Interview with Professionals

Q: What are some things that you personally do to achieve a healthy work-life balance? What challenges do you face when trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance?

Aura: I strive for a healthy worklife balance by setting boundaries around my work time, communication and turn around times for projects. I have a morning routine that begins with 15 min of exercise, meditation, and a great cup of coffee, and that sets me up for the day. When I finish my workday, I turn off notifications on my phone, otherwise I will be tempted to continue doing work, and I take time for myself, to relax and spend time celebrating my daily wins. I also love going out in nature, it usually releases a lot of stress for me, so I sometimes take mini breaks throughout the day to go outside and center myself. The biggest challenge for me is turning off my “work-brain” and I do this by planning something fun after work, it could be chatting with a friend, taking a walk, or cooking something, any activity that clearly defines the end of the workday. Liana: In the world of Zoom and Google meetings, where professional and personal life blend together at home, it’s easy to forget the time of day. I often find myself being able to sit in front of my computer for hours at a time, jumping from meeting to meeting, and even forgetting to eat sometimes. With work and school being more demanding than ever, it’s important to self-regulate and know when to turn off. Keeping connected with friends and family during my free time is what recharges me, not answering another work email, so I purposely make the effort to give my attention 100% to the people I’m with during personal time. Also, when I’m stressed, I do the thing that lets me release that energy. Whether it’s pounding the gym, bashing some bad guys in the latest video game, or immersing myself in a different world through reading, doing something where you can forget all the things that frustrated you during the day is important.

Monica: To achieve a healthy worklife balance, I ensure that I make time for physical activity either before or after my workday, take mini breaks throughout the day to stretch, and shutting off my computer by a specific time. As many of us are working from home now, it can be difficult to step away from work when work is literally steps away from you. I wanted to during the day due to my meeting schedule. Because of this, I feel that I need to work past my work hours to get more things completed, which can sometimes interfere with my evening plans. However, as mentioned, boundaries are important, so I still try to make sure that I’m not logging off work after 6:30pm. I found it important to set boundaries so that I’m not burning myself out. I think the challenge I face when it comes to maintaining a healthy work life balance is the guilt I feel if I do not get to accomplish the tasks

Q: In what ways does your organization promote workplace health and wellness to its employees? What are some benefits that you have noticed from your organization’s initiatives?

Aura: I look at health and wellness as both physical and mental wellness, and while I support client organizations through traditional benefits strategies, this year we did a couple different things such as virtual group exercise classes, virtual nutritionist taught classes on how to stay healthy while at home, and reimbursement for fitness & exercise apps. What has been more impactful however, has been mental wellness initiatives. Some of these included promoting Employee Assistance Programs, a Mindfulness at Work Campaign, group meditations, and reimbursement for apps such as Calm, Headspace and BetterHelp – which are meditation & virtual counselling apps. The benefits include reduction in stress, higher engagement, and in some cases an easier transition to remote work.

Liana: UBC really encourages health & wellbeing, promoting all aspects of health management (both physical and mental). Not only do they have great company benefits to use for professional services, every year they hold a variety of events to promote physical activity and mental health awareness. For example, they have Staff and Faculty Sports Day in the summer (think of it as a race with multiple fitness tasks) and Thrive month in the winter (mental health education & programs). There is also funding provided to departments who want to start a sustainable healthrelated initiative for their employees. Overall, UBC has done a great job in giving the resources to people to live well both at work and at home, which creates happier and healthier employees. Monica: Paladin Security promotes workplace health and wellness in a number of different ways, including providing wellness tips in our monthly newsletter with topics such as healthy eating, active living and mental health.

We also run wellness challenges that can be done from work or home. For our last challenge, we had employees post a photo or video of them doing something that made them feel good, like cooking dinner or a home workout. The challenges don’t just come from head office though, as each department or branch can come up with one that best suits its employees. The challenges were a fun way to keep us all engaged and encourage healthy living at the same time. Additionally, we offer corporate membership gym rates with Goodlife Fitness and Club16.

