Expert Interview: Jessica Grossmeier, Ph.D., MPH - Reimagining Workplace Well-being
In this Expert Interview, AdvancingWellness CEO Mari Ryan is joined by author, speaker, and researcher Jessica Grossmeier, PhD, MPH to discuss her new book “Reimagining Workplace Well-being”.
Mari Ryan: Welcome to the workplace well-being essential series I’m Mari Ryan I’m the CEO and founder of advancing wellness, it is my pleasure to welcome you today to this expert interview, where we explore topics that impact employee well-being.
Jessica is the author of “Reimagining Workplace Well-being: Fostering a culture of purpose connection and transcendence.” And she is a leading voice in workplace well-being having dedicated her career to identifying evidence-based strategies that provide. A thriving that promote a thriving workforce her work includes conducting collaborative research advising writing and speaking on topics related to strategic planning topics related to workplace well-being best practices measurement and evaluation strategic planning and value demonstration. Jessica has published more than 80 articles in professional journals and served as a co-editor of the art in the art of health promotion section of the American Journal of health promotion Jessica, welcome. I’m so excited to have you here for this conversation today.
Jessica Grossmeier: Great thanks so much for having me, Mari.
Mari Ryan: Well, today we're going to explore this topic of workplace well-being from a little bit different perspective we're going to learn from Jessica about her suggestions for reimagining workplace well-being so is a time to make some changes and look at some things differently. I’m curious, how did you come to write a book about reimagining workplace well-being?
Jessica Grossmeier: You know that most of my career has been devoted to outcomes research identifying best practice approaches to well-being and we've known for some time that spirituality is a key domain. And a holistic approach to well-being in fact back in the 70s, when the National Wellness Institute first published their model, spiritual well-being was part of it and they define that, and I’ve been interested in the area for a long time, but I’ve noticed that employers are reluctant to address wellbeing, there are some exceptions, but I’ve noticed that a lot of very reluctant to mention it in their models and so. This past year I was on sabbatical. That was a sabbatical that I knew I was taking for many years I’ve been preparing for it and I went into the year wanting to just follow the breadcrumbs of my curiosity. And back in 2019, I had done a special issue in the art of health promotion section of HP and it was on spiritual well-being. And one day I just sat down at my computer and I started to search the databases, to see if anything new had come up since I had read that and it turns out that when I first did that issue back in I had been using the wrong search terms uncover. The research that I stumbled upon this was probably in February or March of last year, and all of a sudden decades and decades and decades of research came up in the area called workplace spirituality and so I decided to just keep looking as long as my curiosity kept leading me, and it did, and I wanted to see especially what did the research have to say about the most effective ways to address spiritual well-being and to understand how employers have been addressing this component.
Mari Ryan: So interesting. I view you is one of the you know top researchers in our field and for you to discover that a different just changing the search terms would change so dramatically. I think that's just comical and such an interesting revelation. Thank you for sharing that can happen to all of us. In your book, you suggest that one of the missing elements to workplace well-being is this idea of this focus on spirituality. Many people equate to, and I think, myself included, in some ways equate spirituality with religion, which is a topic that is often not even discussed in the workplace it's like politics and religion, you just don't go there, work, so can you explain what you mean by workplace spirituality.
Jessica Grossmeier: Absolutely, so one of the things that I discovered, is that there is no single consensus definition of spirituality or one agreed upon way to measure it. And when you look across the many definitions that are out there and the measurement tools that are being used in the research. Three elements consistently come up and so that became the focus of my book I’m like well, everyone can agree on these three elements so let's begin here. And I don't put a definition necessarily in my book, I share other people's definitions, but the three elements that I focus on are having a sense of meaning and connection in one's life and then, once work. Having a sense of connection and belonging with others, which includes co-workers and having a sense of connection to something bigger than yourself, which is what I call transcendence in my book. And you know when it comes to religion, I’m so glad that you brought that up Mari, because if you ask people what provides the meaning in their life and where they get their sense of identity, where they find community. Many of them are going to refer to an affiliation with the faith Community so religion is highly related to spirituality, but it is different, I believe that spirituality is a much broader concept is inclusive of religion, but it is much broader than that, and so, if workplaces can come forward with a new way of talking about this, then I think, then we can start to talk about this in a different way and you know when I’ve looked at definitions of religion it's really a set of beliefs and practices that express what we believe about our connection with some source of the divine spirituality I, as I said does include that, but it is possible to be a spiritual person without having a specific religious affiliation. And it is possible and quite common for people to say that they are spiritual but not religious so that really piqued my attention, I said “hey, we can talk about this right?”
