Wellbeing Designers – Details, episodes & analysis

In this inspiring conversation, we sit down with the incredible Sarah Cunningham, Managing Director of World Wellbeing Movement. WWM is an impact-driven charity registered in England and Wales. 

Their mission? 𝗧𝗼 𝗽𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱.

We explore:
✅ How academic research is translated into real-world action
✅ Why wellbeing is a measurable science and how it links to productivity, longevity, and national progress
✅ What governments and businesses can do to improve wellbeing
✅ Insights from the Work Wellbeing Playbook and what truly works in the workplace

*****
🎧 Explore more on this topic with these resources:
Visit their website: www.worldwellbeingmovement.org
→ 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁:
https://www.youtube.com/@worldwellbeingmovement
→ 𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸:
https://worldwellbeingmovement.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Work-Wellbeing-Playbook.pdf
→ 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 "𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀" 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Workplace-Wellbeing-Matters-Organizational/dp/1647826357
 

www.wellbeing.design/podcast

🎠 "My purpose statement comes from my favourite children's book, which is about a girl that wants to become a knight. But of course, because she's a girl, that's impossible. Only boys can become knights. So she dresses up as a boy. She goes to the king's court. She works many years to become, in the end, the first female knight and ultimately a legend. So my purpose statement is to be a knight. For me, this means staying true to yourself, serving a greater good, and enabling others to find their own true selves."

🚀 Exciting News!  

🎙️️️ We are so excited to announce the launch of the latest episode of the Wellbeing Designers Podcast, featuring the incredible Tina Steck, Global Head of Employee Wellbeing at Unilever!

Tina shares her inspiring journey and insights into the importance of well-being in the workplace. Since 2017, she has been dedicated to establishing well-being as a strategic priority at Unilever, impacting over 127,000 employees globally.

Highlights of our conversation:

✅ Improved Employee Perception: The percentage of employees who believe Unilever cares for their wellbeing increased from 62% in 2017 to 84% in 2023, showing significant progress in cultivating a culture of care.

✅ Leadership Support: Strong leadership backing is crucial for successful wellbeing initiatives. Without it, implementing such programs becomes extremely challenging.

✅ Driver of Engagement: Wellbeing has emerged as one of the top key drivers of employee engagement at Unilever, highlighting its importance in fostering a committed workforce.

✅ Retention Factor: Data shows that both excessive and insufficient work pressure can lead to employee turnover, emphasizing the need for a balanced approach to workload management.

✅ Work-Life Balance: Employees who regularly plan and allocate focused time for projects report significantly better work-life balance, indicating the importance of effective time management practices.

✅ Strategic Priority: In 2022, Unilever's executive team (ULE) made improving psychological safety one of their OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), demonstrating top-level commitment to employee wellbeing.

✅ Cultural Transformation: Unilever treats wellbeing as a culture change journey, recognising that it requires long-term commitment and systemic changes rather than just isolated programs.

Tune in into Episode 19 available along with all episodes on major podcast platforms (Spotify, Apple, YouTube) or directly on our website. Links in the comment below ⬇️

⁉️What are your highlights? We would love to hear from you! Please leave them in comments!

💙 Share this episode with someone who would love this today (smiley)

🙏 Thank you Tina for your collaboration!

www.wellbeing.design/podcast

🔇 Episode 11 of the Wellbeing Designers with Kacy Flaming, Head of Global Wellbeing at Takeda is out today! 

🎙️ To make you even more curious to tune in and listen to our conversation, let's do a small quiz! Guess which of the following is NOT true! 1 - 2 - 3 ?

Kacy...

1 - ... started her career as an actress before climbing the corporate ladder in pharmaceuticals as a strategic director and recently wellbeing leader

2 - ... considers the ways of working as the main problem to tackle in organisational wellbeing and in society

3 - ... is convinced that up-skilling individuals with wellbeing skills is the way to go because it's a quick fix

😎 To find out the right answer, you need to tune in;) 

My personal highlight of our conversation was:

✨ learning about the dimensions of wellbeing, an approach Takeda developed in collaboration with Thrive Global and Arianna Huffington

✋ hearing her way of taking care of her own wellbeing: setting boundaries! This is my mantra as well. And it is so difficult - we agreed on this!

🙋🏾 she is one of the first ones amongst the wellbeing leaders who I have been talking to, who proactively highlights gender health (including menopause, female health) at the workplace as one of the focus areas of their work

Join our open course, the Wellbeing Leadership Mastery. Click here to reserve your spot.

Reach out to us via LinkedIn 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kasingact

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rekadeak/

www.wellbeing.design/podcast

 Episode 10 of the Wellbeing Designers Podcast is out today! Our guest is the one and only Karen Guggenheim, founder of WOHASU ® and the World Happiness Summit.

When we recorded this, we were not aware that it will be launched just after the #worldmentalhealthday. What a great coincidence!

