Truth, Lies & Work

Episode 49 · 27 July 2023 · 1:21:26

What Does Wellbeing 2.0 Look Like? Future-proofing Organisations for Success

What Does Wellbeing 2.0 Look Like? Future-proofing Organisations for Success

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  1. Intro and the $8 billion wellbeing market

    intro#wellbeing#market#intro

  2. News roundup: Shift shock

    news roundup#news#shift-shock#workplace

  3. News roundup: LinkedIn finds on remote work

    news roundup#linkedin#remote-work#research

  4. News roundup: Corp Talk Bingo with Ashley Menzies Babatunde

    news roundup#corporate#bingo#guest

  5. Introducing guests: Ryan, Louise and Jason

    intro#guests#introduction#podcast

  6. Trend 1: The ongoing destigmatisation of mental health

    panel interview#mental-health#destigmatisation#trends

  7. Trend 2: Employee engagement and connection

    panel interview#employee-engagement#connection#trends

  8. Trend 3: Metrics and measurement

    panel interview#metrics#measurement#data

  9. Trend 4: Personalisation and customisation

    panel interview#personalisation#customisation#trends

  10. Trend 5: A holistic approach to wellbeing

    panel interview#holistic-wellbeing#wellness#trends

  11. Trend 6: Leadership and culture

    panel interview#leadership#culture#trends

  12. Trend 7: Technology and AI

    panel interview#technology#ai#wellbeing

  13. The 7 trends recap and where to find the report and guests

    outro#recap#report#guests

Show notes

What Does Wellbeing 2.0 Look Like? Future-Proofing Organisations for Success

Hosts: Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist)

The wellbeing market is booming — projected to hit $8 billion by 2030 — but are organisations keeping pace with what employees actually need? In this special deep-dive episode, Al and Leanne bring together insights from three leading wellbeing experts to map out the future of workplace wellbeing and the seven trends that will define it.

Joined by Ryan Hopkins (Future of Wellbeing Leader at Deloitte), Louise Aston (Wellbeing Campaign Director at Business in the Community), and Jason Richmond (VP of Clinical Solutions at Headspace Health), the hosts distil hours of expert conversation into practical, actionable intelligence for business owners and leaders.

From destigmatising mental health and the rise of metrics-driven wellbeing, to holistic approaches, personalised workplaces, and the role of AI — this episode is your blueprint for building a resilient, thriving workforce.

🔥 The 7 Future Wellbeing Trends

1. The ongoing destigmatisation of mental health We've come a long way, but there's still work to do. Louise Aston shares how Business in the Community is tackling the stigma around suicide, domestic abuse, and sleep — and why open conversations are just the beginning.

2. Employee engagement and connection is key Wellbeing isn't a standalone initiative. When it's woven into engagement strategy and ESG reporting, it becomes a driver of business performance — not a nice-to-have.

3. Metrics and measurement "Fluffy" is the word HR leaders hate most. The experts agree: wellbeing needs to be measured, tracked, and reported to the CFO in language they understand. The business case has never been stronger.

4. Personalisation and customisation One-size-fits-all wellbeing doesn't work. RAND Europe's research shows the future is tailored, individualised support — which feeds directly into diversity and inclusion.

5. A holistic approach to wellbeing Physical, mental, financial, social — they're all connected. Jason Richmond explains why the most effective interventions look at the whole person, not just the symptoms.

6. Leadership and culture Wellbeing starts at the top. Leaders who role model healthy behaviours — and frontline managers who reinforce them — create cultures where people can actually thrive.

7. Technology and AI From AI-driven mental health tools to the ethical questions around their use, technology will continue to reshape the wellbeing landscape. The key? Using it to create space, not surveillance.

💬 Key Takeaways

  1. Wellbeing has a measurable ROI. When you can speak the CFO's language — data, metrics, outcomes — wellbeing stops being a cost and becomes an investment.
  2. The workplace needs to be personalised. One-size-fits-all wellbeing programmes are dying. The future is customised, individualised support.
  3. Leadership is the ceiling. You can provide all the wellbeing tools in the world, but if leaders don't model the behaviours, culture won't shift.