Mari Ryan: And I would agree with that I would describe myself as being spiritual, but not at all religions so yeah completely identify with that you mentioned, as this third element transcendence. Can you talk a little bit more about that and explain what you really mean by that.
Jessica Grossmeier: I think the transcendence piece is missing from a lot of conversations in the workplace today we're hearing a lot about how we need to take a more humanistic approach, a more holistic approach, a more whole person approach. To well-being and, as I look at okay well, what do they mean by that they're talking a lot about meaning and purpose and connection with others. No one's mentioning transcendence and so I’m so glad we get to talk about it here, because a lot of people haven't wanted to talk about that. When you look at what the word transcendence means it means going beyond ordinary limitations to reach the condition of moving beyond our physical needs and realities. And this is a research term there are states called self-transcendent mental states and some people think of this as a sense of higher consciousness. An elevated state of consciousness and when the research talks about self-transcendence mental states the talking about ah beauty flow, inspiration joy and wonder, and these are experiences that add magic to our everyday lives. They're not something that happens every single day all the time. And if you chase after transcendence, you often won't find it, it needs to it needs to surface, but there are many ways that organizations can create workplace experiences that make. The self-transcendence mental states more likely, and I could go into some of those if you want to just ground this a little bit away from the conceptual.
Mari Ryan: That would be great I think it being a little more concrete is always good.
Jessica Grossmeier: I think so too. Mindfulness is one of the most common ways that organizations foster transcendence at work, and when I looked into the research for the transcendence chapter. I was blown away by how much mindfulness research, there is and it's no surprise to me why so many organizations now have entire movements around mindfulness in their organizations. So, it sometimes functions as a program but for many, it is becoming embedded into the culture of the organization. This means embedding mindful pauses into every meeting limiting the length of meetings to allow cushion of or minutes in between, so if somebody has back-to-back meetings there's that natural pause because meetings are limited to minutes or minutes, for example. And it gets people that space, especially if they've been trying to practice mindfulness. Do you know we here take this top and take three deep breaths well when do people have time to do that when they're racing from thing to thing to thing right. Organizations are starting to build these buffers these natural buffers and to help leaders and individuals to become more aware. Multitasking is actually the death of US. It's the death of productivity, we need to start mono tasking more so it building a culture of mono tasking. Where the expectation is, you will not be referring to your phone or your laptop during a meeting someone else can take notes as a designated note taker. You are here to tune in and listen and to be paying attention to what others are saying and so that's a big way. Nature is another very common way that people experience transcendence and there's been a lot of work done on how to incorporate nature into building design so we're seeing more use of natural light and living plants and in the latest Google building that I had a chance to tour recently there circulating fresh clean air into the building. So the bringing the outside in. We've had organizations, create outdoor spaces for people to meet or go for walks or create walking meetings so that's not new. Mindful organizations encourage people to take breaks during the workday and to make those mindful walks not just mine, you know the walking meeting. And that's something that, as I was going on my sabbatical, I started to incorporate some of these practices into my day I was trying to be a good boss to myself a sabbatical, and so I said I’m going to take this walk every day in the middle of the day. And I’m going to actually make it a mindful walk and focus on what I’m seeing around me, what am I smelling, engaging all my senses. And it's about a minute loop that I do so it's quite a long walk. And when I come back my mind is utterly transformed it's the subconscious mind, which is what we study in yoga, so I think you can really elevate our consciousness in a new way when we do these things there's also a lot of research on a self-transcendent state of flow. And so, when we think of flow often times we think about athletic performance but it's when we become so deeply immersed in what we're doing that, we lose track of time and space, and when you have a chance to really immerse yourself in something and you're enjoying it there's nothing like that you know it's so satisfying and it can be minutes, it can be hours. Organizations can make flow experiences more likely by creating these cultures and mono-tasking but I