In this episode of Honest HR, host Amber Clayton speaks with Rich Safeer, M.D., Chief Medical Director of Employee Health and Wellbeing for Johns Hopkins Medicine and author of A Cure for the Common Company: A Wellbeing Prescription for a Happier, Healthier, and More Resilient Organization about why the workplace is the perfect venue for achieving real improvements in people’s health, how mental health and wellness is a team sport, and steps to begin transforming your organization
Previously brought to the spotlight by the pandemic, organizations’ prioritizing employee mental health and wellness reflects its ongoing importance to employers and employees alike.
But what does the work of creating workplace cultures of mental health and wellness actually entail?
In this episode of Honest HR, host Amber Clayton speaks with Rich Safeer, M.D., Chief Medical Director of Employee Health and Wellbeing for Johns Hopkins Medicine and author of A Cure for the Common Company: A Wellbeing Prescription for a Happier, Healthier, and More Resilient Organization about:
Earn 0.5 SHRM PDC for listening to this episode; all details in episode.
This episode of Honest HR is sponsored Calm Business.
Speaker 1:
This episode is sponsored by Calm Business. Calm Business is an enterprise-level solution that brings mental health and wellness front and center for global organizations everywhere. To bring Calm to your organization, business.calm.com and book a meeting today.
Monique Akanbi:
Welcome to Honest HR, the podcast for HR professionals, people managers, and team leads intent on growing our companies for the better.
Amber Clayton:
We bring you honest, forward-thinking conversations, and relatable stories from the workplace that challenge the way it's always been done. Because after all, you have to push back to move forward.
Wendy Fong:
Honest HR is a podcast from SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management. And by listening, you're helping create better workplaces and a better world. I'm Wendy Fong.
Amber Clayton:
I'm Amber Clayton.
Monique Akanbi:
And I'm Monique Akanbi.
Wendy, Amber, and Monique:
Now, let's get honest.
Amber Clayton:
Hello everyone and welcome back. I'm your host, Amber Clayton, Senior Director of SHRM's Knowledge Center Operations. On our episode today, we're going to discuss the technical competency, HR expertise, employee engagement, and retention. This podcast is approved to provide 0.5 recertification PDCs, but only if you listen to the full episode.
When we plan our episodes, we think about what is trending or topics that might be seasonal nature, and the topic we're discussing today is both. It hits home for me personally, and I'm sure for many of you as well, and that's mental health and wellness. During the height of the pandemic, SHRM conducted research and found that work-related concerns left more than 40% of our employees feeling hopeless, burned out, or exhausted as they grapple with their lives altered by COVID-19. Although we are not hearing about COVID-19 as much, mental health issues remain and, according to SHRM's 2022 research, thankfully employers are leading the charge to improve mental health in America. Today I'm pleased to be joined by someone who is leading this charge, Dr. Richard Safeer, Chief Medical Director of Employee Health and Wellbeing for Johns Hopkins Medicine, and author of A Cure for the Common Company: A Wellbeing Prescription for a Happier, Healthier, and More Resilient Organization. Welcome to the show.
Rich Safeer:
Thank you, Amber. Thank you so much for including me.
Amber Clayton:
Great, great. And it's okay for me to call you Rich?
Rich Safeer:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Much more comfortable for me.
Amber Clayton:
Okay, wonderful. Wonderful. So I thought we'd start by having you share a little bit about yourself, your background with our listeners, and how you came to work in the field of mental health and wellness.
Rich Safeer:
Thank you, Amber. I pretty much knew that I wanted to go to medical school when I was in high school. And when I got to college and I was studying biology, it really wasn't resonating, so I switched over to study nutrition. And it was then that I realized that there's a lot of potential that we each have within our own decision-making to help ourselves. So I went to medical school, became a family doctor, and then within the first year of practicing, I realized, "Wow, most adults don't have healthy habits and most adults are struggling because there are so many different pressures on them." And it was then that I realized, "I'm seeing patients for 15 minutes and I can't have much of an impact in that short of a time. I think there's a much bigger opportunity to support the health and wellbeing of a large number of people in the workplace." Everybody who works spends almost 2,000 hours a year working, so what better place is there than the workplace to help support mental health and wellbeing?
