Transcript:
Alyssa Place (00:00):
Welcome to Perk Up, a podcast about workplace culture and benefits brought to you from the team at Employee Benefit News. I'm Alyssa Place, executive editor at EBN. With Perk Up, my colleagues and I are sharing the stories of businesses who have implemented forward thinking, covetable workplace policies and benefits, keeping their employees happy and their company's bottom line thriving. This week I dive into total wellness and what that looks like in today's workplace.
(00:34)
It's a common New Year's resolution, get fit, eat better, work on your health. But this year let's resolve to do things a bit differently instead of sweating it out alone in a gym before work hours or scarfing down a sad desk salad before back-to-back zooms. Employers are taking a more integrated approach to health and wellness at work, and it's not just about a number on the scale. Encouraging employees to prioritize their total wellbeing can lead to increased productivity, improved physical and mental health, and a more dynamic workplace culture that's appealing to job seekers and current employees alike. MasterControl, a Salt Lake, city based management software platform, reaps those benefits each and every day. Keeping active in any form is such a prioritized value at the company. They literally pay employees to play team sports with their colleagues. Nearly half of their staff participates in one of their 24 fitness clubs from cycling, skiing and running clubs to walking yoga and meditation groups. Employees get paid time to participate in activities and MasterControl pays for team swag like gear or entry fees to tournaments. Alicia Garcia, MasterControl's chief culture officer says it's not about guilting employees into exercising or having a workplace that's in peak physical shape. Instead, the teams are a fun and innovative way to build community, improved mental health, and find that all important and often elusive work-life balance. Garcia shares how the company got this program off the ground.
Alicia Garcia (02:12):
MasterControl has always been incredibly focused on health and wellbeing, and that's in all aspects of employee health. So that was everything from mental health to physical health to even the health of our families because that absolutely plays a role in the support that employees get while they're on their wellness journey. So I've been doing these programs for about 10 years at MasterControl and they probably started with five clubs and they're very traditional. It was probably walking, running, biking, very simple, and HR would manage these programs and help encourage people to come in. It's a minor expense for the company and it's something that we find is now part of the culture. Currently, we have 24 fitness clubs in the company. Employees are encouraged to sign up for these fitness clubs, participate, but what's really special is that it's something that they're passionate about and they get to participate with individuals throughout the company that they may never interact with. It's healthy. The company gives them time. We sponsor them for different events. They get to build relationships and they actually get to do something they enjoy.
Alyssa Place (03:18):
MasterControl had to learn a few hard lessons before they locked into a plan that worked for their team's culture. Garcia says the company initially launched a Biggest Loser-style challenge to incentivize workers to improve their habits, but realized quickly employees were engaging in unhealthy behaviors and an effort to drop pounds. Switching to a team sport mentality took the pressure off and allowed employees to reach their wellness goals on their own terms.
Alicia Garcia (03:47):
When I first started with the company, we actually tried a program that was modeled off of The Biggest Loser, and we thought, what a great way to help encourage employees and we would have a weight loss contest and we'd have employees weigh in, and we actually realized that that created some really unhealthy habits in our employees. They would starve themselves before weigh-ins, and at that point we had some great data for us to realize, you know what? People really need to think more of a healthy mindset when we're going through wellness versus competitions where you just win, right? And it has to be a lifestyle change. It can't be something that just affects employees at one particular period of time. So we redesigned our entire program at that point.
Alyssa Place (04:31):
Since then, the clubs have expanded and are run by the employees themselves who serve as team captains. Not only has this encouraged more people to get involved, the company was even able to lower their healthcare premiums two years in a row, pre pandemic. Most importantly, employees feel good in and out of the office. Garcia says,
Alicia Garcia (04:52):
If you know you're going to have an hour a week that the company is paying you to exercise and meet with your colleagues, then you're going to be really focused during your other time because you're not worried like, I never get to exercise. No, I've got that on Wednesday's at noon, we're going to do a lunchtime run, so then I'm going to focus on my work until I get to that point. If I go out for a run with our runner's club, I only need about an hour and it actually didn't cost the company anything. It's usually on my lunch break, but I know that I'm empowered to take that time to meet up with my colleagues to exercise. It doesn't take away from my family time after work hours, then I'm able to go home and feel like I worked hard today, I exercised today, I feel successful, and now I want to be successful in my personal life. And I actually think that really starts relating into our wellness journey from a mental standpoint.