talked about where employees are discouraged from multitasking. And they are doing this in a lot of different ways, with technology with policies just with good old-fashioned norms and practices. It's flow. I think another important way, especially for high performing organizations, they are always looking for, how do we become more innovative and creative and transcendence is a way to get there. The last point I want to talk about our celebrations and rituals. And I think we used to be better at this decades ago than we are now I don't see as many celebrations or rituals in the workplace, and you know they can be used to recognize beginnings and endings milestones and celebrations, they can honor. Things that are going away. They can welcome new things in, and there are several types of rituals in the workplace spirituality research which I do discuss in my book. And this includes having rituals around. Like I said, welcoming new people in. It could be onboarding rituals, this is what happens every single time we have a new employee come in this is how they're introduced to our organization into our teams. And not just you know here's the checklist get your laptop, get your email signature. Rituals like you're now part of us let's welcome you in. There and lay off for tools, you know a lot of times organizations are using the zoom dehumanizing processes to let people go. We can acknowledge that somebody's going away but honor and respect what they have brought to an organization. And then their assignments rituals, and I think we've seen more organizations, I know at Eileen Fisher they begin their meetings with a moment of silence, just to let people ground themselves. In their chair, so I could go into a lot more, but those are a few of the big ways that I talked about in the book.
Mari Ryan: Well, I love hearing those concrete examples, because I think that really helps grounded, for us, and I really appreciate the idea that organizations are consciously working. To be able to set these some in some cases boundaries, you know, such as the meeting times and the giving permission, if you will, for taking in nature and taking breaks they how many times I’ve done research when developing strategies with clients and you know I ask questions of the workforce to get a sense of what the culture is like and what the workplaces like. I'll ask things like “What do you do on your lunch hour” and “How often do you take breaks” and you know the responses, you get back are a eat lunch alone at my desk and we don't take breaks in this organization. And you know right away that you can't just keep going and not stop. People have to take breaks so it's so interesting to see that organizations are really being thoughtful about these kinds of topics.
Jessica Grossmeier: Some organizations, not all of them. We have a long way to go.
Mari Ryan: I know we do have a long way to go, yeah so What role can or should spirituality play in workplace well me.
Jessica Grossmeier: Well, I thought about that a lot, as I was writing the book and as I said earlier, they have spent a lot of talk about how we need to welcome the whole person approach into the workplace. And that's because there is research that shows that when employees are able to express their true selves at work. It's linked to higher employee engagement levels and job satisfaction and enjoyment of their work, so there is a reason why organizations, want to do this. And when I think about a whole person or approach, it needs to creating space for every individual to contribute and be valued for who they are. As they are with their unique perspective and experience and so diversity equity and inclusion initiatives recognize this whole person approach includes gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and now cognitive age, social and cultural diversity. Spirituality includes people's deepest beliefs about who they are, what matters most to them and how they view themselves in connection with the universe, and with the world around them. So my question has been “Why would we not also include spiritual diverse views as part of our DI and well-being efforts is such a crucial part it's the seat of who we are, why would we not try to find a way and I think with the AI initiatives, we have found ways to talk about extremely sensitive topics these past two years we've been talking about very sensitive things you, you said we don't talk about religion and politics, well, people are talking politics right and so why can't we take some of those lessons that we've learned about how to. Create boundaries and shared values of respect and bring that into how we talk to one another around this area as well, and I think it is possible to do this and many organizations are demonstrating that they can do this they're doing it.
Mari Ryan: Well, that's encouraging to hear that organizations really are working in this direction, and I hope that we see many more continue to do that. In your book, you've described your personal journey from burnout to thriving. What are some of the ways that employers can help address the challenges that employees are facing around burnout disengagement and lack of professional fulfillment.