Amber Clayton:
Yeah, absolutely. And as you're saying this, I'm thinking to myself. I just had a conversation with someone today about how I feel like I've struggled all my life with mental and physical health issues and having to go on diets, and people saying, "You got to exercise," and it's hard. It's hard for someone, especially someone of my age. And so like I mentioned, it definitely hits home for me. I've been in HR for many years and I have found in the past that employers were sometimes hesitant to talk about mental health issues and wellness in the workplace. I think there's been a fear that once an employer knew that someone had a mental health issue, for example, they might be obligated to provide some type of accommodation, or they might not know how to handle it. They don't want to bring it up because the focus is on the work-related issues, not necessarily that, so it's good to know that employers are focusing more on it. But for those who aren't, do you think it's so important for employers to support mental health and wellbeing in the workplace?
Rich Safeer:
So just to reflect on this idea that most leaders, most organizations, they don't talk about mental health and wellbeing, I absolutely agree because let's face it. When people go through, let's say, business school or they get promoted into a management position ... Amber, tell me. When you were being trained and getting certifications in HR, how many hours did they spend on employee health and wellbeing? What was your experience going through?
Amber Clayton:
Not many. Not many that I can recall.
Rich Safeer:
Right? And then we're all taught, "Okay, you're going to the workplace. Don't talk about politics and don't talk about people's health. Those are private." And so yeah, we've been hardwired and trained not to talk about this. Now, we're just going the opposite way. It's absolutely possible to balance privacy and discuss health and wellbeing. I mean, we actually have been doing it for 40 or 50 years in the context of workplace safety, right? When people have to go lift boxes as part of their job, or if you were sitting at a computer and your employer helps design your workstation so that you don't have a repetitive motion injury, this is health and this is just an extension of it.
Sticking with the person who's working at their desk all day, great. You may not have a work like a repetitive motion injury because you got an ergodynamically-sound workstation, but guess what? If your work is stressing you out and you have a headache the whole day, you're really not doing your best work. So there's no better place to address health and wellbeing than the workplace because this is where we spend most of our waking hours.
Amber Clayton:
Absolutely. I've been asked a few times to speak about the importance of having a good workplace culture and what does that look like. And I don't think that many employers think about employee wellbeing as part of that building that culture. You mentioned, in the book, a phrase, "wellbeing culture." What does that mean?
Rich Safeer:
I want to recognize that most of us think that wellbeing is something that we have to do alone. This is like, "It's your life. It's your health. If you want to do something about it, do something about it." We all grow up and we develop habits and thought processes as we're kids, and then changing those habits and changing the way we think as adults is a bit tricky. It's hard, and yet it's really not realistic and it's not the most effective way for us to think about doing this alone. We really are much more likely to develop healthy habits, get rid of unhealthy habits, have more positive emotions when we engage with the people around us. And in the conversation today, it's engagement with our manager, our coworkers, our entire organization.
Culture is the shared behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes of a group of people. So when we talk about wellbeing culture, it's the shared behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes around wellbeing. And in our conversation in this podcast, it's about the shared behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs of wellbeing in the workplace. You can absolutely shape the wellbeing culture of your workplace, just as we've already shaped a safety culture in many workplaces. It's just a matter of applying the science and making it meaningful, and providing a step-by-step plan to get there.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that actually. Because I think anytime there's any type of initiative, employers sometimes just don't know where to begin. So I guess the first thing to ask would be who is responsible for building this wellbeing culture that you mentioned?
Rich Safeer:
So I wrote A Cure for the Common Company because everybody's responsible. In particular, every manager, every leader at every level of the organization. Now, it's great if you have someone who's trained and qualified and has experience like my team does. However, any organization who just rests on a team to do this work will not succeed. They will not reach their potential. Most organizations are not as large as Johns Hopkins and, frankly, you don't need to have a huge team. You really just need to get the training. That's why I wrote A Cure for the Common Company, so that every leader and every manager can play their role.
Amber Clayton:
Great. So some employers, they have programs like the tobacco surcharges or the wellness incentives. Some have health fairs annually. They bring in resources, vendors in from their EAP programs or health insurance programs. How does one begin to assess whether they have a culture of wellbeing, or they have a good start to a culture of wellbeing?