📚 Resources & Related Episodes

👥 Connect With Our Guests

Connect With Us

Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect

Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14

Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Full transcript

Expand full transcript
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team Can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
?Nice.
Al ElliottCheck out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
RyanUh, all stemmed from about 13 years ago. I had an accident. I broke my leg and my ankle, and I was depressed and ended up in quite a dark place.
Leanne ElliottHello, and welcome to the Truth, Lies, and Workplace Culture podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a business psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottWe are here to help you simplify the science of people and create amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottWell, we're coming to you today from the island of Sicily.
Leanne ElliottFrom hell.
Al ElliottYou might notice that there'll be some swear running down our faces because, uh, we're in a lovely house, but it's 44 degrees outside, and we obviously got our studio lights on and stuff. We've got the windows— well, the, the blinds open to try and get a decent amount of light. So if you do see us sweating, then it's not the content, it's the weather.
Leanne ElliottIt's been intense. I think this is like day 10 now of this type of temperature, and it just doesn't get cool at night. Like, it's like it's 38 degrees by half past 8 in the morning. What is that about? Anyway, enough about our first world problems. How are you?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah.
Al ElliottHow are you? How are you? You, you, we haven't heard from you on LinkedIn for a while. Go onto LinkedIn, search for Truth, Lies, and Work. You'll find us. We're freaking everywhere on there. We're, we, we like to post stuff. So get involved. Talk to us.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottSo today, we're talking about the future of wellbeing. As you've probably noticed, wellbeing has definitely increased in people's perception over the last sort of maybe decade. Um, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was only really for the, for the IBMs of the world. Now most people are thinking about wellbeing. Um, they— the pandemic has probably accelerated a little bit as well because obviously we've all been a bit more aware of our own mental health and possibly physical health and working from home and all that jazz. Currently, I think Leanne's worked out that it's $5.2 billion is what it's worth right now.
LouiseMm-hmm.
Al ElliottAnd by 2030, it's expected to reach $8 Yeah, that is what is predictive.
Leanne ElliottBut of course, with the shifts in workplace attitudes, the aging workforce that we've talked before on the podcast, technology, AI— that seems to be in the headlines at the minute, Al, doesn't it? You know, what does the future hold for wellbeing, and how could organisations remain healthy and of course relevant as we step into— and this is a frightening thing, Al— the second quarter of the 21st century? Hang on. 2025, the first quarter, 25% of the 21st century is just gone.
Al ElliottIt's done. Ooh. I'm liking— I'm liking you're getting all corporate and talking about Q2 of the 21st century.
Leanne ElliottI was inspired by our corp talk last week. What can I say?
Al ElliottIf you haven't listened to last week's episode, go back and you'll find there's about 5 minutes where we're really, really daft, and it still makes us chuckle, I think, if we listen back to it.
Leanne ElliottLet's put, let's put a pin in that for a minute, Al, shall we? What do we need to do first?
Al ElliottWell, first of all, we need to go and meet our amazing guests. So we first of all got Ryan Hopkins, who's from Deloitte. Then we got Louise Aston, who's from Business in the Community. And finally, we got Jason Richmond from Headspace. It's possible you've heard of that app. But before we go into all of that, it's our favourite time of the week. It's the news roundup.
Leanne ElliottCue the jingle.
Al ElliottWhat have you got, Leah?
Leanne ElliottI have a new word.
Al ElliottNew word alert.
Leanne ElliottShift shock. You need to be careful with this one. Shift shock.
Al ElliottSo many things are going through my head right now.
Leanne ElliottBasically, it means it's like feeling remorse as a new hire. Like you've changed jobs, you've changed organisations, you've made that shift, and it's a bit of a shock.
Al ElliottRight, okay, got it, got it, got it. Grass is always greener and all that kind of thing.
Leanne ElliottIndeed, yeah. So, um, So yeah, this popped up. It is actually a TikTok trend. It's got about 16,000 views on the Tok, as I like to call it, so far. But yeah, basically this is how it's been defined. Also called new hire's remorse, the term refers to the feeling of regret or unhappiness new employees might feel when a job is different to what they're led to believe in the hiring process, and that can often lead to workers to job hop. Back to their old job or indeed to a new one after a very short period of time. Reasons could be poor onboarding, shady recruitment, or a lack of employer brand. Now, I totally get this, and I think there is definitely some business leaders out there who might be guilty of making it sound like everything's cool and everything's great in the recruitment process, when actually maybe it's a bit of a volatile time. And while it might seem counterintuitive, you know, you wanna sell the dream, You're probably actually better having a very honest and open conversation with that new person coming into your business or potentially coming into your business and saying, look, this is kind of what's going down at the minute. This is a plan we've got to make things better. We see you being a central part of that. Are you in? Rather than it's all great, it's fine. And then your first day you're like, shit, man, what's going on here? The building's on fire.
Al ElliottThere's a great quote. I can't remember who said it, but it's never as bad as you think, but it's also never as good as you think. I think that's probably a really smart thing to bear in mind if you are gonna be changing jobs, starting a business, getting a promotion, creating something at work. It's never as good as you think it is, but it's never as bad as you think it is.
Leanne ElliottExcept when it is.
JasonExcept when it is.
Leanne ElliottJust don't lie. Don't lie to people coming into your business. You know, you want them to trust you. That's not a good start.
Al ElliottWhat else you got, Leah?
Leanne ElliottWell, something that I thought was quite interesting actually. I was on, I was on the old LinkedIn. as I've mentioned, I like to dip my toe in from time to time. Me too, I know you will. Um, and I came across a post by the founder and CEO of a startup called Springworks, Kartik Mandavill, who said that they had received more than 3,000 applications for just one job posting in a matter of hours, like 24, 48 hours. Nuts. When we bear in mind, yes, the job market is slowing, Yes, there have been mass redundancies, but, you know, equally there still is this talent shortage and this fight for talent out there that organisations are still feeling. So to get that volume of applications was kind of like, huh, what's going on there then? So I thought, well, why not just go to Mr. Mandeville and ask him himself?
Al ElliottAnd did you?
Leanne ElliottYes, I did.
Al ElliottI love your news roundup because you just pull these names out. You're a bit like Bob Mortimer when it comes to names. It seems like you make them up. And now we're talking to Reginald Marmalade. These are just amazing names. I want to be called Kartik Mandeville. That is just such a cool name. Anyway, sorry. So you spoke to Kartik?
Leanne ElliottI did. Let's hear directly from him.
?I think in recent times, layoffs and then hiring freeze across different companies, especially in the tech startup sector, has kind of changed the job market. Many companies have been calling people back to offices, which means people are either resigning or increasingly looking for remote options. So even though we have not really done paid postings per se, apart from maybe a couple, and even then we have been kind of getting these resumes. And it's not just the 3,000, but actually the entire 13,000 this month. And we have not seen this before. So I think this is Partly, plus the overall macro situation in the country and in the world.
Al ElliottI think it goes to show, and we are obviously very bullish on remote work because that's what we do. We work remote. We don't even work from home. We work from Airbnbs or Booking.com, places like we are right now. So we're very bullish. And so it makes sense to us. But then I'm worried that that might be one of those— I forget what the word is— confirmation bias or something, where because we are We think remote is the future.
Leanne ElliottWhere did you get that word?
Al ElliottI think, I think you might have used it. I wrote it down. I thought I'm gonna use that and impress her at some point.
JasonVery impressed.
Al ElliottBut so I think perhaps it's possible that we believe it's down to being a remote position because we believe in remote work. But either way, amazing. Good work there. Good work, son.
?Yeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd I think you're right. You know, whether it's whatever it is, if it's, if it's differentiating you in the market right now, being fully remote and not you know, being completely cool and championing that, and that means that you get a massive amount of applications for, for a job role, then happy days, you know. I'm sure you say something about that, Al, when it comes to sales and marketing, your value individual— what's it called? Value proposition.
Al ElliottRecruitment is marketing, sales and marketing. And so if everyone's offering remote opportunities in your sector, perhaps it's worthwhile just trying saying this is in-office only. And then you just differentiate yourself and you're not in competition then with other people. But this isn't necessarily a recruitment workshop, although we would be willing to do one of those if you're interested. So, uh, get onto LinkedIn, let me know, or let Leanne know, or just check the show notes below and you've got our contact details anyway.
Leanne ElliottYeah, but I should just say thank you very much to Kartik for, um, sending those voice notes over, and we hope to have him on the podcast very soon.
Al ElliottVery cool, very cool. Got anything else, Lee?
Leanne ElliottWell, for our final segment, Al, I know you enjoyed the, uh, Corp Talk Bingo last week, a bit So I thought I'd come up with something else for you. So this is actually inspired by Ashley Menzies-Babatunde, another fabulous name.
Al ElliottOh, I love it. I could say that all day. Like, baba ganoush is another word that I really like saying. So I think that's why I like Babatunde.
Leanne ElliottBabatunde. Ashley Menzies-Babatunde, awesome, awesome woman. She has a podcast on the HubSpot Podcast Network called No Straight Path, our sibling show. She did an episode recently on what it is to be an accidental entrepreneur, something that she identifies with, didn't necessarily set out to go and be an entrepreneur but has found herself in that position. I guess I kind of relate to that, although I still see myself more as a consultant than necessarily an entrepreneur. Al, there was no accident between you going into business, was there?