Alyssa Place (05:39):
While MasterControl's program was well established before the pandemic hit today, the field is getting crowded with employers who are realizing the benefits of a healthy workforce. More and more employers are stepping up their wellness benefits beyond health insurance plans, seeking to integrate physical mental health to best support their workers. While 77% of private industry employees have access to health insurance plans and even greater share of employers are offering lifestyle benefits like weight loss programs, mental health resources and behavioral health coaching support, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 84% of employers implemented these benefits into their suite of offerings during the pandemic. Addressing both Mind and Body is the only way forward for today's workforce says Ryan Bonnici, chief Marketing Officer at GymPass, a New York based platform that provides gym memberships and fitness classes as an employee benefit and for Beci attaining that balance is personal.
Ryan Bonnici (06:40):
My mental health was so unstable five years ago. I think over the course of the five years, I really started to realize that balancing my nutrition and my fitness and even just how I manage energy, it's like it's such a process and learning around what that balance looks like for you. But I think I've like worked it out now for me and for me it's like I need to work out every morning before work. That's sort a non-negotiable for me and it could be anything really, but it's kind of like I need an hour to myself each morning. But starting my day with that for really sets me up in the right frame of mind from the start of it.
Alyssa Place (07:20):
Bonnici started at GymPass in 2022 and says the support from his employer has helped him prioritize the healthy habits that have transformed his mental and physical health for the better. Therapy, medication, eating well and exercising are a core part of his day-to-day, and he's quick to share that with his team. That vulnerability has not only been accepted but valued.
Ryan Bonnici (07:44):
We want people to come in, we want them to thrive here. It's by demonstrating my own vulnerability that people will just tell me their challenges because I think I have created a space in which it's safe for them to do that cause I'm doing it myself.
Alyssa Place (08:09):
Despite this open door policy and a suite of employee benefits that offers a variety of health and wellbeing, perks, even Gym Pass's employees get stuck putting their health on the back burner. To combat that, Bonnici says he's made a point to be explicit in his calendar notices to destigmatize the time he takes off for a therapy appointment or workout class, and he's ended meetings early to ensure employees have the time they need to tend to their own needs over those of the company
Ryan Bonnici (08:38):
I put my therapy on my calendar as a public thing so everyone in the company can see this is when I do therapy. I don't care how important the meeting is, no meeting is more important than my therapy. Similarly with my work out, I work my body and I work out my brain and to me, there's no difference between the two of them. They're both incredibly important to me. If I'm having a tough week or if I struggling, I have on several occasions sent a message to my direct reports. "I'm so sorry, I'm canceling all my meetings today. I'm taking a mental health day," and I've had them then come up to me when they needed to have mental health days themselves. We're not solving crazy world problems here. I mean with my team specifically, we're doing marketing. We're marketing something that I'm really proud. Companies and individuals making well-being universal, but at the end of the day, I'm a marketing team and no one's going to die if the campaign doesn't come out of the door today. And so I try to be really real with my team.
Alyssa Place (09:47):
That attitude has been beneficial for both Bonnici's well=being and that of his colleagues, and it's an ethos that extends through the entire GymPass community. Chief People Officer Livia de Bastos Martini says that leading by example and offering flexibility is integral. What won't work is forcing them to engage.
Livia de Bastos Martini (10:08):
You need to create a context that also motivates people. So it's not just we have this, no, it's you have flexibility to do this. All of the leaders are doing this as well. It is something that's rewarded and positively viewed at the company if you're taking care of yourself because putting the burden exclusively on the employees is not going to work. So it is for me, I like to do yoga. You may like to do CrossFit and somebody else may like to just do meditation. Not leaving anyone behind is a big deal, but it's essentially how do we keep creating the sense of belonging to a larger group? This is a hundred percent connected to wellness in my mind because if you see the relevance of what you're doing and how you're contributing to the mission of the company, it makes you even more engaged.
Alyssa Place (11:08):
MasterControl's Alicia Garcia has seen a similar mindset shift within their workforce too, while just about half of their employees are participating in teams and clubs, forcing 100% participation will only hurt those efforts overall. Instead, engagement should feel organic and most importantly, fun, Garcia says.