Rich Safeer:
Yes. So each of the benefits that I just heard you speak of are really benefits of programs, resources. They don't really speak to how an employee feels about the shared behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs. The quality of the culture is really in the perception of the individual and, in this case, in the perception of each employee. So in my opinion, to get at the root of whether or not you have a good wellbeing culture, or how good, you really need to ask your employees. So there are questions that an employer can ask to get at the root of the six building blocks needed to create a wellbeing culture. It also happens to be that the companies that are considered "best companies to work for" or "great place to work," there's a high correlation between those companies and their effort to support the health and wellbeing of their employees. So I would say there's two different paths you can take, or take both of them. Because at the end of the day, if we're not protecting and supporting the health and wellbeing of our workforce, people will walk.
Amber Clayton:
Absolutely. Are you able to tell us a little bit about some of the things that you've done at Johns Hopkins, as far as your culture?
Rich Safeer:
Yeah, absolutely. And we have a lot of it out in the public domain on the internet. I don't know where you'd like to start, Amber, but I'll give you one piece of information, then we can see where you want to go here. And this is available on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention website. We're a published case study on the Center for Disease Control and Preventions website. We're a case study around the comprehensive effort that we've taken to support our employees across a continuum of health issues from prevention, like cancer screening and immunizations, all the way to helping address chronic diseases. And even with those resources, policies, and programs in place, that alone does not tell you whether or not you have the makings of a good wellbeing culture. We actually do a Culture of Health survey every year to assess how our employees are thinking about our wellbeing culture, where are we doing well, and where should we focus the following year.
Amber Clayton:
That survey, do you do that in conjunction with an employee engagement survey or any other kinds of surveys, or is it just a survey that's out on its own, just specific to employee health and wellbeing?
Rich Safeer:
Yeah. We have a health and wellbeing platform and we have a couple of different surveys that we administer every year. One of them is our Culture of Health survey. That's just our own. We designed it and we deliver it and we collect the data. And we're very fortunate because our employees ... We have 57%, or something like that, participation. We're pretty lucky.
Amber Clayton:
That is a very good participation there. What strategies do you have for employers to incorporate mental health and wellbeing in their culture? And I know you can't describe everything that's in the book, but can you just give a few strategies?
Rich Safeer:
Yeah, I'll just give a couple that are probably overlooked frequently. When I look at the industry and the market, I think a lot of employers rely on EAPs and health benefits and just some type of program that our employees can go to. And I certainly believe that we need them, but there are two often overlooked strategies to support mental health in the workplace. One of them is pure support. We are all impacted by the health and wellbeing of the people around us. When our coworkers are happy and engaged, when we have good relationships with people on our team, we are much more likely to be happy ourselves. And then when people are stressed, when people are sad, when people are speaking negatively around us every day, all day, that can bring us down. So there are peer support strategies that employers, in my opinion, pursue them. Set up the infrastructure. You already got the people. It's just a matter of creating the opportunities for coworkers to support each other.
Now, the second way that's often overlooked is the role of the leader in supporting mental health. And I'm not talking about leaders becoming armchair therapists. Please do not do that. That is not your job.
Amber Clayton:
Yes, we do not encourage that.
Rich Safeer:
No. I'm sorry if I'm redundant, but leaders haven't been trained in how to support employee health and wellbeing. Most leaders don't realize that they could have a very positive impact on the mental health of their team, and they can have a very negative impact. Amber, I don't know if you saw recently, I think the company's UKG out of England. They did a survey, a global survey, and they found that the mental health of the 2,000 people they surveyed is most highly correlated to the employee's spouse. And the same percentage who said spouse, 69%, there was another 69% that said that their manager had the greatest impact. Tied. Imagine that your manager has just as much impact on your mental health as your spouse. And so I don't think most people inherently want to harm each other, but I do think that we're not aware of the impact we have on the people we lead. And so merely investing in training leaders to know how their words, actions, and behaviors are impacting their team is really important.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we spend the majority of our days at work or speaking with our manager, so I can completely understand where that's coming from. And as far as training, what are your recommendations? Bring somebody in to train? I mean, obviously, you want some expertise here. So what would you recommend, as far as training for your leaders?