Al ElliottUm, probably. I don't know. Um, well, basically I failed my A-levels, so the only thing I could do was teaching maths, and I hated that. I hated children. I hate maths. So, you know, terms of Venn diagrams, and that didn't work. And then I got sacked from being a pub manager. So it was kind of like, not necessarily accidental, but the only path for me really, because I was kind of like unemployable, which I think is probably quite, quite a common trait with entrepreneurs is that particularly after a while, I could never work for anyone now because one, I'm too lazy. Two, I like working whenever I like working. And three, someone tells me what to do, I'll be like, no chance. I'm I'm not doing that anyway.
?What?
Al ElliottSorry, I feel like I've gone off on a rant.
Leanne ElliottSo yes, so yeah, Ashley was basically saying, you know, building your business, you can sometimes find yourself there unexpectedly. It's hard work. There's lots of challenges, lots of uncertainty. And of course, these situations that I've, I've translated this— Ashley probably wouldn't say this— I've translated this as to kind of those moments, and we both had these, where you look around and go, what the fuck is this? Do you know what I mean though? You're like, how did we get here? Like, both good and bad moments, like WTF moments, but yeah. So I thought, I'll do some research on this. Turns out we're not alone, Al. Looked at Entrepreneur Magazine, posted basically a list of some crazy shit that can happen to you as a business owner. So it's sharing time, Al. Are you ready? I'll read through a couple, see what speaks to you. If you have a story, share. So the first kind of WTF moment of being an entrepreneur, an accidental entrepreneur, Taking an all-important phone call from a very weird place.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah.
Al ElliottI think we were on— we, when we used to live in a place called Estepona in, in Spain, southern Spain, we once rented, it was really cheap in off-season. We once rented this, like, yacht with, like, all the skipper and everything. So we ended up in the middle of the, middle of, of the bay watching these dolphins. And I remember taking a phone call from, I think it was the bank manager or something. And I was standing with one foot up on, on, on something on this rope on the yacht talking, and I felt like, this is A, really strange, but B, have I made it? I'm on a yacht talking to my business manager. So that's one of them. And there is another one where I had to negotiate something fairly sensitive whilst I was indisposed in a public toilet. But that actually sounded really weird.
?But I was—
?I know.
Leanne ElliottI wondered where that was leading.
Al ElliottI was doing— never mind. I was otherwise engaged, literally in the public toilet.
Leanne ElliottExcellent. Yeah, excellent. Um, my second one, there's always some dickhead.
Al ElliottHave you got one of these?
Leanne ElliottI've got thousands of these. There's just— I think there's just always, when you're, when you're in it, maybe either self-employed or trying to create content, um, there always just seems to be some dickhead that seems to be doing really well, and you're like How? Like, you're not even very nice. Um, yeah, I won't mention anyone in particular, but definitely many people that I think, I don't, I don't know how you're successful. Um, but fair enough. Um, I will try and take some lessons from that.
Al ElliottThat was brilliant. Well done, Leah. I loved it, I loved it, I loved it. So let's get on with the main section because it is hot as Balls in here.
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottSo if you do see the sweat, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. We'll try and edit it out in post. I say that. I don't have a clue how to do that. Okay. So on to the main section. Okay. So today, we are talking about the future of wellbeing. We're saying, what are the current trends? What's here to stay? Will generational differences have an impact on this kinda, like, strategy? What about AI and technology? How does it all fit in? Well, we've got 3 amazing guests who are gonna talk you all the way through that.
Leanne ElliottWe do. Our first guest is Ryan Hopkins, who is a Future of Wellbeing leader at Deloitte. So a pretty good person to ask about this kind of stuff. He's also a TEDx speaker, an author, and on a mission to engage 1 billion people in the betterment of wellbeing.
RyanMy name is Ryan Hopkins. I'm the Future of Wellbeing leader for Deloitte. I am working with workplaces around the world to develop culture where people can thrive, not bikes, bananas, or one-off events. Developing work where people can turn up and be their best selves, where the individual and the organization thrives.
Al ElliottOur second guest is Louise Aston. She is an award-winning, high-profile ambassador for health and wellbeing in the UK with a career dedicated to tackling the stigma that surrounds mental health, including topics such as suicide, domestic abuse, sleep, recovery. Louise is currently the Wellbeing Campaign Director at Business in the Community. So let's go meet Louise and hear more about Business in the Community.
LouiseYeah. So Business in the Community, we are the Prince's Responsible Business Movement. So basically our membership, we actually reach 20% of UK employees. Most of our members are large corporates. And what we do is we convene businesses to solve really challenging issues, which they could never do on their own, but in terms of collectively working towards common goals.
Leanne ElliottOur final guest is Jason Richmond. Jason is VP of Sales Solutions at Headspace Health, a specialist in behavioral health. He actually started his career as a therapist before moving into organizational-level interventions. Here's Jason to explain more.
JasonMy name's Jason Richmond, and I am, as you said, uh, Vice President of our, uh, Clinical Solutions area at Headspace Health. I've been in the behavioral health field for the last 25 years, the first part of that journey as a therapist myself. And so I practiced for a dozen years, and, and then I moved into the medical insurance carrier side of behavioral health. And so I was basically working to help to develop and deliver behavioral health products to the commercial markets.
Leanne ElliottWe also have a few cameos from other guests, so look out for those.
Al ElliottSo Leanne's taken all of the insights from our amazing guests, and she's identified 7 future trends of wellbeing.
Leanne ElliottI have, and these trends are all things that business owners can capitalise on today to build resilient and high-performing teams in the future. So are you ready for our first trend, Al?
Al ElliottI am.
Leanne ElliottThe ongoing destigmatisation of mental health.
Al ElliottCatchy.
Leanne ElliottWell, you know, I'm not, I'm not the marketer here, Al. I'm sure you can come up with a catchy name. But, you know, like you were saying earlier, since the pandemic especially, mental health is becoming much more of a day-to-day conversation. It doesn't have the same stigma it did 50 years ago or even 100 years ago. I think it was in our mental health awareness episode we actually talked about that, didn't we? Kind of how the last 100 years it has changed significantly from, you know, you would be classified as a lunatic and put in an asylum to now being a part of day-to-day conversation and organisational life as well. So experts are predicting that organisations that continue this mission will not only remain relevant in the market to both consumers and prospective talent, but will reap the commercial benefits too. So crucially, this type of commitment from business owners and leaders is one of the few things that will drive systemic change. I think, did we use the example, Al, of, um, of like accidents in the workplace in a podcast recently about kind of how this, this accountability needs to sit with the leaders?
Al ElliottYeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think we talked about it. We've talked about several times, I think, uh, certainly in the psychological safety, we've touched on it last week as well, which is definitely one worth going back and listening to.
Leanne ElliottYeah, so I think this— there's a real opportunity for business owners, for business leaders. So let's hear more on that from Louise, who is Wellbeing Campaign Director at Business in the Community.
LouiseWe're in a situation right now where employers have 2 choices. They can do nothing, which quite frankly, with you know, kind of low productivity, high attrition, deteriorating employee mental health is not a sustainable option. Or they can redefine success, which is about prioritizing people and unlocking the value of a thriving workforce. And this hasn't been done before. And now we've got the data to actually really substantiate it. So this is very much about tackling the systemic causes of poor mental health. It's not about taking a kind of tactical, reactive, um, individual— well, approach to individuals. This is about a whole system, whole organizational approach.
Leanne ElliottThis type of shift will completely flip mental health on its head because instead of talking about coming from a place of of deficit, and then getting, just kinda getting people to the point of surviving. If we're flipping that to a more positive psychology approach and saying we're actually gonna work really hard to take people from surviving to thriving, the impact not only on individuals but on organisations as well is gonna be massive. And this is exactly what the foundation of this landmark report produced by Business in the Community and McKinsey Health was all about. all about prioritise people, unlocking the value of a thriving workforce. What's also really cool about this report is it's been developed for CFOs in collaboration with CFOs, so it really does create a very compelling economic value proposition for placing employees and wellbeing at the heart of organisational strategy.
LouiseI'm really excited about this report. It's a real landmark report. It's the first time ever that all the aggregated data that supports thriving employees has been analyzed in one place. We've been fortunate enough to have the McKinsey Health Institute as our research partner. So basically, they have actually analyzed that data. So that's the first. in terms of looking at the benefits of prioritizing thriving people. But also what's very special about this report is we convened an advisory board of chief financial officers. So this is— they've very much shaped the report along with Business in the Community's leadership team and obviously with the support of the McKinsey Health Institute. And what the report highlights, which is super exciting, is the size of the prize for getting this right in terms of truly enabling thriving employees. So the research shows that actually the UK economic value of improved employee wellbeing could be between £130 to £370 billion per year, or that's 6 to 17% of UK's gross domestic product. But that's the equivalent of between £4,000 to £12,000 per UK employee. So think of that size of the prize. This could solve the cost of living crisis. I mean, it's phenomenal. So this is really groundbreaking. And, you know, historically, the focus has always been looking at the cost of poor mental health, and we've turned this on its head. So very excited.
