Why Your Company's Wellness Strategy Is Missing Its Soul: The Spiritual Imperative

Welcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Nathan to the Built By People podcast.

Nathan, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

Sure. First off, thanks for having me today. Appreciate it.

I think my career journey's been really interesting because I actually started my career after I graduated with a master's degree in rhetoric. I became an actor and my journey since then hasn't really been linear.

And I think for some people who

share a nonlinear path, we often find it's difficult to tell our stories, but I actually think that there's significant value

to having a diverse set of experiences. It helps us be able to navigate

human behavior more fluently. It helps us understand the emotions that

are associated with different career paths.

And in my particular experience as an actor, that all definitely— understanding human behavior

and emotions is a big piece of

it, but also the power of storytelling to shape meaning.

That becomes a really big piece.

But learning to be an actor also

taught me how to get quiet, how to listen deeply, how to read between the lines for meaning and help people feel seen and heard.

So all of those things really inform what I do regularly. But in terms of my own journey, when I was thinking, when my acting career was starting to wind down, I was really thinking about the essence of what I loved. And I realized that the deepest part of me was interested in helping people find ways to harness the potential of the human spirit. And to me, that potential gets grossly

untapped in the workplace. To me, the saddest thing about the

workplace is that when we show up for work, more times than not, we

leave some part of ourselves outside of the door.

And some days it could be a huge part of our identity.

I think about the experience of people that are gender fluid or transgender who are not comfortable being out at work.

Other days it may be a small

grief that we're experiencing, like one of my employees who recently shared with me that she was just feeling a little bit sad about a roommate who recently moved out.

And it's just those sorts of things that just distract us from the work, but also keep us from being fully

human in the work. Regardless of the size of what gets left at home or outside of the workplace, the result is that person's not fully present.

Organizations then don't get to harness and

harvest the gifts of the experience of grief.

And that realization really led me to

HR where I can use my skills to help support people thrive in workplace cultures. Where we can make really impactful change by helping people experience that they can truly belong.

And that to me is the foundation

of what I think workplace wellness means,

is that you get to fully belong.

Nathan, how does your experience at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition shape your perspective on workplace wellness? And what does a truly holistic approach to wellness look like through your lens?

Yeah. At IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, for those who don't know the organization,

we train health coaches, the people that help with behavior change that's associated with holistic health.

We believe that wellness isn't just about things like nutrition.

It's about the whole person.

And that philosophy to me is my

approach to workplace wellness. So a truly holistic approach recognizes that employees are more than their job titles. They're complex individuals. They have unique needs. They have unique experiences of stress.

They have unique dreams and aspirations. And so when we're designing workplace wellness, we have to go beyond these traditional

benefits like gym memberships and step challenges.

We have to include holistic mental health

support, work-life balances for folks that are, especially for folks that are working high stress.

We gotta think about financial wellness.

We have to think about personal growth opportunities, spirituality. Experiences really that help us foster connection and purpose.

And we're looking for that multidimensional approach. I really feel like when organizations build a multidimensional approach, we honor the multidimensionality

of what it means to be human.

And we're able to show up to work feeling like we have a sense

of how our whole selves belong.

And maybe I also want to specifically

just call out something about the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

That's really been driving this home for

me over my tenure there is that there's a big missing piece of our current healthcare system, which is the support for behavior change.

So the medical system does a great

job at responding to the health crisis, but it's really insufficient at preventing health crisis.

And one of the reasons I think for this is that doctors don't know anything about nutrition. The National Academy of Sciences suggests that a good, healthy medical training should include

a minimum of 25 hours of nutrition education.

And right now, less than 8% of

medical students report having even 20 hours of instruction in nutrition.

It's just not a part of our

medical system in the US.

And that means that most doctors aren't better at giving nutrition advice other than

just saying eat less, exercise more.

And even if they knew that answer,

knowing the answer is different from being able to empower someone to do something different.

And so health coaches, from my perspective,

are a missing piece of wellness.

And at IIN, we train the best

of the health coaches, and health coaches are experts at supporting behavior change over time.

And they do that by building supportive relationships with clients, and that relationship becomes

the foundation of meaningful change for people.

And so I would say to anyone

who's listening now, who's in charge of

designing a wellness program, If your wellness program doesn't include access to free supportive

health coaching, I can pretty well say your wellness program isn't going to make much of a change and you should

reach out to someone so that they

can connect you with options. Feel free to reach out to me if that's fine.

Nathan, you've spoken at conferences about spirituality at work. Can you share some specific examples of how organizations can create space for employees' spiritual identities while maintaining professional boundaries?

Yes, this is my favorite thing to talk about. So thanks for asking the question.

Spirituality at work doesn't have to mean religion.

It's about creating space for meaning and purpose and connection. And so some organizations do this by offering meditation or mindfulness sessions.

Some create quiet rooms for reflection or spiritual practices like ritual and prayer, or some more forward-thinking organizations are actually integrating

their business practices with spiritual perspectives.