Alicia Garcia (11:29):
I think that's a really important part of these programs. If I force you to, if I say as manager, you need to make sure your team participates in it, you're just not going to get genuine interaction and it will do nothing to affect lifestyle at the end of the day, when it comes to wellness, it has to be your total life. It can't just be for one hour a day once a week. It's got to be all the time. You have to be always thinking about it.
Alyssa Place (11:52):
Back at GymPass, this more nuanced approach to health and wellness has changed what they offer through their platform to both clients and their own employees. De Bastos Martini says they've recalibrated their efforts to get people engaged. The company has partnering with gyms like LA Fitness and Orange Theory and has expanded their partnerships to include one-on-one personal training services through TraniAct. They also expanded their existing partnerships with meal planning and diet app Life sum. Those incentives and that spirit of belonging are increasingly more appealing to workers. GymPass conducted their annual state of work-life wellness report and found that 83% value well-being support just as much as their salary and 77% are prepared to leave their company if they don't feel their employer prioritizes their well-being. The employers who encourage and participate in the programs themselves will see a greater return on investment and a more loyal and motivated workforce. De Bastos Martini explains,
Livia de Bastos Martini (12:53):
You see people around you maybe losing weight that was important for them, or they see that they're eating better and they see difference in their skin or their hair. It's so engaging, it's so contagious in that good way that if you ensure you have a minimum level of company movement or a group of people moving together, I think it's just a self-reinforcing cycle, but it has to come from a genuine place of wanting to invest in the wellbeing of everyone. Just to see that one person, this is me, Livia, as an individual, I can have a lot of impact on everybody else around me, but I can also create policies that really institutionalize how everybody else is going to experience this. People feeling empowered, cared for. I can't say I care about your wellness but you're going to work eighty hour weeks. This is not congruent. But it's saying, I think I consider your wellness a priority for me, so I think you should consider it for you. What are we going to do to make it work? You have flexible policies, you have my support, you have benefits in other programs that can help you, and I'm here for you.
Alyssa Place (14:13):
While not every employer has the means to ramp up their wellness programs this year, finding other ways to encourage healthy habits can go a long way. Garcia believes the fitness clubs are a low-cost way to, as she says, put your money where your mouth is when committing to employee wellness.
Alicia Garcia (14:30):
It's a small perk, but it's something that means a lot for their day-to-day and just shows that we mean it. When we want to support your healthy lifestyle, we are going to put our money where our mouth is. We are absolutely going to support you on that journey. We want you to be successful in your personal life and your professional life, and that really does require us saying, make sure when you go home you feel like you can be with your families or your friends or whatever your lifestyle is and you feel supported by us. At the end of the day, your help is an individual journey. It's about your own genetic makeup. It's about your lifestyle. It is about your own comfort level and what makes you feel happy and motivated. But if you are interested in a social program, I'm able to provide you with a social network.
Alyssa Place (15:14):
That personalized approach has transformed Bonnici's attitude about work and his own well-being. He's on a mission to ensure that more employees feel empowered to take control of their own wellness and feel safe turning to their employers for that guiding hand.
Ryan Bonnici (15:30):
We really do have those healthy habits in place and people really hold each other accountable to those healthy habits. That's really what the whole idea of wellness is about. It's, it's not about one versus the other. It's the heavier the work becomes the more important my wellness practice becomes to me. So on weeks that I know are going to be extra busy, they're the weeks that I categorically cannot miss my workout cause it helps me keep everything in a really good place. We do a good job constantly asking employees for feedback and constantly adjusting work. Wellness is really about you as an individual, working out what works for you and adjusting. I feel it's so much than it's employees live that vision internally and I think it shows in terms of the passion and the people and how connected we all are as colleagues.
Alyssa Place (16:44):
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Perk Up. We'll be back in two weeks with a new episode on The Truth About Gen Z's Financial Literacy. This episode was produced by Employee Benefit News with audio production by Kellie Malone. Special thanks this week to MasterControl's Alicia Garcia, as well as Livia de Batsos Martini and Ryan Bonnici from GymPass. Rate us and review us wherever you get your podcasts and check out more content from the EBN team at www.benefitnews.com.