The Future of Corporate Wellness_

The World Economic Forum has already defined Wellness as an “Imperative” for all companies. It is no longer an optional issue, but not because of regulatory compliance, but because Wellness is the engine that takes the car to its destination, as well as the destination itself. Wellness is the basis for “Organizational Performance, Productivity, Talent Retention, Creativity and Innovation” and is one of the Strategic Pillars for corporations of any size.

Although not all companies are developing or implementing Wellness programs, things are moving rapidly in the world of Corporate Wellness (CW): The integration of the basic components of functional health (nutrition, exercise, stress, emotional work, sleep); the systematic and interrelated integration of the pillars of well-being (emotional, physical, spiritual, environmental, financial, intellectual, etc.); the use of vast technological possibilities; the extension of Wellness to the world of Telework; coaching as a thinking model; the integration of family and the “house” environment in wellness programs; as well as the implementation of increasingly creative and innovative programs that generate engagement and transformation.

In this essay we go beyond these issues.

Based on the Philosophical Principles of Wellness and Social Design, I begin to dream of what Corporate Wellness might look like in the future.

PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATION OF “WELLNESS”

Wellness, Wellbeing, or whatever you want to call it is the quintessential question of humanity. We have been searching for it for thousands of years. And today, with so much knowledge, technology and development, we are still looking for it, wondering how to live and work in Wellbeing and for Wellbeing.

For both individuals and corporations, Well-being is not a matter of goods and services we can buy, but ways of being and thinking. It is not about the absence of disease but of the continuous search for well-being. Including the search for what “well-being” even means.

In order to enter the CW of the future, it will be necessary for us not to lose sight of the fact that Wellness:

• It is a continuum and not a fixed or static state.

• Has a holistic sense that seeks to balance all spheres (physical, mental, financial, environmental, occupational, intellectual) and not necessarily being the best in one of them.

• It is the responsibility of the individual and cannot be delegated to someone else.

• It depends on being able to develop the potential of each entity towards higher stages of well-being.

• It is based on self-knowledge and self-integration.

• It is not obtained overnight, but takes time and practice.

In my opinion, it is better to speak of principles that can serve corporations in their quest to define Well-being than to bring a strict and immovable definition that applies to everyone at all times. What follows are some of the principles that can guide us in inventing the CW of the future:

POTENTIALITY AND CREATIVITY

Since Well-being is always a continuous awakening of potentiality, creativity, and co-creation are a fundamental axis to being able to continue re-inventing the programs, events, needs, solutions, and processes that generate Well-being.

In corporations, or any other type of community, if the culture is a “creative culture”, innovative ideas will always be created.

In a culture where people feel they have the power to choose and influence decisions, then more creativity and collaboration will be achieved.

The Corporate Wellness of the future must understand itself as a Culture Creator so that the things we want to occur, materialize more easily.

The CW of the future understands that the “cultural environment” must be designed in such a way that health, creativity, relationships, and corporate processes become the principles, means, and ends of companies. The CW of the future understands that everything related to a company must be human-centered: Humans are the ones who make up the company, the ones who make things happen, and the end for which these things happen (the customers). Understanding that the entire value chain of a corporation begins and ends with the human allows us to interrogate, in an increasingly profound and effective way, the inexhaustible source of existing potential.

Getting to a final definition of what is “human” is impossible, in a way, the same happens with CW. So, every organization must constantly define and redefine for itself what CW means. And even, someday, include non-human entities to the mix.

IDEAS COME FROM THE INSIDE, NOT FROM ABOVE.

As the radical social designer Cheryl Heller tells us: “Proposals for change emerge from within the communities that want to change”. Perspectives, insights and information are much more valuable coming from the people that the ideas will impact than asking an expert who has implemented programs in another location and organizational culture.

This may sound obvious, but it is very easily forgotten. It is much more comfortable to copy successful programs or earn certificates for meeting certain parameters, than to do the work of understanding your own home. It is easy to think that those who have the best ideas are those who come from outside because they have an “objective” perspective, or that they come from those “above” because they are the ones who know your organization. But any change that a corporation wants to generate — any change that requires the active and voluntary participation of the people who will carry it out — is successful only when the changes are designed WITH THEM and not FOR THEM.

QUESTIONS, NOT ANSWERS

We all know the traditional solutions of Corporate Wellness: Yoga and meditation classes, software and Apps to improve nutrition, exercise, stress; group integration activities; financial wellness tools; clinical consultations, coaching programs, and many more.

All this is fundamental and all companies should already know not only the importance but also the economic benefits of implementing these programs.

But here we are thinking about the CW of the future. How can we add to this already existing and proven base? How can we continue to expand the potential?

The answer is: With more questions.

There is an art to framing questions that lead us to creative innovations. For social designers, the best questions are vague enough to allow ample space for observation and, at the same time, they are specific enough that they push us into deep analysis and reflection.

