Maggie was a hard-working CFO. While she was at the workplace for more than 40 hours a week, she also spent most evenings and weekends in her home office. Maggie’s life became increasingly sedentary and she gained weight – lots of it. She was spending less time in her community and with her family and friends. As the holidays approached, Maggie found she couldn’t fit into her dress clothes. She joined a “New Year New You” wellness challenge through her employer – which gave incentives for participation. This challenge primarily involved eating behavior changes with some small, closely-monitored, steps to activate and integrate fitness into Maggie’s life.

The New Year started off strong and Maggie lost weight. Buoyed she took even more steps to improve her health. Then came significant funding shifts in the organizatioincluded reductions in staff. This coincided with some poor financial decisions made within her family. After all of the progress that Maggie made, it didn’t take more than ten weeks to undo the improvements – and matters were made worse. Stressed, Maggie’s error rate at work increased as did her irritability and complaints from her direct reports. New Year? Yes. New You? Sort of – but not ultimately towards a state of greater wellness.

What went wrong? Maggie took part in a workplace wellness program. She even reached some success. It’s not just about Maggie’s commitment. It’s not just about the wellness initiative? It’s more….

In a September 2014 report from the CEO Council on Health and Innovation, there is increasing evidence that employers are investing in workplace wellness in order to decrease healthcare costs and boost employee attendance, engagement and productivity. Typical efforts are aimed at helping employees gain healthier behaviors (e.g., through nutrition and fitness programs and tobacco cessation and stress management classes). The debate continues, however, as to how much these efforts affect employers’ bottom lines. Are these programs missing some critical elements? How much do these initiativreally impact employees’ overall state of wellness? Think of Maggie.

These questions are leading to a shift in the discussion about workplace wellness and revisiting what “wellness” is. As a colleague recently said, “It’s time to move to workplace wellness 2.0.” The typical singular focus on physical health is fading while greater recognition of the interplay of multiple dimensions of health is on the rise.

There are myriad multi-dimensional models of wellness that take into account interdependent components. For example, the National Wellness Institute identifies six dimensions: Intellectual, Social, Physical, Occupational, Emotional and Spiritual. In their book, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, Tom Rath and Jim Harter identify five areas of life that are within individual’s control that contribute to overall “wellbeing”: career, social, financial, and community, in addition to physical wellbeing. 

So if wellness (or wellbeing) is more diverse than traditional employer supported programs address, what can be different about workplace wellness 2.0?

One clear strategy is coaching. The International Coach Federation defines coaching as “a thought-provoking process that inspires clients [employees] to maximize their personal and professional potential, which is particularly important in today’s uncertain and complex environment. Coaching helps clients to discover, clarify and align with what the client wants to achieve.”

Coaching recognizes the interdependence of areas in one’s life and holds the person as whole; not just as a slice of a larger pie. For example, Maggie’s professional life was impinging on her personal life. She was experiencing deficits in her physical health, her financial wellbeing, and emotional state. All of these deficits compounded and her work and relationships suffered too.

Being future-oriented, coaching is about creating solutions and strategies that are actionable. Coaching holds clients accountable. A coach who has had strong training, is experienced and certified can help clients navigate the interconnectedness of the different elements of life, towards a fuller state of wellness.

A tool that many coaches use is the Wheel of Life; a pie chart with each wedge representing a key area in a client’s life. Each wedge gets assessed separately and then the whole picture is addressed. Imagine the center as zero – where the client is entirely dissatisfied with this section of the pie; and the outer circle as a 10 where the client feels a full degree of satisfaction with this part of his/her life. When we look at how Maggie completed the Wheel (Figure 1), we can ask her, “If this were a wheel on your car, what would the ride be like?” Other questions to help Maggie contemplate what’s pressing include:

·      What surprises you?

·      With physical health at a three, what would it look like at a score of a five? What about a seven? How do other areas affect this one?

·      What area most affects the other areas?

·      What needs to change?

·      What do you need to say “no” to in order to make room for change to happen? What can you say “yes” to in order to facilitate change?

These are the types of questions that an external coach can easily ask. With confidentiality at the core of coaching, Maggie is safe to explore her full state of wellness and make changes across different areas to support her in achieving her greatest potential.

Replacing Maggie is costly. A study by the Center for American Progress found that the cost of losing a high level executive can be up to 213% of the employee’s salary. The American Management Association confers that coaching has a role in executive leadership development and retention and improves organizations’ productivity and profitability.

Why not think of coaching as part of workplace wellness too? What is the cost of true low wellness in an organization?If you can relate to Maggie or her employer, consider reaching out to the Justice Coaching Center for a free consultation. You can have a New Year, New You starting any day of the year.