Why Wellness isn't just about 'wellness'

So I magically and serendipitously discovered this new book called The Power of Habit and it's starting to change the way I think about a lot of things. Besides the fact that I've been constantly blabbering about Pepsodent (as my friends and family shake their heads), I've had a mini-breakthrough about wellness strategies. Here we go.

Piecemeal wellness strategies will not work. What we're looking to do with wellness is create healthy habits-decrease snacking in the afternoon, increase exercise, increase stress-relief, developing coping, etc-which themselves create healthy organizations. And the only way to create these new habits is by helping individuals identify cues and develop new routines while receiving the same rewards. We need a comprehensive strategy to give employees the tools they need to make changes in all parts of their life--not just a on-site gym or healthy choices at lunch.

Wellness strategies are not just wellness strategies. Employees who learn how to understand cues (i.e. boredom/fatigue at 2:30 leads to sugar-seeking) for unhealthy habits are have the tools to remake their other unhealthy behaviors (i.e. bullying, unproductive or uncreative days, lack of organization, lack of prioritization) that slow down organizations. By creating a successful wellness strategy, we're creating successful organizations. Done!

The stigma around wellness can be broken. Similar to workplace flexibility, diversity & inclusion efforts, and other still 'taboo' subjects, wellness is considered an individual accommodation, and not a business strategy. But don't you see! If you've read my paragraph above, wellness isn't just about making our obese employees leaner to reduce healthcare costs, but about creating lean, productive, and happy organizations. It's not an individual accommodation, but a strategy to increase profits and shareholder value.

Phew-now that that's off my chest and everyone's nodding their head in agreement, I can get to work changing the world (my Gen Y is showing again, isn't it?).

Be. Well. Now.