Has wellness been hijacked?

Wellness is a great concept. It brings happiness into health and encourages a truly holistic approach to life. Wikipedia defines wellness as a healthy balance of the mind-body and spirit that results in an overall feeling of well-being. It sounds like exactly what every one is looking for. But when you start to talk about corporate wellness, or workplace wellness, all life goes out of the concept. Total solutions, disease management and health screening do not inspire visions of enjoying life and living it to the full. They start from the assumption that sickness is here to stay and needs to be discovered, managed and controlled but can never be healed.

The wellness industry is growing phenomenally fast. Wellness guru, Paul Zane Pilzer, has labelled it the next trillion dollar industry. But wellness has two different faces. On the one hand there are the small businesses – people working from home or in small centres selling all kinds of wellness products and services at a speed of growth that is escalating rapidly. On the other hand corporate wellness is also exploding but in a very different direction.

The baby boomers who are driving the popular wellness revolution have been described as the first generation to refuse to accept the inevitability of death. They are actively looking for ways to prevent aging, stay healthy into old age and enjoy themselves more than ever before after retirement. This is a radical departure from current notions of old age, which are often dominated by pictures of sickness, frailty and suffering.

The corporations have been largely forced to take on wellness. This is partly through legislative pressure, with many countries introducing laws to make companies liable for stress-related sickness in their employees. It is also financially motivated, as research has repeatedly shown the enormous costs of absenteeism (and increasingly of presenteeism as well).

Whereas the baby boomers are actively looking for new solutions and new lifestyles the companies are struggling to organise largely traditional and mainstream health systems, such as doctors, nurses, insurance and screening systems. The problem is that the traditional health system does not have solutions for the problems that people are handling.

Nobody ever went to see a doctor to get happy, because a doctor doesn’t have any clue how to make people happy. And many stress-related health problems are described as chronic diseases, which means that they last for a very long time - or maybe for the rest of your life - because there is no medical cure. Counselling is a common offering in companies for emotional problems, but whilst it may provide a useful pressure valve it is not a powerful treatment for stress, unhappiness or depression.

Imagine walking into a company where the employees are happy, healthy, full of inspiration, fit, love working, have meaningful family lives, active social lives, and enjoyable relationships at work and in their community. That kind of company would be a pleasure to work in and bound to be successful because people would be working to their optimum capacity.

So can we create a system of true wellness that will serve the development of the companies and their employees and will pay for itself because of the benefits that both sides will gain?

First of all we have to face the fact that we can’t place all the responsibility into the hands of the current health system. Absenteeism, stress, depression, the very roots of the wellness revolution, have not been solved by the current system. If they had been we wouldn’t have this revolution, we would all be much more well. So we need to look elsewhere for solutions.

We also cannot rely on makeshift feel-good wellness offerings, such as the on-site massage team which visits the office once a month or the wellness day that raises awareness for a little while but leaves most people unaffected. They are easy to organise but have little or no real effect on employee wellness.

Corporate needs are different than individual needs and many of the new small wellness businesses that are springing up simply don’t have the capacity to serve the corporate market. However it is in the best interest of both companies and employees to find and develop systems of health and wellness that really work – that benefit people to be happy, handle stress, love working, and to have enough energy to go home at the end of the day and enjoy their family and social life. So far the corporate world has hijacked the concept of wellness and turned it into a modern version of occupational health. It is time to raise the vision and find out how to make truly healthy, happy workplaces where people thrive.

Learning to love

I recently asked a 46 year old man what importance his marriage has in his life, expressed as a percentage. His instant response was 80%, on the grounds that his marriage impacts and is impacted by his work and almost every other aspect of life. I then asked him how much education about relationship he received at school, from his parents or in the army (his first job). His equally instant answer was ‘None at all’.

What an extraordinary situation!

Many people are more emotionally involved in their relationship than in their job, and yet we dedicate a minimum of 12 years compulsory education as preparation for employment and virtually none at all to the art and science of relationship. Is it any wonder that we find it difficult to keep peace in the world?

It seems as if we still rather naively believe that relationship, like sex, is just natural, and will happen automatically. It is true that most relationships do happen ‘automatically’ – driven largely by hormones in men and a need for love and security in women. Falling in love is all very well, but few people are prepared for falling out of love. Watching parents blunder their way through relationship rarely provides a good model for the next generation.

Would education in relationship ability (not just skills) make any difference now or in the future?
The vast majority of people leave school able to read. This gives them skills for navigating their way around our society. It is basic literacy and highly valued. It is taught and practised daily for a few years at a minimum. Schools worry when children fall behind in reading and have special classes, teachers, schemes and research programs to provide additional support.

Now most people are like the illiterate struggling to make sense of a literate world. They don’t know how to read the signs all around them to find the way to wherever they want to go. Relationship problems can cause havoc at work, destroy family life, undermine children’s confidence and cause physical and emotional health problems.

It is possible to learn relationship, just like anything else, with time, practice and good teaching. The more you learn the more you realise that whatever you did in the past, from dating to divorce, and every step in between, could have been done much better. Learning relationship is like learning to ski – it’s much less painful and much more fun with a teacher.

We still treat personal relationship as if it is a constant in life – never changing and therefore never needing an update. But relationships a few hundred years ago had totally different requirements from today – and what about the relationship of the future? Does anyone ever ask what that might look like?