Al ElliottSo Ryan from Deloitte agrees that there's a lucrative opportunity for organizations to instigate a radical new approach to employee wellbeing. He also quotes research from Liz Hampton, who's the director in Deloitte's strategy consulting practice, Monitor Deloitte.
RyanComes in 3 chunks. We do lots of writing and development of all of the reports and thought leadership. And I, Liz Hampson, and the team have done some incredible work since 2017. The Deloitte Mental Health Report in the UK, the £1 spent, £5 back. So I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, right? Don't think that was me, it wasn't. But I'm building on that work. And what we do with organizations is help them understand First and foremost, we did a big piece of work with the Institute of Directors. We asked 30,000 leaders in the UK, are you measuring the effectiveness of your wellbeing efforts? We found that only 1 to 2% of them were. We're all doing these amazing things, providing solutions, applications, support, catching people when they fall, which is the right thing to do. But we have no idea how effective any of these things are. What gets measured gets incentivized, gets improved. So this is the first thing, and we need to understand the needs, interests, concerns, expectations, and risks of the people. There's also the measurement, the implementation, the change and stuff like that. Like any decent measure in the workplace, if we launch an initiative and we don't have a concerted change effort around it, we don't track the effectiveness of it and measure it or set up the data capability, it's not going to work.
Leanne ElliottAs I mentioned before, we have come a pretty long way in a short period of time when it comes to mental health. Bear in mind, you know, 18 century, mental health was attributed to the supernatural, to witchcraft. It wasn't really until the 20th century where we saw psychologists like Freud and Skinner that really started to think about these as more mental health conditions. And even then, it was 1983 that the Mental Health Act in the UK was introduced. Even then, it needed significant updates in 2007, and in 2021, the UK government have again pledged to relook at the Mental Health Act to remove any inequity for individuals. So this stuff is fairly new, and we are asking organisations to play a leading role in this radical rethink of mental health and wellbeing at work. But as Ryan explains, the data is continuing to show us that happy employees are very, very good for business.
RyanIt's something that's spun up on the side. It's seen as a nice-to-have. The understanding that this is something that drives performance is relatively new. And there is data everywhere, but we're almost suffering from too much of it, and we don't know which piece to look at. And the C-suite have 100 priorities— keeping the business afloat, 10% inflation, the war in Ukraine, everything. How do you know what to focus on? And if it's something that's seen as a benefit, a solution, a webinar, it's going to remain that. But it isn't. It's not something that's added. Well-being is often the about looking at the work, the systems, the processes, the structure, the experience, the policies, the technology— not a benefit. That is a part of it, but it's not in its entirety. From the research that we're doing and that the Oxford University Wellbeing Research Centre were doing as well, uh, with BT, and they found that a 1-point increase in happiness resulted in a 12% increase in sales. So we're starting to draw out the real clear links with massive studies which are undeniable. And I think that data is becoming more and more clear and the understanding is developing. But like anything, it takes time. And the perception is that it's a soft, fluffy thing that's on the side, but it is so far from that.
Al ElliottSo Jason Richman, who's the VP of Sales Solutions at Headspace Health, he agrees that this shift from negative to positive connotations is the future of wellbeing. So he said this is a conscious consideration of the Headspace Health brand.
JasonHeadspace obviously has a direct-to-consumer portion of that, and people have a choice in the app stores of multiple different tools. What I would say is that Headspace has really been around the longest. What I think that we do really well is the quality of the meditation and mindfulness that we deliver. I think it's of the highest quality. I also think that the brand and the feel is very appealing to people. It's upbeat, it's got a very sort of positive feel to it. And so I don't necessarily, I think when people are looking around for meditation and mindfulness, it's not because they want to feel less happy.
Al ElliottI think that the pandemic, which again, I hate using that P word, but it's had such a big impact on everything. The pandemic has really brought to the forefront mental health, and it means that particularly on the younger generations Zeds, and probably the— are they called alphas, the ones behind that? Mhmm. They seem relatively happy to talk about their own mental health. And so for the first time, probably since World War II, we, us older generations and everyone, employers, leaders, everyone can kinda get an idea of what mental health is and why it is such an important aspect and something to understand. I think this, this ability to be vulnerable and to talk about your own mental health on video, on TikTok, on whatever, is probably gonna be one of the key things that's gonna destigmatize problem of mental health. 20 years ago, if you said, I'm feeling depressed, everyone would be like, oh my God. I'm not talking to Arthur anymore. He's— he might go and kill himself. Now people are happy to say or seem happier to, to, to disclose that they are struggling a little bit. So our guests have shared their own experiences with mental health. So we're gonna hear from Louise first, then Jason, and then Ryan.
LouiseSo my background's actually creative. So I trained as a textile designer for fashion. I did a and started my career as a fashion buyer at Marks Spencer. I transitioned into campaigning by taking health into fashion for a national skin cancer prevention campaign. And then I really got the campaigning bug and, you know, in terms of purpose, my values. And then basically my brother was sadly diagnosed with schizophrenia And that's when I entered the mental health space very early on in terms of tackling the stigma. And from there, you know, I was creative director at the government's marketing and communications agency. 5 a Day was mine. Talk to Frank. Don't Give Up Giving Up tobacco education. So really that background in terms of my passion, my beliefs, my values, making a difference. has led me to what I do now.
JasonOnce I started studying it, I found the human mind fascinating. I found human behavior very interesting. Why do people do the things they do? All interest me. And so I pursued psychology. I had a terrific professor in my undergrad that taught an experiential psychology course, and I took that, and it was a course that allowed— it was very small. There were only like a dozen people in the class, and it allowed us to really sort of practice a bit of vulnerability in almost like a group counseling session for an entire semester. And then we did a trip, an experiential trip where we went whitewater rafting and rappelling to challenge your own personal fears as part of that experience. That hooked me at that point, seeing the ability to sort of connect with people I wanted to do more, and that led me to a graduate degree and then a practice, so that the ability to be able to connect with someone— I can't solve their problems. I'm not responsible for their problems. But to be able to connect with someone when they truly need that was very meaningful to me. I felt like that was a worthwhile pursuit.
RyanAll stemmed from about 13 years ago. I had an accident. I broke my leg and my ankle. And I was depressed and ended up in quite a dark place. And coming back from there, I've been through— I've had bulimia for years, anxiety on and off, medicated for the best part of 10 years. And as I pieced myself back together again and again, I was learning what worked and what didn't and moved into the wellbeing space about 6 years ago.
Al ElliottSo our second future trend is employee engagement and connection. Employee engagement, oh, Lianne's favorite word. Employee engagement, without a doubt, is the focus of the future in terms of wellbeing. Employee engagement and connection is all about fostering this sense of belonging, community, and social connection within organizations, as Louise explains.
LouiseSo this goes beyond wellbeing. Okay, so in terms of being thriving, that is when people can absolutely be at their best. So it's about optimizing wellbeing engagement. It's about sharing purpose and value with your organization because a lot— all of this is about organizations putting thriving people at the heart of their organizational purpose and business strategy. And obviously you've also got to align that with culture to make it real.
Al ElliottLouise also goes on to explain that this isn't something for large corporations, the IBMs and Microsofts of the world. This is for smaller businesses too, and it's going to really help them thrive.
LouiseYeah, well, we were very mindful about the report and our actions being relevant to SMEs. And actually, as part of the process of developing Prioritize People report, we actually involved a handful of SMEs to ensure that basically it was accessible and relevant. And in terms of the tools that we've got coming down the line that will be launched in September, again, they will be relevant and accessible for SMEs. So, you know, I would say, we would say that prioritizing people, unlock the value of a thriving workforce, is relevant to all organisations regardless of size or sector?
Leanne ElliottI think arguably employee engagement may be even more relevant to smaller or owner-led businesses, particularly those that are looking to scale and exit. We've mentioned before about ESGs— environmental, social, governance— is a framework used to assess organisational business practices and something that is growing in popularity and importance. The S of ESG, social, this is where employee engagement firmly sits. And it's really about looking at any way that we can create environments in which people can experience positive mental health and positive performance. And when it comes to investors, we are increasingly seeing now that this type of data in terms of employee engagement and wellbeing is being requested as part of the due diligence. And again, that sits under that S of ESGs. So something that is really, really important for any business owner that is looking to scale and potentially exit their company. The other thing to bear in mind, as we learned from Andrew Berry a few episodes ago from Mind, it is actually a legal obligation that you carry out a stress assessment on your— within your workforce every year, which I don't think many small organisations know about, let alone do. And there is also some very significant talk of the government making ESGs as a data reporting point mandatory for all businesses in the UK. So if employee engagement is not currently on your radar, it's time to start thinking about it. Here's Louise to tell us more.