Jessica Grossmeier: I opened the book with my personal story of burnout and for myself my spiritual well-being journey was part of working my way back through. Because, for me, I had lost sight of my purpose and what I was doing it for I’ve always been very passionate about well-being I still am. But there was a time in my career, where I was really struggling to find everyday meaning and what I was doing, and so, for me it really began with getting back in touch with my purpose again and with my values and starting to take a really hard look at was I living out the values that I said, where my highest priority when I think about how I want people to characterize me and how I want to be remembered in my life. And what how that translates into behaviors I was not exhibiting those behaviors in the workplace, and so I went on a bit of a journey myself to rediscover. In name for myself what is my purpose, what are my values, what does it look like to live that out every single day, no matter what I’m doing for my job, and when it comes to burnout I think it's a piece of it it's certainly not all of it. One of the books that I read last year's by Jennifer Moss she wrote “The Burnout Epidemic”. She states that organizations have to use more systemic approaches to address burnout. My journey was very individual. And my workplace didn't really come alongside and say well here's some tools that can help you, and if they had it would have been programs, and it would have been you know here's the gap right so. One of the things that I really been thinking about is how can organizations, create systems that better support people, and I was thinking about this when I read Gallup’s State of the Workplace Report, which just came out, I believe, last week, and they found that stress level sort of all time high globally actually in the US we're doing better than a lot of countries which was no surprise to me so. You know I think about what can organizations do about this. And many people have talked about how the length of the average day just got a lot longer during the pandemic. And it hasn't abated you know people are still working really, really long days the traditional commute from work to home, has now been replaced by meetings for many people, my husband is with a multinational employer and he's starting his day now at am used to be, he was catching the bus now it's on zoom calls at am and they go well into the evening hours many days and he's not alone, a lot of people I know are doing these kinds of hours and so we have to as a workplace address this need for boundaries and when you've got your boss's boss, demanding that you get on calls at six in the morning it's extremely hard to set boundaries for yourself. I think it takes a certain level of confidence, it takes a certain level of having that autonomy and your job in an environment that respects that many employees don't have that. And so, to throw another resilience program at them is really, a slap in the face for a lot of employees, so I don't have all the answers when it comes to how do we address burnout, but I think we have to be looking at policies practices and guidance around how workers treat one another and especially leaders. How the leaders treat one another because their role modeling what's acceptable and how leaders interact with employees, we know from a lot of research, including miscellaneous Gallup report that people tend to leave bad relationships in organizations bad relationships with their boss. If there's toxic relationships with their coworkers, that's what oftentimes they're leaving they'll go to another workplace environment that has a lot of the same demands but doesn't have that toxic culture and so there's a need for a return to the so called soft skills of learning that are active listening skills expressing compassion and kindness towards one another and treating one another with the respect that we deserve and so I think employers can do a lot of things as part of whatever training they're offering in the workplace, whether it is workplace well-being training. I think there's a fit here, or it can be in leadership development in organizational effectiveness talent management types of training, we can be embedding this stuff all over the place and starting to reinforce. It really matters, how we treat one another, and it matters for well-being as well as for business performance.
Mari Ryan: And I think you're right I think there's a lot of opportunities to integrate well-being with you DEI, leadership development, and training and development, and all those areas. I think there's got to be some collaboration and cross team pollination really within those functions, I think that's something that's really missing. I really agree and we've been talking about the need to integrate across functions in well-being for a really long time.
Jessica Grossmeier: You know reading about this way at the start of my career, there were thought leaders talking about the need to do this is hard. And I think one of the things that has given me some hope that we're making a change is we are now beginning to bring in at the C suite level strategic roles with budget with authority to bring. These functions together and sometimes it's called a chief well-being officer role they're calling it chief people officer role they're calling it a lot of different things. But anybody that's elevated to that level with the authority, the budget, the oversight of these different functions and they can say okay here's a strategic business objectives right. And this is how we're going to advance employee engagement employee experience employee well-being across all these functions and everybody needs to be aligned I think that's going to help us move forward.
Mari Ryan: I totally agree. Let's go to that thought around this strategic viewpoint, because in your book you advocate for the development of strategic plan. But I’ve noticed that with research that I’ve been reading, for example, Willis towers Watson survey showed that 72% of employers are seeking to differentiate and customize their well-being programs, in order to be able to attract talent. And yet 44% don't have a health and well-being strategy from your perspective, what do you think, why do you think so few organizations fail to develop a strategic plan for well-being.