Will we be like the couples in Stepford Wives, programmed for perfect partnership? Or struggling, Start Trek-style, to understand partners from truly alien cultures? Will Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World become real, with cloned baby production? Or will we all have virtual relationships – with no need to face reality at all any more?

As Professor Irwin Corey said, “If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re going.”

Relax at work

Whilst everyone likes the idea of being relaxed at work it is difficult in most companies to find the necessary support to make real change. Three excuses may be heard repeatedly: no time, no space, or the managers wouldn’t accept it.

These answers indicate a lack of understanding of the true benefits of relaxation. Any manager who really knows the difference it can make will create space, time and support throughout the workplace.

An anecdote can only suggest the potential but such stories are becoming increasingly common.

The sales teams of a well-known London company had not made a single sale for two months. One morning they happened to have organised a one hour relaxation session for the whole team. The same afternoon they made £200,000 (around $560,000). Some of them thought it was pure coincidence. Others wondered whether there was some connection.

Apple Computers, Yahoo, and Google are three major international companies that actively encourage their employees to relax or meditate, at every level from executives down. After exercise, relaxation has been shown as the number 1 factor in improving performance. A little internet research will help develop the argument supporting relaxation in the workplace. Once that’s in place it’s time to find a way to implement it.

Some organisations, such as the Ministry of Transport in New Zealand, make special breakout rooms where people can relax during the day. The logic is simple. An agitated employee is good for nothing. It’s better to spend 30 minutes calming down and then work effectively thereafter, than to spend all day quietly fuming, unable to concentrate properly.

Ideally every company would make time for employees to relax daily, simply because of the results. Trelise Cooper, top Auckland fashion designer, brings all her staff together at 9.15 each morning for a short meditation, part of the holistic approach Trelise credits it for taking her business beyond her wildest dreams. But in a world that is less than ideal it is also quite acceptable to encourage people to do it at home. It’s not only good for work. It improves health, helps relationships, gives you more energy for family and social life and cuts down the need for stimulation by alcohol, smoking and coffee.

The real key is to prove that it works. HR staff are often more open to relaxation than other parts of senior management. A small pilot programme is the simplest way to spread the message more widely. Take some key performers in the organisation, preferably including those with clearly defined performance targets (for example sales staff) and invite them to take part in a relaxation programme for one month, say 20-30 minutes daily. Results speak more than a thousand arguments.

The really wise organisation will employ a specialist, someone who is expert in relaxation and whose sole role is to support staff to become happier and more relaxed. Smaller companies can band together to share a specialist, perhaps working online. The cost of a salary will more than outweigh the benefit to the company in increased revenue and reduced sick leave alone. Dr Sven Hansen, Director of Resilience Practice for PWC, with a special interest in developing leadership teams, says “We’re firing our brains to death with a gadget infested world. This is leading to adult attention deficit disorders, similar to the ADHD which is becoming so common in children. Leaders manage attention. If you can’t control your own attention, how on earth can you control the attention and strategy of a large organisation?” Or to put it more simply, “The relaxed mind works better.”

Do less, achieve more

Relaxation has a bad reputation – many people are afraid that if they relax they will become lazy, slow or sleepy and they won’t get anything done. They connect good performance with hard work.

But imagine buying a new car. Do you want to buy from a nervous salesman who desperately tries to persuade you to buy his product, or the one who is relaxed and confident in what he is selling? The relaxed salesman doesn’t work so hard, but his results are better and everyone feels good around him as well – a win-win situation.

It’s easy to understand why we perform better when relaxed if you look at the human energy system. Anyone who has experienced acupuncture will be aware that life energy (known as qi in Chinese) flows through our body via a system of channels called meridians. When we are tense our body contracts, constricting the meridians and reducing the flow of energy through the body. When we relax our body becomes softer and more expanded, the meridians open up and more energy is able to flow through.

A simple explanation of energy is that it is the difference between being dead and alive - it is what makes the body move, breathe, feel, smile and think. When we receive less energy (because of tension) we have less of that force that causes us to be lively, active and productive. When we get more energy we literally have more life - more ability to think, create and act.

When we become tense we have to work harder to make up for the lack of energy. This in turn causes greater tension, further reduces the energy flow and a negative spiral is created. As we feel worse (and more tired from lack of energy), we tend to become emotionally negative as well. We complain about stress, worry about ourselves and other people and find it hard to let go of irritations. This negativity only adds to the tension and eventual energy starvation.

If on the other hand we relax and open up we have more energy, so we feel livelier and less tired. With increasing energy we can achieve more which makes us feel positive and even more relaxed. A virtuous spiral develops, whereby relaxed people can feel better and better and more and more positive and eventually they also achieve more and more.

If you find yourself collapsing, exhausted, at the weekend, or you are constantly looking forward to holidays so you can do nothing for a while, it may not be the case that you are overworking. You simply don’t know how to relax properly. A relaxed person can handle working all day and still be full of energy for family and social life in the evening. The relaxed person achieves more with less effort. They may look like they do less than the busy person who is constantly proving themselves, but just compare the results.

Why do we often get our best ideas in the shower? - because we are relaxed and open. Imagine having that feeling all day – where nothing bothers you because you feel you have the capacity to solve any problem and more than enough energy to do whatever comes your way.

Relaxation doesn’t mean watching television or reading a book. It is not having a beer or playing sport. Relaxation is not the same as sleep. It is a peaceful activity – the simple art of ‘doing nothing’ – but ironically, doing nothing is one of the most difficult things of all to do well.