Rich Safeer:
Sure. Well, there are a lot of coaches out there. If you wanted to have one person on one, or coaching a whole executive team, because obviously it's a trickle-down effect. Once the executive team starts to learn the skills that are needed to support health and wellbeing, it's easier for other people to pick it up. But Amber, not every company has the resources to bring someone in. Disclaimer: There's a training program that follows the book at creatingawellbeingculture.com. It's a self-paced training program so that any leader at any time can go out and learn the skills needed to do a better job. Some large organizations have their own organizational development and learning departments and they, I'm sure, can be helpful. I just don't think that we think about it enough. I just don't think that we pause and take the time because everyone's got 50 things on their to-do list.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah, absolutely. So how does a company measure their success?
Rich Safeer:
Yeah. I would use a tool specific for assessing the perception of your employees. Now, there are companies out there like Great Place to Work and Comparably that can help you with that. I also offer samples of tools in the book. I have a chapter called Counting Culture and give three sets of questions, five questions in each set, to help measure different parts of culture. You may find that you're able to create your own question set or that you have an outsourced vendor, like an engagement survey as you brought up earlier, Amber, that has maybe one or two questions. But if you ask that company, they actually may have many more questions, but they just gave you the most frequently asked questions and you can choose to focus on a subset of the questions that they have.
Look it, in my opinion, I'm very biased. If we don't focus on the health and wellbeing of the workforce, nothing else is really going to matter and everything is related to it. And most leaders don't know that not having the right tools and equipment to do one's job actually is a wellbeing question, because who hasn't gotten frustrated when the copy machine is jammed or who hasn't gotten frustrated when their ...
Amber Clayton:
Technology doesn't work.
Rich Safeer:
Yeah.
Amber Clayton:
Technology doesn't work. Having issues, yep.
Rich Safeer:
Absolutely.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah. So you had mentioned some other organizations that have been recognized for their work in this space. Can you give an example of an organization and what they have done?
Rich Safeer:
Sure. I mean, I'll speak to Cisco Systems, the internet company. They've done a great job of filling the six building blocks needed to build a wellbeing culture. They have peer support systems in place. They have a lot of different employee resource groups so that employees who have either a similar background or a similar life circumstance, like new moms that are back to work, to have another group of like-minded people in a similar situation to share their challenges and to help each other brainstorm ways to get through that difficult period. Sure, they have all the mental health resources one would hope for, but they also go an extra step. During the height of the pandemic, they offered those resources to family members and friends because they knew it was important to make sure that their employees were surrounded by mentally healthy people.
Amber Clayton:
Absolutely. Have you seen or heard of any organizations that have decreased turnover or have increased productivity? I know as an HR professional, we tend to go to our executives, our CEOs, and we want to be able to show them the return on investment for looking at these types of programs and initiatives. Of course, they're going to want the numbers. They want to see how is this really impacting the business. So any thoughts around that?
Rich Safeer:
You say that, of course, they want to see the numbers because yeah, that's what they've grown up doing. And the numbers don't always tell the story, okay? How many times have we had to show a return on investment for a chair or a desk or a computer? I don't think that happens. I mean, these are basic tools that many people need to do their job. And I would ask people to start thinking about, "Don't we need our health and wellbeing to do our job well?" We talked earlier about the person sitting at their desk and they got a headache. How great a job are they doing that day? Probably not great. So sure, if you want to look at return on investment and you're determined, then okay. But I think there's some shortcomings.
If you look at Richard Barrett's book, The Value-Based Organization, he does a great breakout of some data around return on investment, and compares the top 40 best US companies to work for against the average S&P 500. And he'll show you that if you follow that path, you're going to be much more profitable. Lots of documentation around the connection between wellbeing, health, and the cost of running a business and profitability. The problem, Amber, is most companies don't have the resources to do an accurate measurement. And I don't want to get too science driven here, but you have to hold a lot of things steady and constant to measure the impact of a dozen things. It's really hard to do a good study. And having been in this space for 25 years, I don't think most organizations do a great job of measuring.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah. That definitely has been a challenge, especially for those smaller to mid-size employers that, like you mentioned, don't have the resources available to them. So what advice could you give our listeners? What other advice can you give to them on this particular topic?
