Wellness - Essential or Cliché?

Wellness – essential or cliché?

By: Katerina Marinov, SHRM-SCP, MHRM, PPA
March 26, 2021

“It’s up to you today to start making healthy choices. Not choices that are just healthy for your body, but healthy for your mind.”- Steve Maraboli

We have all heard the mantras telling us how we can stay healthy: exercise, eat well, sleep, etc. They are very easy to ignore in the name of ‘productivity’, and ‘getting work done’. But the science is clear – taking care of ourselves can directly improve the very ‘productivity’ it is claimed to detract from. Our mental and physical wellbeing has a tremendous impact on our cognitive capabilities, mood, and energy levels. We are all very aware of the benefits of physical health, but I would like to re-emphasize the ‘mental’ aspect – many of us replace “wellbeing” with “fitness” and draw the line there. Almost one-quarter of U.S. employees reported feeling emotionally drained or having trouble concentrating during the COVID-19 outbreak, according to research from the Society for Human Resource Management. Mental health issues, stigmatized as they are, affect more than 1 in 5 adults nationwide every year, leading to 200 million lost workdays, and costing business an estimated $200 billion.

How do we promote wellness at SAGE?

In wealth management, having a growing and vibrant client base is a key to our continued success. At SAGE we believe that our team members are the heart and soul of our business and our most important asset. Our priority and approach are to ensure that we are always putting our employees first. As such, taking care of our clients, starts with hiring and retaining talented team members and taking care of our team members. These core beliefs are what drives a great deal of the decisions we make on how we approach wellness as well. Our Total Rewards Program is built intentionally around the concept of a culture of health – it is about creating a culture that is supportive of our employees’ career, emotional, financial, physical and social well-being. Our employee-focused approach inspires us to live our motto “Doing well, while doing good”, with deliberate and discerning wellness components, some of which include:

Flexible work schedules, opportunity to work remotely during COVID and beyond, all in the spirit of work/life balance
An Unlimited Time Off Policy
Wellness room in our corporate office – it is an opportunity to optimize your breaks
Calm App to use from the comfort of your home – I am an avid supporter after being skeptical of the real benefits for the first 6 months
Recently, our employees were given an opportunity to work remotely for a month while enjoying the sun and blue skies of FL. The stay was sponsored by SAGE.

Best Employer practices & tips

Workplace culture is a large influencer of employee happiness and wellbeing. This seems wonderful, and it is, theoretically – more opportunities for employee self-care should translate to more self-care and higher wellbeing. The problem is that the benefits of most wellness programs tend to be restricted to those who are already taking care of themselves through, for example, exercise, yoga, and meditation. This makes sense as if you already do yoga, it is relatively straightforward to carry this practice into an office yoga room. If you don’t though, without a complementary awareness boost, you are unlikely to start. So how can companies upgrade their wellness programs with their employees in mind? Two steps you can take are implementing flexible schedules and increasing compassion in the workplace. First, flexible schedules, in terms of when employees can work and how easily they can take time off, create a culture where taking care of their needs is permissible. However, ‘permissible’ is not enough: employers should spread awareness about these policies, normalizing them through sharing time-off stories, for example. Second, understanding managers inculcate a culture of trust and positivity. Examples of this include opening up and discussing their own challenges and taking days off for mental/physical wellbeing. The benefits are overwhelming and include boosting employee adaptability and performance and decreasing turnover. Beyond managers, colleagues can help each other – it just involves being open to talking through work-related or even personal issues and respecting their trust.

Personal tips from a dedicated champion of healthy eating and lifestyle

As the adage “mens sana in corpore sano” implies, the mind and body are irrevocably linked – taking care of one often impacts on the other. Perfect examples of this are how sleep both boosts cognitive performance and heals the body, how healthy eating gives our mind what it needs to function while encouraging physical health, and how exercise releases stress and makes us feel better while improving our cardio and muscular capabilities. We all know that sleeping 7-8 hours a night, eating well, and doing regular exercise are incredibly important. The benefits of exercise may last longer than many of us might expect. The workouts we completed years ago may continue to influence and improve our health today, according to a new study. However, one thing you might not be as aware of is how to take a proper break. There is a general concept that taking a break from work can be beneficial; how and when we should take these breaks is less well-known. Here are three tips to optimize your breaks:

Move around frequently and regularly
Research has shown that 5-minute walking breaks every hour ‘improved mood throughout the day and reduced feelings of fatigue in the late afternoon’, as well as boosting energy and focus, and notably did so more effectively than single 30-minute exercise chunks.
Socialize
Social breaks were found to be better for stress and mood when compared to only eating a snack or changing task, e.g., checking emails. Video-calling is a potential substitute when working from home.
Fully detach from work
This is a hard one, but research has shown that “psychological detachment from work, in addition to physical detachment, is crucial, as continuing to think about job demands during breaks may result in strain.” Furthermore, tech-free breaks “increase vigor and reduce emotional exhaustion.”

Combining these three can help make exhausting days staring at screens more manageable.

Katerina Marinov is an HR Manager at SAGE Private Wealth Group. She holds a Master’s degree in Human Resource Management, and is SHRM-SCP and PPA Certified. Katerina has lived in 3 continents working for international Fortune 500 corporations before joining SAGE Private Wealth Group.