Jessica Grossmeier: So this is just my speculation. I think one big reason for a lack of strategic plans is that organizations haven't positioned well-being strategically within their organizations is tacked onto the tactical responsibilities of someone in a managerial HR or benefits role and the creation of a strategic plans requires strategic thinking. And that's a skill set that if you're just putting out fires every day and reacting to what's coming at you, you don't have the ability to think strategically. It requires a different I actually think of it as transcendent state, we need to elevate our state to be able to get up to the strategy level. And that also requires that we have somebody who understands all of the different functions in the organizations and how they can work together, because if you're not really sure what it means to have responsibility or oversight for risk management you're not going to be able to understand how to work with that function effectively and so I think part of the creating a strategic plan requires putting people into more strategic positions in the organization, giving them the time of space and, by the way, the mandate to create this.
Mari Ryan: You know the resources.
Jessica Grossmeier: There was this wonderful interview that happened. It was the Global Wellness Institute's Workplace Well-being Initiative and they had an interview of Chief Well-being Officers. And for each one of the individuals they said, you know it is a requirement that we think strategically. At this level, and so that is part of their role and responsibilities when when you're tacking a job or responsibility onto somebody else's role oftentimes without additional compensation or budget. That that sends you a message that this isn't going to be strategic and so we have to set our people up for success by bringing this up to a strategic level.
Mari Ryan: Well I’m glad to hear that there are some places where it is being brought to a strategic level, and again I know we have a lot more work and you and I are on the mission to make sure that that happens. But hopefully we'll see more organizations really taking this to that level where it really is viewed strategically.
Jessica Grossmeier: Can I have one more thing on to that Mari, because I don't want to give short shrift to the many HR managers and benefits managers who have exceptionally strong strategic plan so it's not that it's impossible to do this, it does require time and investment of resources it requires access to these cross functional leaders. And you know, the ability to mobilize them to pay attention to hey I’m creating a strategic plan, I think a lot of what we're doing can be aligned. And you know I think the best strategic plans are informed by multiple sources of data and oftentimes the HR or benefits manager only has access to certain kinds of data, so they really do need these other functions. To come together with them and help them understand what here's how the view of the organization looks from my seat, based on the data that I have available to me. And I’ve seen organizations use strategic planning tools to really help them understand what the needs are across multiple functions across multiple data points and to also add to that data by getting employee input. And feedback and I know that you do, that a lot in your work with focus groups and surveys and interviews. So, I have seen organizations put a lot of effort into a thoughtful strategic plan and it's interesting the organizations that rely on grant funding they're required to have a written strategic plan with measurable objectives. And many of these people don't have a ton of experience doing this, but there are so many free tools available that can help guide people in creating these things it's a matter of making it a priority. And when people are using these ramps sources as funding there's a lot of incentive for them, because if they've got a better strategic plan they're more likely to get the funding they're seeking so it's really matter of making a priority, I think.
Mari Ryan: Well, it is, and you know we can only hope that organizations will continue to make well-being a priority, because we all know, they can't achieve their business objectives without healthy engaged people. So with that Jessica, I’m curious as to where we might be able to find more for our audience about the work that you're doing if they want to follow up and learn more.
Jessica Grossmeier: Thanks so much. The book is available if anyone's interested. Anywhere that books are sold online so that includes Amazon, Barnes and Noble and a lot of other places. I invited people to follow me on LinkedIn because I continue to follow the research that's emerging right now, and now that people know that this is an interest of mine they're sending me research studies and so I’m constantly posting on LinkedIn about the new resources that I’m coming across new research and I’m trying to break down some of the concepts into the book into more digestible pieces. So feel free to follow me on LinkedIn and then, I have a website jessicagrossmeier.com where people can get additional free resources, including some that I mentioned in my book, and then I’m going to be adding to those resources, especially around employer case examples to help people see well what are organizations doing what is this actually look like to address this area so those are a couple places to start.
Mari Ryan: Excellent. Well lots of great resources and again just to your fabulous book about reimagining workplace will being. It's always it's wonderful to spend time with you thanks so much for being here today.
Jessica Grossmeier: Thanks for having me.
