Building wellness in teams

Most people would agree that it's been a remarkable year. Not only have we experienced the tribulations of the COVID crisis, but world events have created some of the most interesting times in human memory. This has tested how well we feel across many aspects of life.

With this in mind, when volunteers were sought for a PwC Sydney office partner to help out in the wellness of our people, I jumped at the chance – as did my colleague Emma Grogan.

However, in order to be effective, I needed to think about exactly what did wellness mean and how could I help our team be more so? This article summarizes some of the thoughts that emerged.

The dimensions of wellness

According to what I found in my research, there are eight dimensions of wellness[1]. Those dimensions include:

• Emotional: your mental health;
• Environmental: the way in which the environment meets your needs and encourages you to be your best;
• Financial: you have enough resources to live the life that you wish;
• Spiritual: you have sufficient meaning and purpose;
• Physical: your health is sufficient to allow you to do all the things that you wish;
• Occupational: work that is fulfilling and makes use of your strengths;
• Social: sufficient and quality interactions with your friends and family, and
• Intellectual: the way in which your life provides the necessary mental stimulation.

 These are summarised in this handy infographic:

These many dimensions indicated to me that wellness is a very rounded topic. In order to be truly well, it wasn't sufficient to focus on one dimension or the other.

This revelation meant that it was good to tackle all of these dimensions at once in any program that we developed.

In addition, it struck me that working on wellness occurred at two levels – one as an individual and one as a leader of a team.

Working on your own wellness

Using this framework, I thought about how I would look to improve my own wellness (and also encourage others to do the same). I used the four part action framework that I have found useful in other areas of my life as follows:

• Reality check: Consider each of the dimensions in wellness, and where you are relative to your aspirations. Remember that each dimension is important, but perhaps not equally so to all. In addition, it is easy to lose perspective in your comparison, so I have found it useful to use a trusted friend or mentor to keep myself perceptions grounded in the right context;
• Plan: Having benchmarked where you are against where you'd like to be, build a plan which would enable you to bridge the gap. Recognising that the hardest part of a plan is getting started, make sure that you have a few quick wins in each dimension to build both confidence and momentum toward the change that you seek;
• Execute: Get started on your plan. The best plan is useless, if no action is taken; and.
• Review and adapt: Just as action is important, agility is equally so. After all, according to the ancient military maxim that no plan survives contact with the enemy (or reality), means that your plan will need to adjust for changing circumstances and the ease or difficulty your find in making progress.

When I used this framework to engage in my own reality check, I found a few gaps, and noted a few action points in the back of my day-book to work on in each of the categories.

Leaders: Building wellness in the workplace

Working on your own wellness is useful, but for business leaders, it doesn’t stop there. People that are more well are more productive, so the justification for leadership action is an economic one as well as essentially a moral obligation. So how can a leader build wellness in a team? Here are my starting thoughts:

• Agenda setting: Any important issue that is not on the workplace agenda, is not that important. Putting the wellness of your people on your businesses is an easy but essential step in improving outcomes for the team.
• Role modelling: Americans sometimes say it is important to eat your own dogfood. I agree. If you say that wellness is important, but do nothing or reveal by your own wellness activity that it is not a personal priority, your words will be seen as hollow. Moreover, being a wellness role model will help your people realise what can be done in this regard.
• Education: Not everyone knows what wellness is, what it’s dimensions are, what being well looks like, or how you might change things for the better. Accordingly, educating your team on each of the eight dimensions, and how they can move the dial is really important.
• Facilitation and mentoring: Helping individuals work through their own wellness journey and encouraging them to assume leadership on the issue doesn’t happen magically. Helping them work through their own wellness issues and facilitating them having those conversations with their team is a vital contribution.

 Conclusions

 In conclusion, I'm looking forward taking on this wellness partner role with Emma, with a view to building both my own wellness and that of our Sydney team.

 I’d welcome any readers ideas about what other issues we should consider.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Richard Stewart OAM is a Corporate Value Advisory partner with PwC. He has been with them for 35 years in Australia, Europe and the USA, doing his first valuation in 1992. He has helped his clients achieve great outcomes using his value skills in the context of major decisions, M&A, disputes and regulatory matters. His clients span both the globe and the industry spectrum. He holds a BEc, MBA, FCA, FCPA, SFFin, FAICD and is an accredited Business Valuation Specialist with CAANZ. He has written two book, Strategic Value, and Hitting Pay Dirt, and is an Adjunct Professor at UTS.

[1] The dimensions ranged from six to eight, but the ones with eight seemed to me more complete.