Rich Safeer:
So Amber, I guess one last message to our listeners today is that we often think of our wellbeing and health as an individual endeavor. But really, wellbeing is a team sport. And there's lots of evidence to show that when we work with the people around us to improve our health, we're much more likely to be successful. And when we surround each other with positive emotions and thoughts, we're much more likely to be happy. So I strongly encourage everybody who's listening today to think about how they can work with the people at their job to support their health. Don't go it alone. Find the other people who have the same health goals and you will be so much better off.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah, absolutely. And just for those who struggle with their executive-level team ... I mean, obviously you have to have buy-in from the top-down ... any advice for those leaders who are trying to do this without necessarily the support of their higher-ups, if that makes sense?
Rich Safeer:
Yeah. I mean, almost a grassroots-type of effort. And certainly when I arrived at Hopkins 11 years ago, that first year, there was a lot of grassroots effort that was happening. I was leading by influence and trying to make things happen. And if you make things happen, usually the leaders know. And then all of a sudden, they want in. "Hey, what's going on? What's the buzz?" And so sometimes, it means working a little bit longer because you've got your job to fill and you're trying to do good things for the people you work with. But I would strongly encourage anybody out there who thinks this is an important topic and that you're passionate to go for it and find other people who are passionate about it in your workplace. There are many more people who are interested in their health and wellbeing than there are people who don't care at all about their health and wellbeing, and so it's a matter of finding the other like-minded folks, making sure what you're doing, and then moving forward in a methodical and intentional manner.
Amber Clayton:
Rich, is there anything that surprised you when you wrote this book, or during the process of writing this book?
Rich Safeer:
Yeah, a lot. I mean, during the process of writing the book, I came to realize how much reading I had done over the decades, both research articles and books. And the book reads like a story because there's a ton of stories in it, yet there are a lot of references. I wanted readers to know that I wasn't making this up and that there's real science behind what I'm promoting. The thing that surprised me after the book was written were the leaders who were willing to offer an endorsement of the book. I was just simply thrilled that Janet Foutty, the executive chair of the board for Deloitte, the consulting firm ... She's endorsed the book. She knows that this is a book for all leaders because we don't have enough resources to help our managers.
I was also thrilled to get the endorsement of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. He's an executive coach who helps Fortune 500 CEOs. And I'll just name one more, Amber. You kind of got me really excited. Michael Bush is the CEO of an organization called Great Place to Work, which I'm sure you're familiar with, and he endorsed it because he saw the connection between this wellbeing culture model, this wellbeing culture building, and the company being able to arrive at a great place to work.
Amber Clayton:
Great, thank you. One of the things with our listeners is they want to be able to have some takeaways, as far as can we talk a little bit about some of the activities that employers do to help with the health and wellbeing of the organization? For instance, I know when I was actually at Johns Hopkins Hospital not too long ago with a friend of mine, and I looked at your vending machines and there was a bunch of healthy snacks in there. Here I am looking for the cupcakes and there's a bunch of healthy snacks. I think sometimes hearing some of the things that employers have done is a helpful thing for them. Something I did ... I have a staff of about 25 individuals, and health and wellbeing is not something that we particularly focused on necessarily in our department, but there are things that we have done to encourage conversations around it.
We actually had a meeting one time, and most of my team is remote. And we had a meeting where I put up a poll and the question was, "What causes you the most amount of stress?" and I listed on there, "work," "family," "finances." But the majority of the employees said work, and I was surprised by that. I didn't think that work would be their biggest stressor at that particular moment. And when I saw that it was 40%, I said, "Okay, now we need to figure out what can we do." And so during that particular meeting, we had a conversation where people were sharing ideas with one another around how they reduce their stress. Things like yoga, Pilates, reading, puzzles, drawings, exercising, things of that nature, and it was a really great and productive meeting. Now, of course, that was just one meeting, but that was something that we did so that we had it out there, that we talked about it, and we talked about ways that we could potentially reduce that stress.