LouiseI suppose why— another reason why this agenda cannot be ignored is basically is there's growing anticipation that investors are going to be demanding that businesses report on the social of ESG, as they do on the environmental and governance dimensions. So businesses, whether they like it or not, are going to have this imposed on them at some point down the line. So this is a great opportunity to anticipate and respond to this trend in investor pressure by proactively investing in employee health and wellbeing and treat the kind of concept of a thriving workforce as a critical capital asset on balance sheets and in turn is to publicly disclose.
Leanne ElliottLouise went on to explain that organisations that focus and report on ESG efforts are more likely to have a competitive employer brand.
LouiseSo the vision is that more businesses will start to publicly report on thriving people. So this again is linked to putting the S, the social, into ESG. That is about accountability, transparency. Obviously, there will be business benefits, in terms of attracting and retaining talent, basically in terms of making thriving people, making wellbeing non-negotiable and business as usual, is we know that job seekers and employees are becoming more discerning about the employers they want to work for. So basically, I'd like to see happier, healthier, and more engaged workforces and a happier UK.
Al ElliottESG is also important in terms of consumer brands. The research shows us that Gen Z shoppers demand sustainable retail. The majority of Gen Z shoppers prefer to buy sustainable brands, and most are willing to spend 10% more on sustainable products. A Pew Research Center survey finds that Millennials and Gen Z stand out for their high levels of engagement within the issue of climate change. And one-third of millennials often or exclusively use investment products that take ESG factors into account. This is also the same for 19% of Gen Zers. Now, Gen Zers— a lot of Gen Zers who responded to this survey, they've said that they experience stress or sadness or anger or frustration due to climate change and its related disasters. We've— we're sitting in Sicily at 44 degrees. There's There's wildfires in the north of Italy, there's hailstone.
Leanne ElliottThe size of golf balls. Have you seen that on YouTube?
Al ElliottI haven't. No, I haven't. I'm gonna have to have a look. But the whole point is that this isn't something that we can just ignore anymore. And Gen Zers, because they're the future of the, of, of the world, they are so passionate about this. More than 50% of the respondents expressed this fear and anxiety about the future, and Gen Z demonstrated a greater concern than other generations. So this is probably why Gen Z are prioritizing their mental health and demanding that employers do the same? I asked Jason about this.
JasonYeah, a great question. So I would say a little bit, a little bit, yes. I think that it is a generational thing. It's definitely true that the generation that's coming up now is much more open to talk about the mental health struggles that they may have and actually to feel almost a sense of entitlement from their employer to say, yes, you should care about my mental health, and yes, you should offer services that help me to address good mental health? I, I think that's a, that's a healthy progression.
Leanne ElliottYeah, employee engagement and specifically ESG sitting behind that strategy is really gonna be an impactful thing you can do as a business owner, not only to improve the wellbeing of your team, but to really increase your competitiveness in the market. So our 3rd future trend is metrics and measurement. I don't think this is a shock, maybe, Al?
Al ElliottNope. You like metrics, measurements, and data. That's what you live for.
Leanne ElliottI do. I do. And our experts like it too.
?Why?
Leanne ElliottBecause, well, fluffy is often a word that is used to describe HR, people and culture, wellbeing professionals. As a psychologist, I can admit there may well be and are some products and services out there that may fall into that fluffy category, or perhaps as wellness washing. And the reason for that is that it's no evidence, there's no data behind those interventions to measure their impact. The focus moving forward has to be on measuring the impact of various wellbeing interventions through data and through metrics. Louise and colleagues at Business in the Community and McKinsey Health recognize this, and in building this flagship People Report, made sure to include the most metric-driven of all C-suite. The CFO.
LouiseThe primary audience for the report are CFOs. As I said, they've shaped the report. And why CFOs? Well, obviously they hold the purse strings, but also CFOs are really interested in creating value and obviously to do with ESG and putting the S, the social, into ESG. That is all about creating value, and people are the most critical asset, but also human capital is a really important part of enterprise value.
Leanne ElliottJason agrees that there is an increasing understanding that good mental health affects the bottom line.
JasonIt is, it is way more impactful from a financial standpoint than I think anybody ever knew. Now, there's a growing recognition within employers that good mental health affects the bottom line. But for years and years, mental health was considered just sort of a check-the-box kind of benefit that, yes, we need to do something for them, but let's offer something and then not think about it again. And I would say over the last decade or so, there's been this growing recognition that people are more productive when they are in a good Pardon the pun, headspace. The reality is that productivity, absenteeism, presenteeism, which is coming to work but not being really present while you're at work, therefore not very effective, and then high turnover rates of staff are all very expensive propositions for an employer. And none of that takes into account the cost of comorbidity. And so we all know—
Al ElliottComorbidity.
JasonYeah, so comorbidity. If you think about the fact that employers know that the most expensive sort of physical conditions that someone may have, like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, musculoskeletal issues, those are all very expensive things for a workforce and for an employer. We know that there's a mental health component to all of those. Any new diagnosis that someone gets medically creates an emotional experience. People have an emotional experience related to their physical self, and we see comorbidities, like co-occurrences of depression with, let's say, diabetes and with heart disease. And there have been plenty of studies that have been done that show— that have done 2 different cohorts, those that are addressing the mental health issue and those that have done nothing to address the mental health issue. And the, um, recovery rates of those that address their mental health issue, um, the recovery rates for their physical condition is much higher and a much faster rate. So it takes longer and costs more if you don't address the mental health issue first.
Al ElliottWe also asked Ryan from Deloitte, and he agreed the future of wellbeing lies in showing CFOs the money.
RyanIt's seen as this soft, fluffy thing, but it's so, so far from And that's the work that I'm doing to make sure I'm attaching pound notes to not prioritizing it in the workplace, to show the C-suite how much money they're losing. And then we say, okay, do we want to do something about this? Inevitably, the answer is yes when they see it put down quite simply. Wellbeing is so much more than a set of policies or a solution or an application. It's something that's integrated in every single part of the business. It's cross-functional, includes every part of the business. We help organizations like set up the strategy, which is super interesting. So, and the biggest effect I've had on wellbeing previously was working with the IT function in one organization where we focus on using tech sustainably, used to develop all these tips and stuff like that, and end up saving the business 2.5 million hours in a year.
Al Elliott2.5 million hours in the year. We've already talked about this. You wouldn't do marketing without checking your ROA and checking your strat— checking your metrics and making sure it's actually working. Why are we, why are we not doing the same with wellbeing? Yes, there are some apps out there. Leanne alluded to them before. They're just nice to have. They're going, oh yeah, we've got something in place. Are you actually checking your ROI? Are you actually seeing that it's saving you money? Because if it's not, stop doing it and do something else. Wellbeing is a science. Here's Ryan.
RyanWhat we can start to do is treat it like a science. You wouldn't go to marketing and say, what's the engagement this month? Or go to sales and say, what's the sales numbers looking like? Or go to ops and say, how's the— I don't know, the square meterage of the office sites? You go to our bean and say, how is this? And then we say, I'm not sure. So if we really want to move it forwards, we're gonna have to start marking ourselves a little bit, and that's uncomfortable. But to give it the attention and the budget it deserves, then we need to start doing that and tracking the effectiveness of our efforts. And we will unfortunately see that a lot of what we're doing is not helping and potentially exacerbating issues. The world's best applications and solutions— when I was at my lowest, I wouldn't have wanted, I wouldn't have been able to, I wouldn't have been in the headspace. What I needed was the love and attention of the people that I care the most about. The most, the most, the most important part of my day now is, was I block my lunch out of my calendar and I'll give my nan a call every day. And that for me is more valuable than anything else. So what we can do is measure it and get a couple of measures and get the C-suite to understand the importance So simply put, if you're going to do one thing to create a burning platform to change well-being, it would be to look at the attrition, the voluntary attrition, and then find out the reason for people leaving. And there's a lot— Mental Health Report 2022, as I said, by Liz Hampson team, some incredible work— about 62% of people that left their jobs last year or planning to next year is due to poor mental health, stress, workload, etc. You apply that percentage to the voluntary attrition and work out how much each person leaving your business costs, when it costs about 7.5 months' salary to hire and retrain someone, plus the increased cost of salary in the market with inflation being 10%, you've now got X figure per person. Times that by 62% of the people that left the business, and you've got a 5,000-person organization, you've got about £35 million. That is your platform. And you can say, okay, so, all right, so people are leaving because of workload stress. Stress being workload being the biggest cause of stress in the workplace, double anything else. So how do we address this? Then you understand the NICER, the needs, interests, concerns, expectations, and risks. Biggest stress is non-stop work culture, can't switch off. Okay, so how do we address that? One or two things, attach a measurement, a clear KPI to each, treat it like the science that it is, give it the respect it deserves, and do this. And we say, okay, so we're going to aim for a 0.2% reduction in voluntary attrition over a year. We do that, we measure it, and then we earn the right to do more, and we start to open up the scope to develop a truly flexible, psychologically safe workplace where we belong. All of those sorts of things actually develop well-being. Because wellbeing is an outcome. It's not the focus. The more you talk about it, the less likely you are to affect it. It's about configuring the work and everything else around the people, because what you need is different to what I need. And when we do this properly and we encourage everyone to become— come in and be their self and share their things, and we get the leaders to exemplify this amazing behaviour and we measure it all.