As Heller notes, powerful questions demand thinking beyond the obvious and the usual. They prevent us from repeating the same things we already know or take for granted. Powerful questions are irresistible and intriguing when they are relevant and above all, they unite and bring together the people who are looking for the answers.

Questions are the basis of Wellness because they are the best way to continue becoming aware of ourselves. And in this sense, questions become experiments, which, as such, take on more importance than plans. In the future, we will use the power of prototypes to be able to choose which actions work best for the organizational culture we want to create, the productivity we want to achieve, and the well-being we want to embody.

THE POWER OF CONTEXT

Corporations are living entities. And no living being can be fully understood outside the context of which it exists. Everything we do is connected to other things and to other people. In order to understand the forces that shape the systems in which we work and collaborate, we have to study the context of the situation that we are seeking to improve or transform.

What are the invisible dynamics behind the actions of a company’s employees? What social, political, economic and ideological contexts directly but invisibly permeate the attitudes, movements, relationships, objectives, and processes that occur within my company?

The CW processes of the future include the constant study of these intangible and tangible forces. Understanding people, places, events, and internal and external cultural dynamics as relationships and not as separate entities is key to using context to our advantage.

THE ICEBERG AND THE MIRROR

The identity that we have as individuals and as corporations is our destiny. The story we tell ourselves, defines our relationships and determines the paths we decide to walk to go where we want to go.

When we plan Wellness interventions in our companies, or when we hire a CW provider in the future, we will not only need them to understand us (the Company), but to make us understand how we understand ourselves (how the company sees itself). Organizations that see themselves as winners tend to win. Corporations that understand themselves as _________________ (“healthy”, “creative”, “innovative”, “disruptive” choose the adjective you want) tend to be exactly that.

In order to understand the image that a corporation has of itself, that is, the image that the employees of the corporation have of itself, it is necessary to unearth the Iceberg of the Unspoken Rules, the Deep Culture and the Unconscious Rules that lie below. This will lead us to understand the conflicts, obstacles, needs, assumptions, beliefs, preferences, emotions, and paradigms that govern our actions but that we do not realize because they are habits personality, organizational culture, as well as automatic and inertial processes.

We are well aware of the skills needed to face the world of tomorrow: creativity, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, growth mindset, communication skills, and cognitive flexibility. All these skills will help us adapt and prosper in a complex world that changes at ever-accelerating paces, and whose problems require a constant re-invention of people, communities and systems. The CW of the future has to think very deeply about how to integrate these needs through the construction of its own identity and the use of its own language. To do this, the Iceberg and the Mirror will require us to touch vulnerable points and force us to have uncomfortable conversations. Only in an environment where the discomfort of self-knowledge and risk-taking is nurtured, self-transcendence will be possible. Wellness includes taking risks.

SOCIAL NETWORKS

We are all shaped by the nature and quality of our inter-personal relationships. Our health and well-being depend on our social networks, as does any large-scale business project. The focus for the CW of the future will be to understand the needs and norms of the groups in order to strengthen the trust and interdependence of its people.

They have taught us to measure and therefore to value transactions: Investments and investors, sales, click count. All of this metrics will continue to be useful because they help us locate our organization at all times, but gradually, we will expand our transactional mentality and complement it with a relational mentality.

As Heller so correctly proposes, when the process of communication, of uniting, is well enabled, people learn new things every day. Truth and aspirations are put on the table, and when shared with others, “the atmosphere is lightened in the same way as when one opens the window of a car that has been recycling the same air for a long time”.

Focusing on facilitating, amplifying and encouraging networks of people within organizations is one of the best bets we can make, not only for the well-being of interconnected people, but also for the continuous reinvention that a business constantly requires.

THE FUTURE

The CW of the Future will depend enormously on being able to create systems and creative processes that take us from isolated actors to integrated organisms; from directive and affirmative positions to self-critical, creative and changing processes; from vertical executions to community leadership; from linear thinking to systems thinking.

The CW of the future must believe and start from the idea that identity is fluid and changing. This can only be achieved with the full participation of the people who make up the teams of people in question. The level of growth, empathy, resilience, innovation, leadership, productivity, disruption, will depend on this constant game of mirrors, on observing the languages ​​we use to define ourselves and by forging through identity the future that is desirable, and possible, for us.

For those of us who are interested in continuing to explore the possibilities of the CW, the question is and will always be the same: What, when, who and how is the Corporate Wellness of the future?

References:

Heller, Cheryl. 2018. The Intergalactic Design Guide: Harnessing the Creative Potential of Social Design. Island Press.

Strickler, Yancey. 2019. This could be our future: A manifesto for a more generous world. Penguin Random House.

World Economic Forum. 2014. The Wellness Imperative: Creating More Effective Organizations Report. Available here