the leaders across the institution are given to invite us in to share this resource. And Mike, we've built it in to so many different parts of our strategy now.
We've build in breathing exercises into new employee orientation to new manager orientation. We have mindfulness messages on our employee ID badge, holder, on LED screens in our hospitals. We've really integrated it into the way that we're thinking and it's sticking and it's really helping.
Mike: I love that when you do something like that in new employee orientation, people are like, oh, I guess these guys are really serious. Yeah
Richard: We are serious. We try to infiltrate all aspects of our organization, and this is what it takes to build a wellbeing culture. You don't just make it, listen, our mindful Monday is super popular, but it's not just about those 15 minutes. It is woven through the way we do our work.
Mike: Beautiful, beautiful. Great stuff. I'm sure we could spend another hour talking about examples and maybe we'll do this again
one day but this was amazing. How could people find more about you, more about your book? Where should they
go?
go
Richard: and if you can spell my name, Richard Safeer. S A F as in Frank, E E r as in Richard. If you can spell Richardsafeer.com now that's a good place to start. you can check out A Cure for the Common Company, a Wellbeing Prescription for a Happier, Healthier, and More Resilient Workforce, wherever books are sold. And I'm on LinkedIn, Mike, and I've seen you there. I love watching some of your videos.
Mike: Excellent. Excellent. Well, Hey Rich, this was amazing. Thank you so much for doing this.
Richard: Thank you. I hope to work together again.