Al ElliottOkay, so number 4 is personalisation and customisation. Oh my God, as a marketer coming to this, that this area, it's kind of strange how similar some of these fundamentals are. With an increasingly diverse workforce who want different things like hybrid working, work from home, remote, all that kind of thing, we have to make sure that we personalize the way work experience in order to stay competitive. This isn't, oh, well, look, you know, Dorothy wants to work from home once a week, so maybe we should let her know, because if you don't, then Dorothy may go off and find herself a position at a company that does do that kind of thing. So wellbeing is no different. And Jason from Headspace explains that on-demand services will play a huge role in personalizing and customizing support.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)You ask?
JasonYeah. So, as you're aware, Andy started the company in, I think it was 2010 here in the UK. And it was the first digital mindfulness meditation app that was available to the masses. And it's really grown since then. And what happened is about a year and a half ago, Headspace merged with a US-based company that was called Ginger. And Ginger was an on-demand virtual mental healthcare delivery system. And the idea of this was the fact that Headspace, as you know, was really a leader in mindfulness and meditation, self-directed tools for people to build resiliency, and really create an emotionally healthy lifestyle. And what it lacked was when it encountered people who needed more care or a higher level of care, there was really nothing for them in that instance. And so the merger between these 2 organizations allows Headspace to expand its reach from just being a self-directed tool to actually now providing services like behavioral health counseling, which is available on demand, or coaching, which is available on demand, and then counseling for those who need clinical levels of service. We also have the ability to fully deliver EAP services. And so for groups that are unhappy with their current EAP and perhaps were looking to replace that, we have the ability to provide work-life services and management consultations, critical incident responses, those sorts of things. So Headspace, which has a hugely well-known brand known for mindfulness meditation done digitally through an app, now is one of the most comprehensive mental health solutions on the market because it's from mindfulness meditation all the way through complex mental health conditions that they're able to offer services. And the idea is that mental health is a journey, right? It's never linear. It's never You know, it's always a one-size-doesn't-fit-all kind of proposition. Everybody's experience is unique. And so we wanted to be able to develop a solution that was gonna really take people wherever that journey goes, and that always to have something for everybody. And the ability to deliver that to a workforce really was just the next logical step for our company.
Al ElliottSo Jason went on to say that he believes that private sector organizations like Headspace Health, where he's the VP of Sales, will play a key role in the future of mental health care, often filling the demand and helping services to be more accessible to the majority.
JasonOur mental health care system, both in the UK and the US, is inadequate at best. And I say that with all deference because I've been a part of it for 25 years. It just simply needs to evolve. And that is what is going on in real time. It's evolving, it's becoming better. And so part of what we offer that's different is that it's truly on demand. Within the very moment that someone decides that it's time for me to get help, and that's a difficult decision, when they do and they raise their hand, we can connect them with a behavioral health coach within 2 minutes or less. The average time of coach response in our entire book of business right now, and that's millions of people, is 51 seconds. Within 51 seconds of you saying, I need to talk to somebody, and then we're connecting you. In the old system, you'd have to call somewhere, maybe get a referral from your GP, maybe you would have to wait for callbacks. You would then schedule an appointment that might be days or weeks out. By that time, the amount of distance between when you experienced the thing that motivated you to get help and now you get to talk about it could be weeks and weeks. People drop out, they lose motivation, they simply don't do it. Our solution is offered immediately in that moment.
Leanne ElliottThere is some fabulous research by RAND Europe led by Christian Van Stolk, um, who appeared on our podcast back in the Britain's Healthiest Workplace episode. I wanna say January, Al.
Al ElliottYeah, sounds about right.
Leanne ElliottBut yeah, Kristian and his team at RAND Europe have really dived into customization and personalization in the world of wellbeing and wellbeing support. So when we spoke with Kristian, he shared some of his research findings. Let's hear very quickly about that.
?Yeah, so the idea was really is that there is sort of a, you know, sort of, there are a number of preconceptions about, you know, what the world of hybrid working will look like. So on the one extreme, you will have people, well, everybody has to come back into the office because we, you know, we, you know, that tends to be better for business outcomes. You'll have more social interactions there. On the other hand, you know, there is a school of thought that says, well, look, you know, remote working has sort of worked during the pandemic. So we need to introduce more remote working or allow people to work and be working as flexibly as we can. And of course, as always, Leanne, the truth is somewhere in the middle, right? And so this study really tried to look at what the world of hybrid working looks like to some extent, but also try to link work behaviors that we're seeing in this new way of working to health and well-being outcomes. And the way that we could do that is because we had 2 interesting data sources. One is Microsoft Viva Analytics data. So basically anything you do on your computer more or less is captured by somebody, right? And so Microsoft, if you use Microsoft 365, collects all of that information in one place. So I can tell you, I can, if I have your data, Liana, for instance, I would know when you're in a meeting or in a podcast with me, as it happens, when you're actually sending an email, what time you're sending this email, whether you're working late, what time you start working and your computer switches on. All of these things are captured. So this sounds a little bit scary, but don't worry about that too much. And of course, on the other side, what we had is we had very detailed health records. records of Vitality's employees because, of course, Vitality collects a huge amount of information and we could merge these datasets to some extent. So that shows— the idea was really to look at certain types of work behaviours and then look at what the health and well-being impacts of that work behaviour would be. So, for instance, you could say sending emails late in the evening is bad for health and well-being, or you get up really early and you start working, that is bad for your health and well-being, or being in excessive number of meetings during the day might be bad for your health and well-being. These were the hypotheses that we were testing. As it happens, um, in this research, what we showed is that there are really different categories of workers. First of all, that's important to think about. So, you know, even within an organization, there are a variety of different subcultures, and these workers typically like to work in slightly different ways. And that's interesting. And if you dig below that, there is no real uniform type of work behaviors that leads to optimal health and well-being outcomes. So what this means is really that there's a high degree of personalization that is required within a workforce. So having a blanket ban on emails after 7 or 8 in the evening might seem like a good idea to achieve executive, but ultimately you probably are sort of impacting negatively the, you know, a certain group of workers within your organization. So that seems to, to me, to push a lot of the responsibility down to line managers in terms of managing their staff effectively and trying to encourage work behaviours that lead to better health and wellbeing. And of course, understanding really what staff need as well. So that's, that's really what this study is about.
Leanne ElliottAnd of course, personalisation and individualisation is going to feed directly into diversity and inclusion. We don't have the time to dive into that in more detail here. But to find out more, check out our EDI 101 and Neurodiversity 101 episodes. We'll leave a link for these and Christian's research in the show notes.
Al ElliottSo the 5th trend that Lianne identified is this holistic approach to wellbeing. So it's great that we're starting to talk more around, more about health in the workplace, but we need a more holistic view of this whole thing. We need to be encompass mental and emotional, social, all that kind of aspects of well-being. So Jason from Headspace agrees, and he says that this is why there are so many more programs coming up there which are more comprehensive around wellness than just health.
JasonIt's also influenced very intentionally, I think, by our society, which has said, let's not treat mental health any different than we treat physical health. And if you think about it, for years and years, we've been We've all accepted the truth that if you want to stay physically well and be preventative about it, you know that you need to eat right, you need to get enough sleep, you need to exercise regularly, right? Everybody knows that, and we all accept it. No one challenges that. We talk about it freely and openly, and we see people engaging in it all around us. We have not extended that same mindset to our emotional wellbeing. The reality is that there are plenty of preventative things that we can be doing and should be doing in order to stay emotionally well. And we're just now on the cusp of, I think, making that truly table stakes, where people readily accept, easily accept the fact that, yes, of course, I should be meditating. I should be having good social experiences. maintain good boundaries with my work? There are things that we can sort of normalize in the workforce and in our populations that would allow people to start taking care of themselves, which in turn will reduce the number of escalations, the number of symptom development, all of those things. It's that movement that you're experiencing that I think is a very good thing. for our society.
Al ElliottAnd it's not just about how we approach our own health. It's really important to change how we approach the health of others.