Rich Safeer:
I love that because as the leader, you brought it up and you were able to evoke an exchange of information. And it sounds like people on the team trusted each other enough to share intimate information about themselves, knowing that they wouldn't have repercussions. So clearly, you're already doing something well. And on top of that, you made space for the topic. So one of my favorite tips, Amber, because I'm often asked, "If there's only one thing that I had to do, what could I do?" I'm thinking, "Well." But if you only had to pick one thing, I would say put wellbeing on the agenda. Because most teams have a regularly-scheduled meeting, and if wellbeing isn't a standing item, then every time you're about to have the meeting and you're preparing for it, you are prompted to think, "Okay, what is it that we're going to talk about today?"
And Amber, in your case that day, it was, "What are the things that are making us most stressed, and how can we lower that stress level?" So it could be a conversation. It could be a matter of bringing someone in to lead a wellbeing exercise. It could be a matter of someone taking a turn to share something new about their own wellbeing habits. Maybe it's, "Hey, next week we're going to do a potluck. But you know what? I think we're all going to try to make something vegan this time because that'll be new for all of us." Whatever it is, if you have wellbeing on the agenda, then you're going to think of something to do with your team.
Amber Clayton:
I have to laugh about the potluck because I have a couple employees that said, "I will never do a potluck." I love potlucks, but we don't do them necessarily in our department just for that reason. As far as remote ... I mean, we know a lot of employers are remote/hybrid now, workforces where they work at home part of the time, work in the office. Any suggestions or anything that needs to be done differently when you have a group that's partially remote and partially on site?
Rich Safeer:
Yes. Loneliness is a real problem. It's gotten worse. And loneliness is not just someone who feels bad because they're lonely. It actually increases their risk of high blood pressure, increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes. It lowers our immune system, so we're more susceptible to infections. Frankly, people who are lonely die younger. It's really important for us to feel connected. And if people do feel lonely at work, they're more likely to leave. And so while some managers are a little bit afraid of pushing their employees to come into work, I think it's going to be necessary to maintain a team. Because at some point, the employees are going to feel disengaged. They're not going to feel well as an individual.
Now, the other piece of this is if you are going to have people come into work, I strongly recommend that they come in on the same days. Because if people show up and nobody else is there, or just a few people, they're going to be like, "Well, why am I here?" and they're not getting that health benefit from seeing and interacting with their colleagues. So make it that there's a common day or a common couple of days for everyone to meet together.
Amber Clayton:
Yeah, that's what we do on our team. Our remote team, which is primarily in the DMV, they'll come in once a quarter and we'll try to get them in on the same days, and I love it. I love the energy of having people in the office. And I've always worked with this team that's been primarily remote for 11 years that I've been with the organization, so I know exactly what you're talking about. I think it's really important sometimes to have that connection with people not on the phone, not on the conference calls. And with that, I think that's a great place to end here. We've come to the end of our show. Thank you again, Rich, for taking part in this episode.
Rich Safeer:
Thank you, Amber. It's been great.
Amber Clayton:
Lots of great information for our listeners. For our listeners who are SHRM members, you can find resources specific to this topic on SHRM.org. You can also contact SHRM's Knowledge Center and ask one of our HR advisors for assistance at SHRM.org/hrhelp. And this podcast is approved to provide 0.5 recertification PDCs. But again, only if you listen to the full episode. The activity ID is 24-ADEWQ. If you haven't already, please subscribe so you'll never miss an episode, and be sure to rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts. So feel free to reach out to me. You can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn. And if you'd like to learn more about Honest HR podcast, about myself, or the other co-hosts, or to get additional information and resources on what was discussed in today's episode, head on over to SHRM.org/HonestHR. And to learn more about SHRM podcasts in general, check out SHRM.org/podcasts. Until next time.
Speaker 1:
This episode is sponsored by Calm Business. Calm Business is an enterprise-level solution that brings mental health and wellness front and center for global organizations everywhere. Calm believes that the future of work is mental health, and leaders will drive productivity and improve retention in the workplace by making employee mental health and wellness a priority. Calm Business also offers organization-level analytics, insights, and reporting, as well as support for dependence, and workshops specifically made and tailored for your organization. To bring Calm to your organization, visit business.calm.com and book a meeting today.