Finally, we promote a mentally healthy workplace through offering flexible schedules, an employee assistance program, support from team members who are trained in mental health first aid, and monthly awards. This has made a positive impact throughout our organization, with results seen through surveys, higher than average retention rates, and corporate culture awards (Canada’s Best Managed Companies Award, and Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Culture Award).

Aura: With many employees working from home, mental health has become a top priority. This means checking-in more often, increased communication between leaders/managers and their teams, and not only providing health and wellness resources for employees, but actively engaging them in their own health and wellness goals. We include employees in decisions about benefits, perks and programs – by finding out what they really want and need. WFH surveys are great for finding out what people need, and pulse surveys are even better for gathering sentiment, morale and real team feedback.

In addition, providing employees with functional workspaces has also become part of physical health and wellness strategy – like having ergonomic furniture at home, automatic reminders to stand up and take breaks, and more frequent informal team meetings to simulate the social interactions we would normally have in the office.

Liana: While physical activity is as important as ever, there has been an even bigger focus on mental health and wellbeing. Social isolation and lack of meaningful interaction with family, friends, and co-workers have really been an issue for 2020. With everything going virtual now, UBC has found ways to deliver programs through different communication methods to still engage and connect employees. For example, during the height of the pandemic, UBC began doing virtual fitness and mindfulness challenges, providing free resources on relaxation techniques and holding Universitywide recreational “movement breaks” led by the UBC Rec team. Just because things are virtual, doesn’t mean the support has to stop! Making sure that people can still connect with each other in fun ways and knowing that they’re not alone is how employers can still create an environment of trust, openness and health.

Monica: Managers have regular check-ins with their employees to ensure they are feeling connected and engaged with their team members. Despite many of us working from home, we continue to ensure that our employees are recognized and rewarded for their efforts through verbal appreciation and notes, as well as gifts. We have also fully embraced video conferencing, which has allowed us to announce and recognize award winners and celebrate the hard work and dedication our employees continue to show. As the new year has just started, we have not had a chance to run any wellness challenges yet but intend to do so in the next while.

Aura: Tracking individual health/ wellness has evolved a lot – there’s several work wellness apps on the market that can help you track benefits usage, run assessments, track employee activity and more. I recommend a combination of ongoing conversations between leaders and their people, analysis (surveys, focus groups, looking at employee engagement rates, turnover rates, PTO/ sick leave, and pulse survey results), and technology (wellness apps). Building authentic relationships with your people will give you a high degree of insight into their health and wellbeing. This takes time, trust and nurturing of relationships, but yields the best results in terms of identifying any trends or individual roadblocks.

Monica: We currently do not track our employee’s individual health & wellness at the workplace. We rely on our managers to continually connect with their employees and speak about any challenges they may be facing that could affect their mental or physical health. On a larger scale, we look at statistics of our employee assistance program (EAP) to see how many employees are using it and whether they are finding it helpful. The work from home challenges mentioned above are also a good way to keep tabs on employee’s health & wellness, as it encourages them to be active and socialize. If they are not participating, it gives managers an excuse to check in.

Liana: UBC performs a number of surveys on staff, faculty, and student engagement throughout the year and these surveys often have various questions about health and wellness. This has lead to UBC’s Wellbeing Strategic Framework, which lays out the targets and goals for the University to increase wellness at both campuses. As time progresses, the surveys are a great way to measure impact on the health & wellbeing initiatives run by the University.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to tell our audience?

Aura: The way we work, communicate and connect is changing – inevitably the way we look at health and wellness benefits for our teams is also changing. The days of traditional benefits packages being enough are over, more personalized health & wellness plans and choices are key. Mental wellness is more important than ever. When we support the holistic health and wellness of our employees, we empower them to grow and personally develop – which will inevitably show up as higher engagement, productivity, higher retention, and all the other buzzwords we like to use in HR. Connect with your people, find out what they need, and co-create wellness strategies for 2021.