JasonIt is perfectly acceptable for everybody to say, you know what, I'm struggling right now, or I'm seeing a therapist, or perhaps people to normalize the idea, maybe even ask each other about that. If you knew if you had a A colleague or a coworker who had just recently had a knee surgery. When you saw that person again, you'd inquire about how their knee is. We never ask people who have been missed because of a personal experience. We don't talk about that because we're uncomfortable ourselves at times talking about it. We don't want to make someone else uncomfortable. What if we— what if this change that you and I are describing, what if that turned into a situation where it's perfectly acceptable? for me to ask you about your mental health. You, you and I just met. Uh, if I open the conversation with, um, how you're doing emotionally, you would think that's a little odd. What if we lived in a world where that wasn't the case, that we actually cared about that with one another? I think that would be delightful.
Leanne ElliottIt would be delightful, Jason. It, it really would. But you know, this type of change does take time, and building these types of relationships takes time, which is why it's so important for business leaders, for business owners to build their, their self-awareness and their emotional intelligence so they can build these rich coaching-based relationships with the members of their team.
Al ElliottI asked Jason more about these sort of difficult conversations, and his response was brilliant.
JasonIn that perfect world, we could have those conversations and it would be very comfortable. In the world we in— we're in right now, it's not, it's not quite there, right? So subtly and, and comfortably being able to have a conversation with someone about them potentially needing some additional support is sensitive. You have to be really sort of thoughtful and careful. My rule of thumb is that, you know, those types of conversations typically require a bit of a relationship. In order for you to give me that kind of advice, we'd have to know each other well enough for me to think that it was genuine coming from you and for me to feel comfortable enough to be vulnerable with you to say, yeah, I am struggling, and I would welcome that advice.
Leanne ElliottThat leads us nicely onto our 6th trend, which again, I'm sure not necessarily comes as a surprise to regular listeners of the podcast. Trend number 6, leadership and culture. So, we're currently finishing off our own research at the moment at Oblong that looks at the relationships between leadership constructs or behaviors, employee engagement, and wellbeing, specifically in hybrid and remote work environments. Again, it's a catchy title, I'm working on it. But an early finding that we've found already is that employees are really looking for leaders to be investing in their own wellbeing as leaders. So employees want to see those positive behaviours role modelled in the leaders in their business, and Jason agrees that this type of role modelling is crucial in the future of wellbeing.
JasonThe great thing about our current society is the fact that There are so many tools and resources that are out there, many of which are available on a direct-to-consumer way, kind of like Headspace is. Members can go and pay for a subscription themselves to Headspace if they like. So your ability to mention of what a meaningful impact it's had for you as an example may be signposting for that person to say, oh, that's interesting. Or if they are interested, then they'll ask you a question. Well, tell me how that works. I've never meditated. What is that like? What does mindfulness mean, or what does it mean to you, or how do you use it? I think the great thing about the tool is the fact that it has— it's such a broad tool in that it has focused music. So if you just want to leverage music, if you want to work on your movement and start having more movement, physical movement in your life, there are tools built within to help motivate you for those things. Same is true with sleep, which is one of the most significant aspects of our mental health. There are sleep casts and sleep tools that help people get a good night's sleep. And so it's just so— there's so much application for it that your ability to be able to share with someone how it's impacted you, and especially if you can do so in a way that's not like overly— that doesn't require them to be overly vulnerable, I think that— That might be a good way to do it. Sleep's an easy thing to talk about. Exercise is an easy thing to talk about. So, you know, I might start there, and then you'll be able to work in the idea, oh, and by the way, it also helps people with anxiety. It also helps people with depression. I think that would be a brilliant way to start.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast, that's us, by the way, and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the We actually have a lot in common.
Al ElliottWe both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)And 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking.
Al ElliottAnd you're not going to say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
JasonIt is.
Leanne ElliottIt's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)It can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)I am.
Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back. I've got Keep that in.
Leanne ElliottAnd you know, it's not just leaders that need to role model these behaviours, it's frontline managers too, because these frontline managers are often the people that will set the tone for our culture. As somebody I spoke to recently said, you know, line managers are often the culture keepers, which I quite liked. One of my favourite definitions of workplace culture is that workplace culture is defined by the worst behaviours tolerated. So we know that any kind of workplace that lacks basic civility, respect, that is going to lead to emotional exhaustion, to greater conflict, and of course, you know, withdrawal, which those 3 things actually together are the key pillars of burnout. So we really need to train our minds not only to support people in their own wellbeing, but also from a commercial and legal point of view, risk any grievances appearing as well in the workplace. So, managers don't just need to role model these behaviours, they need to police them too. Here's Jason for more on training managers.
JasonYes, that is the challenge for anybody who's managing people. And it's so funny because the reality is that the frontline manager is often the first person who recognises when someone's in trouble. They're the person who's overseeing the work that someone's someone does. If someone needs time off, they have to come to this person. If there's conflict between that person and a coworker, the manager, frontline manager, is going to be the first to hear about that, right? So the manager has a front row seat to impairment, so to speak. And we train people, we train supervisors and managers on how to have a constructive conversation with people, the ability to be able to sit down with someone and in a very nonjudgmental way, talk about the behaviors that you've seen, talk about what you've witnessed, and then open the door for a conversation. You would be amazed at the amount of information and how easily people share if they feel like you're asking because you really care. If you're noticing, hey, you know what? I'm worried about you. Here's what I've been seeing. How are things? You would be amazed at how many people are responsive to that, how many people are like, oh my gosh, thank you for asking. Or you'll get enough information for you to take that next step. I don't think that— I think you said, where's the line? The line to me is that a manager should care. A manager should intervene and express that care, point them to the many benefits that an employer's offering, kind of like Headspace Health or an EAP or any other benefit that I don't wanna go on about this, but we were Samaritans, which basically meant they were professional—
Al Elliottwell, not professional, but we were, we were volunteer listeners in a listening service in, in the UK. And one of the greatest things about that was explaining how you can sort of distance yourself from the— some of the potentially horrific stuff you hear on the phone from callers, and your everyday life. And I won't go into the ins and outs, but if you are interested in that, then look up Samaritans because it is really, really interesting. So I asked Jason from Headspace a bit more about how non-trained people can establish these kind of boundaries.
JasonThe line really is not getting involved in whatever the issue is and not taking ownership of whatever the issue is, because therapists are taught as part of our training to have really good boundaries and to not own somebody else's issues. A non-trained person who asks how someone's doing and then hears of very sad or horrific kinds of situations that someone might be experiencing at that time, it's hard not to want to say, oh my gosh, how can I help? How can I, you know, like, oh, you're going to be kicked out of your home? Can I give you a loan? That would be a terrible thing for a manager to do, right? You can't own the problem. You can care, And you can help them get to a place where they can get help. But I think a good, healthy boundary between a manager and someone they're managing is probably pretty healthy.
Leanne ElliottSo, our culture audit, the RX-7, is based on a lot of wellbeing research and literature, and one of the foundations that comes up every single time we do an audit with a business is resources, and that includes providing manageable workloads, which I know is really tough, especially in today's climate, especially with the ongoing fight for talent. After speaking to Ryan, it really does seem to be a universal challenge.
RyanSo the biggest cause of stress in the workplace is workload, not a lack of anything. And the traditional approach to fixing people in the workplace is to give them more to do, whereas we should consider if you're A glass of water and your glass is already full up to the top, pouring something else in the glass, you're just going to make a mess on the table. You are, you are the mess on the table. What we can do is actually look at the glass and consider what's in there. If this piece is too large, how do we configure the work properly? How do we consider the digital boundaries? How can we give people space, time, flexibility, autonomy? So if you're going to do anything today, it's something so simple. But if you auto-schedule your meetings to finish 5, 10 minutes early and you've got 6 meetings per day, say, do you know how much time you save per year? Nearly 6 work weeks per year per person. So when we configure the tech and the environment around us, this gives us space because you already know that an apple is better than a packet of crisps, that getting off your butt is better than sitting on it all day, that calling a loved one is better than being isolated and head down all day. We just need the space to do it, and that would be the biggest gift that you can give someone today. And then you can use these amazing solutions, applications, webinars, all these incredible people here that are changing the game, right? But the precursor to all of that is a bit of space. We do that and then we give people— here you go, here you go, Steve, here's some time. You're allowed to take that time, prioritize that time, build your day around it. We trust you to focus on outcomes.