🌟 As previously announced we are expanding our guest circle beyond "heads of wellbeing" and introduce some systemic change makers. Karen is the perfect example of being such an inspirational leader. She created WOHASU® a unique platform that elevates wellbeing and raises awareness about the science of happiness. Their goal is to educate individuals, businesses, and civic leaders on the significance of utilizing data-driven tools and policies to foster happiness and wellbeing.

Join me and Karen for this conversation if you are curious about...

🎙How happiness, wellbeing and longevity (3 popular terms nowadays) are interconnected

🎙How WOHASU has been evolved into a world-wide movement since it was launch in 2016 and became a driving force to create the Como Wellbeing Manifesto signed by members of the UK Parliament

🎙What's Karen's advice for future wellbeing leaders

🎙Insight how WOHASU helped to support and transform a business towards happiness and wellbeing

🎙What is going to happen in London 19-10 March 2024 😀

👀 One of my favourite take-aways is about ...

The rippling affect ... as we transform business environments into positive organizations, that not only impacts the business and the employees working there, but also their families who are associated with these employees. - This is super important aspect and makes the work of wellbeing leaders even more important!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenguggenheim/

Buy your ticket to the next World Happiness Summit 19-20 March 2024: https://bit.ly/3FcFFSg

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rekadeak/

Join our open course, the Wellbeing Leadership Mastery. Click here to reserve your spot.

www.wellbeing.design/podcast

"If we don't take care of the people taking care of our patients, our patients are going to suffer." - Episode 9 of the Wellbeing Designers Podcast is out today! Our guest is Jonathan Fisher, MD FACC a cardiologist, wellbeing leader and author of the book, "Just One Heart" based in the US.

This is a very special episode for me in many ways. When I discovered Jonathan's work few years ago, I felt that his approach towards health finally manages to make peace in me and in the world between the traditional Western medicine and the more spiritual Eastern one.

Jonathan has been a cardiologist for more decades Novant Health. Nowadays he works 60% as a cardiologist and 40% he is a wellbeing leader.  

Some of the thought provoking topics we are talking about:

1. What if we say that someone as a doctor can truly care about their patients only if they care about themselves? How is this possible in the current health care system?

2. How can a doctor after facing burnout go back to the same system as a new person and contribute to a systemic change? 

3. Even if healthcare is considered as one of those "lucky" industries where people are most connected to the meaning and purpose of their work, these days healthcare workers are so exhausted that they are often disconnected from the results of their work. What to do about this? 

4. And what about trauma? We talked about our common favourite physician, Gabor Mate and his work in this field. 

5. How can a doctor embody a mindful approach in practice?

And... If you are interested in reading Jonathan's upcoming book, "Just One Heart - a cardiologist's guide to healing, health, and happiness, is a practical guide to inner workings of the mind heart connection, helping readers master their stress and develop a healthy and joyful heart, make sure you get on the waiting list: https://jonathan-fisher.presale.manuscripts.com/registration/select

Jonathan and I are very much looking forward to hearing about your feedback on this conversation!

🎙 Links to the episode in comments below!

Sharing is caring! Share this episode with someone who would love this today:)

Join our open course, the Wellbeing Leadership Mastery. Click here to reserve your spot.

www.wellbeing.design/podcast

In this bonus episode Reka Deak, the host of the Wellbeing Designers Podcast changes her seat. She is interviewed by one of her good friends Isabel Steinhoff. Reka shares about her vision and mission with Wellbeing Designers, a bit about her story how she got here, about the community that started to form around Wellbeing Designers and the work that they are doing and planning to do with organisations.

Connect with them:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/isabelsteinhoff/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rekadeak/

www.wellbeing.design

Join our open course, the Wellbeing Leadership Mastery. Click here to reserve your spot.

www.wellbeing.design/podcast

"One of the things we have got to fix is CEOs and CFOs have to understand that GROWTH is dependent on wellbeing. They can't sacrifice wellbeing for growth ...
... I think wellbeing is gonna be part of the overall corporate SUSTAINABILITY agenda in companies over time. if companies are more and more dependent on the innovation and service and creativity and productivity of the individual people, wellbeing is a financial metric almost..."

❓ How does this resonate with you 🤔 
❗ It very much resonates with me 😀 

YES! Time has come for Episode 8 of the Wellbeing Designers Podcast with Josh Bersin CEO of The Josh Bersin Company and author of the book "Irresistible". 
I am super excited to share this conversation with you as Josh is putting organisational wellbeing into the bigger context of other HR and business topics and challenges. 
Thank you Josh for sharing your insights with us! It was great to have this conversation with you 🙏

Links to various podcast channels via our website: https://lnkd.in/eTFB9TCf or in comments ⬇️

My top 3+1 learnings are:
💚 People sustainability: wellbeing is predicted be part of the overall corporate sustainability agenda in companies 

💰 Pay Equity: according to the research done in the Healthy Organisation study Pay Equity has a massive impact on people's sense of wellbeing. People who feel underpaid or unfairly paid are bringing, carrying a big burden around with them every day at work. Reminds me on the basic levels of the Maslow pyramid and the importance of financial wellbeing. 