Leanne ElliottManaging by outcome seems to me like the obvious solution to any managers or leaders that have beef around, around remote working, around technology. You know, I think, yeah, fair enough, people could have more than one job if you don't have eyes on them. People might go on these hush trips. Do you remember that word of the week from a while back, Al?
Al ElliottI do.
Leanne ElliottUh, you know, they could go abroad and work remotely and you have no idea. They could be using ChatGPT for a proportion of their work and you have no idea. But if we're managing by outcomes from a commercial perspective, we know what we need to achieve to stay on track. So how those outcomes are achieved doesn't really matter, you know, in the, in the big picture of things. My concern more comes from if there are people out there that are working more than one job remotely, the impact that's going to have on them. And that could be another job, it could be a significant side hustle, you know, how is that gonna impact on their resilience, on their families, on their recovery time, and on managing those conflicting priorities? That, I think, is something we need to be very, very aware of. Ryan also brings up some of these very topical conversations that are happening around working from home and the integration of work and life.
Ryan'Cause you can take a horse to the well-being water, but you can't make it drink. So you can create the space and do all these things a business can, but then it's down to the individual. But you can encourage them, you can show them the way, you can get leaders to exemplify this behavior. So this for me is the work, the future of work that we want to work in. So tech is the issue but also the solution. 89% of people are working outside traditional work hours now, but I think it's 64% of people are doing personal stuff inside of work hours. So find me someone that hasn't done their ironing while on a company all-hands and I'll find you a liar. And that's cool. We just need to configure the work. Forget work-life balance, it doesn't exist. It's life, which work is one part of, and it certainly isn't the first part. If we're going to use work-life balance, let's use life-work, because you need to prioritize the things that you need to do to be your best self each day. Because as my mate RuPaul says, if you don't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?
Leanne ElliottAmen, Al. I told you, RuPaul Charles is one of the greatest philosophers of our time. And if you won't believe me, then believe the future of wellbeing leader at Deloitte.
Al ElliottI do believe you. I do. And I just, it did make me smile when I was going through the notes of this thing that Ryan brought her up to.
RyanI love it.
Al ElliottNo list on future trends is gonna be complete without us talking about AI. So number 7 is technology and AI. The one thing we haven't quite worked out yet is the sort of the idea of privacy, the idea of how do we not share information, particularly if you're using a cloud-based, uh, language— large language model where you are potentially uploading sensitive information to it. That's something we're not ways down. But, but to be fair, it's only really been commercially usable for the last sort of 6, 8 months. So that will come. I asked Jason about the technology and the AI behind Headspace, the app.
JasonUm, our, our use of, um, augmented intelligence, and augmented meaning that We have artificial intelligence that's running in the background of everything we do. Our coaching interaction is done via discrete and confidential chat communication, so it feels very much like texting with a family member or a friend. Every single text and chat that happens on our system rolls into our AI, and it feeds this incredibly large database that we've built over the last decade. What that does, we build algorithms and predictive models that that information bounces up against, that information produces meaningful insight to our care team in real time while they're working with members. The care team then gets that information and decides the appropriate time, how to contextualize that, how to make that a natural part of the conversation. So we don't want the AI actually doing any of the care. I want our care team doing that, but we want to power them with absolutely everything that we can. in that process. And that's, that's really what distinguishes us. So it's the immediacy, it's the broad nature of what we do, and it's the technology.
Leanne ElliottSo technology and AI is something we have been chatting to our guests about for a very long time. So I had a dive back into the Truth and Lies archive and found some clips, some that you've heard, some that you haven't, from previous guests. First, we have Dr. Ryan Sherman from Hogan Assessment Systems.
?Right. Most countries have anti-discrimination hiring laws where you can't hire, because that's the real concern, right? The concern is that these AI will cause adverse impact in hiring, and there is some legitimate concern there. So there's— and the topic of AI is so expansive that there's so many different tools that go in and that are part of this. But some of the tools that I've looked at, automatic resume readers. Years ago, gosh, it's been several years now, Amazon had a tool that would recruiting engineers, and they had to get rid of it because the tool, the AI tool that they built, it was just picking men. It was just like, oh, we know what makes a good engineer, a man. Then it was just finding men and only trying to recruit men for these jobs. That's actually not a problem of the algorithm. People blame the algorithm. Oh, the algorithms are the real problem. Um, there's, uh, this one, uh, really well-known, uh, woman who's written several books about sort of like the war against algorithms and all that. And it's—
Louiseit's—
?the algorithms aren't the problem, right? The algorithms, uh, are just trying to reflect what you tell it to reflect, right? So if you say, this is what I want in this job, then it will go— it will go find that so incredibly well that it will uncover biases that perhaps you didn't even know that you had. That's what these algorithms are really doing in the case of the Amazon case. There's other cases too, where there's phone interviews or video interviews. There's some great reporting by some investigative journalists who actually trained actors to do phone interviews, do these automated interviews over and over again, the same way, to do the exact same interview over and over again. But they would change little things, right? They would change something in the background, like whether there would be a picture or whether it would be dark or whether it would be well-lit, or whether they were wearing a burqa or whether they're wearing a scarf or whether they're wearing glasses. They would change all these little features, and then we get very different personality scores based on those little feature changes, which tells you that there's really something problematic about using AI in that way. You shouldn't get a different personality score if you're wearing glasses or not. We actually have a ton of data on this. There's no There's no difference in whether you wear glasses or not in your personality. So, so that's one of the, that's one of the concerns is that people are using these tools in ways that are really, um, biased, really inaccurate.
Leanne ElliottSo those are our 7 future wellbeing trends, and I think could be summarized by wellbeing is here to stay so long as we start to prove its impact and ROI. What do you think, Elle?
Al ElliottYeah, I mean, ROI is everything in business, isn't it? You're not gonna do anything without ROI. So let's just, let's once and for all put this to bed and go, wellbeing has an ROI. You just need to find it. Okay, rant over.
Leanne ElliottSo to recap those 7 future trends for you. Trend number 1, the ongoing destigmatization of mental health.
Al ElliottTrend number 2, employee engagement and connection is key.
Leanne ElliottTrend number 3, metrics and measurement.
Al ElliottTrend number 4, work— the workplace needs to be personalized and customized to individuals.
Leanne ElliottTrend number 5, we need to take a more holistic approach to wellbeing.
Al ElliottTrend number 6, it's all about leadership and culture.
Leanne ElliottAnd trend number 7, technology and AI will continue to change the world, including the world of wellbeing.
Al ElliottWell, there you have it. It's this stage of the podcast, normally say that's a lot, but there's Oh, that's a lot. There was only 7, and, um, we've done— I think we've done a good deep dive into each one of those. Uh, if you're interested in connecting with some of our guests, there's more— there's, there's all the details in the show notes. But in their own words, this is how you can find out a bit more about Louise from Business in the Community.
LouiseSo basically, go to Business in the Community's website, bitc.org.uk. You'll find the report, which has got an accompanying deck So if you want to engage your own executive C-suite, you can do that. There's also a collection of really engaging videos from a variety of business leaders, including Javier Echave, David Wright, Chief Engineer at National Grid, and our own CEO, Mary MacLeod. There's also an elevator pitch animation, which is very useful. So everything to do with the campaign is on BRTC's website, and there's more coming down the line in September.
Al ElliottAnd this is how you can find out more from Ryan from Deloitte.
RyanMe, I'm the host of the Audacious Goals Club LinkedIn Live series, bringing together amazing people to be incredibly audacious. And I developed a wellbeing video series called Toilet Break Wellbeing because I think it's this big complex subject, but actually wellbeing is no little thing. It's made up of small things. And for me, it's as simple as going to the toilet. We go 8 times every day. So I made this little video series, and I've done about 70 episodes so far. Yeah. So hit me up on LinkedIn, Ryan Hopkins, um, or Future of Wellbeing on Instagram and TikTok. And yeah, I hope you found this helpful. I appreciate you for having me.
Leanne ElliottAnd we will, of course, leave the links to both Jason and Headspace Health in the show notes so you can find out more.
LouiseCool.
Leanne ElliottSo those are our 7 future trends on wellbeing that we are already starting to see, and we will see more and more over the next 2 to 5 years. I personally am excited. I'm excited that there is a conversation around wellbeing that is more dominant and public in the world of work. I'm also very excited that this theme of evidence and data is really starting to gain traction, and so many more voices in the wellbeing space are making this point. So hurrah to them. So thank you to Louise, Ryan, and Jason. It has been wonderful to have you on the show and share your incredible insights. Next week we are bringing you a slightly slower summer vibe. It'll be our first episode in August, and we hope you're taking time out to relax, to recharge. Um, if you've been listening to us at all, hopefully you are. So we thought next week we will bring you some lighter and entertainment, and maybe some sources of— what'd be the right word, Al? Self-care, reflection.
Al ElliottAnd all in, all in, uh, in poetry. We'll be writing the entire thing and doing our own home-written poetry poems.
Leanne ElliottWe might even have a piña colada in hand.
Al ElliottWell, look forward to it. See you next week.
?Bye-bye.
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