💁‍♂️ Confusion: is one of the main factors affecting wellbeing. "What am I responsible for? What are my priorities? What can I not do because I have to do this versus that?" The company might have too many things going on and there seem to be conflicting priorities. Targets are too high and we're not hitting our metrics and people are not sure what they should do about it.

💫 Solutions: should come from the business, problems are not expected to be solved by a single wellbeing manager. Bringing people together to agree on the problems and then discussing solutions is the way forward!

The book Irresistible: https://www.amazon.com/Irresistible-Secrets-Enduring-Employee-Focused-Organizations-ebook/dp/B0B1VQL9ML

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bersin/

https://www.wellbeing.design/podcast

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rekadeak/

Join our open course, the Wellbeing Leadership Mastery. Click here to reserve your spot.

www.wellbeing.design/podcast

In Episode 7 of the Wellbeing Designers Podcast we get to know the work of Lisette de Jonge and Julia Cornu, the two Global Health and Wellbeing Leaders at Ingka Group / IKEA based in Sweden.

As a big fan of the Scandinavian way of living, working and BEING:) I was very keen on to bring them into this conversation and to share about their work with you and the world. In close collaboration with the local wellbeing leads in each country they are co-creating global wellbeing initiatives to deliver value for more than 170k employees worldwide .

My three highlights from our conversation:

💫 Measurement and return on investment are important but the overall health and wellbeing of coworkers is even more important. We need to acknowledge that wellbeing is a long-term topic. We cannot change the engagement within a month in the organization.

💫 Listening to people and their needs is crucial. However, we need to go deeper than the surface. If they request a chair massage, we need to ask why, what is underneath this idea and need?

💫 Health and Wellbeing need to be integrated into all key people processes, and ultimately, into all key business processes. So a close collaboration with various business areas is a must.

Join our open course, the Wellbeing Leadership Mastery. Click here to reserve your spot.

www.wellbeing.design/podcast

In Episode 6 of the Wellbeing Designers Podcast we get to know the work of Newton Cheng who is a husband, father, competitive power lifter and Director of Health + Wellbeing Google based in California. 

Newton's vulnerability got my interest. He openly shares about his mental health struggles while working in the organisational wellbeing space of a famous organisation. I really enjoyed talking also about spiritual wellbeing with him as this is a topic that we sometimes rename, reframe and very few people dare to put it out there in a corporate environment.

My three highlights from our conversation:
- Talking about Charles Vogel and how communities can impact social and mental wellbeing
- How to approach spiritual wellbeing at work using secular, non-secular and research based approach in engaging people
- Measuring the impact of all the work done towards wellbeing in organisations is not easy, we need to be honest about this. Still, there are frameworks like the one from Christina Maslach that can be a good base to experiment. 

And an extra learning: showing up as a credible influential business (not only wellbeing) leader is key to success for future wellbeing leaders!

❓ What are YOUR take aways? Share them in the comments or reach out via PM.
We are curious about your story, your learnings and feedback. 

🤞 Sharing is caring! If you like the podcast, share it with others who might be interested;)

Reach out to us:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/newtoncheng/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rekadeak/

Join our open course, the Wellbeing Leadership Mastery. Click here to reserve your spot.

www.wellbeing.design/podcast

Jake Sanders shares about his role as Global Wellbeing Initiatives Lead at Philip Morris International. He gives insight into their work and the learnings along the way.

I owe you a short explanation how this conversation started... 🤔 Having second thoughts because of the profile of the company: tobacco. Then I asked the question from myself: isn't this hypocrite? There are so many other industries that directly or indirectly contribute to addictions, mental or physical illnesses? ... what came to my mind: social media addiction, unhealthy food, companies who might produce a healthy product but have a toxic work culture so employees are burnt out etc... I invite you to think about this!

After this short philosophical anecdote I invite you to tune into and listen to our conversation with Jake who impressed me with his energy and eagerness to make a positive impact on people's lives. So there was no question afterwards that I would invite him for a show. 🚀 

Top insights:

1. 💡 There is so much offering out there focusing on individual wellbeing. What we need in organisations though is a SYSTEMIC approach, how to go beyond interventions for individuals. 

2. 💡 TIME is one of the biggest currencies that you can give back to people so they can spend it on their wellbeing. 

3. 💡 The paradox is real: a company that doesn't necessarily produce healthy products is very much into the wellbeing of its own employees and creating a great work culture. There two seems to coexist. 

❓ What are YOUR take aways? Share them in the comments or reach out via PM.
We are curious about your story, your learnings and feedback. 

🤞 Sharing is caring! If you like the podcast, share it with others who might be interested;)

Reach out to us if you have questions, comments:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-ap-sanders/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rekadeak/

Join our open course, the Wellbeing Leadership Mastery. Click here to reserve your spot.

www.wellbeing.design/podcast