So this, this is things like encouraging

employees to bring their personal values into goal-setting conversations.

But it can also look— there's so

many novel ways to do this.

Things that I've done is having a

minute of silence in a meeting before a big decision gets finalized.

So we know we're going to make this big decision.

Before we all actually say yes, let's just take a minute of silence.

Or another thing that I've done is we're going to ring a bell.

It's 3 PM in the office for

everyone to stop work because we've all

been going so fast.

We're going to stop and we're just

going to come to a complete rest for 1 minute and just be.

There's so many simple ways that it's not distracting to the work.

It actually helps to pace out the work and we've found that these sorts of rest moments are actually really meaningful to achieve work ends.

But it can also show up in things like the way that we measure success. To me, this is one of my big ones recently.

My personal executive coach keeps reminding me that every time I hear someone say

KPI, I should actually reinterpret it as

a key purpose indicator.

So we can't rightfully measure our true

impact with these like old school myopic MBA ways of thinking.

So as important as things like LTV

and AOV and ROAS are, we have to expand our vision.

And I'm not advocating for dropping those measurements.

I'm advocating for something that's more holistic, more human.

We need to imagine measurements like the

number of lives that are impacted, our community outreach and engagement numbers, levels of

innovation that are driven as a result

of the company's purpose.

Employee purpose engagement scores, charitable giving amounts quarter over quarter, theory of change application and accomplishment percentages, things like that, that

are actually driving purpose.

They're actually a better indicator of the

success of the organization long-term.

And so I just feel like those are the things that we're going to evolve into eventually as we start to

realize the limitations of some of our current ways of thinking.

But maybe one last thing to say here. About spirituality is that a big piece

of it is being inclusive as a leader.

So making sure that your people and especially your managers are trained with, trained

to respect and include diverse perspectives, whether that's through flexible time off policies, encouraging open dialogue in a way that respects everyone's beliefs. But we want to foster an environment where people feel safe to express what matters to them and what's important to them. And that often means slowing down. Slowing the pace of businesses that are moving too fast. There's a teacher, Parker Palmer, who I think said it well. The soul is like a wild animal.

It's tough, it's resilient, it's savvy, self-sufficient, and exceedingly shy.

And so if we wanted to show up, we can't go crashing through the woods shouting for the creature to come out. But if we can sit for an hour or two at the base of a tree, it will come out.

And I think that's true when we

start to think about these workplace interventions that invite spirituality to come in. We can't go crashing through the woods. We've got to just make some space to be quiet.

Nathan, how do you see the connection between employee engagement, behavior change, and medical benefits playing out in successful wellness programs?

Yeah, I spoke a little bit about this already, but maybe I'll share an

additional piece of the puzzle as I see it.

Our wellness program focuses always on supporting behavior change. So when employees feel engaged in their

work and supported in their personal wellbeing, they're more likely to adopt healthy behaviors that improve their overall quality of life.

And if that happens habitually, it ripples

out and it becomes culture.

So any program that helps make a

bridge between awareness and action is a really great start.

So preventive care incentives, health coaching, those

are really good examples of behavior change,

but successful programs need measurement.

And so I always have a bias toward measuring the intended behavior change.

For example, if a company offers mental health resources, but doesn't create a culture

where it's okay to use them, employees are not going to engage.

So that's one of those moments where

I'm encouraging leaders to actively participate, share their own experiences, actively reinforce that wellbeing

is a priority and When that happens,

employees naturally feel encouraged to take advantage of the resources.

Nathan, what are some common misconceptions about workplace wellness that you've encountered and how do you address them?

Yeah, the first one is pervasive.

There's probably two major misconceptions. The first one is that wellness programs are nice to have and not a strategic imperative. Very few CEOs that I talk to would put a wellness program even in their top 20 list of priorities.

It's even low on the list for people that administer benefits, but the evidence, I think, tells a very different story.

So research has found that employees who

participate in even a basic wellness program

experience a 25% decrease in absenteeism, a

30% increase in productivity. That doesn't even touch the, the lowered

healthcare costs, which is always a result

of a wellness program, but Another study found that all employees who participated in a wellness program improved their productivity in an average of 1 full workday a month. So you can get an additional workday

out of everyone that works for you if you've got a wellness program.

Like, this is a strategic imperative, but

more importantly to me, it actually honors our human need for wellness.

So the second myth maybe that I'd

share is that wellness is just about physical health. Fitness is important, but true wellness includes mental, emotional, spiritual, financial wellbeing.

And the best way I think to

address any of these misconceptions is just

share this data and share the real

human stories of how workplace wellness transforms people's lives.

From your experience, what role should CEOs and HR leaders play in championing workplace wellness initiatives?

Yeah, I mean, CEOs and HR leaders,

like most topics, they set the tone.

So when leaders support wellness by participating

in the programs, by normalizing the conversation, by ensuring that policies align with wellbeing, it signals to everyone that it's a priority.

And so leaders need to model healthy behaviors themselves, like setting boundaries around work

hours or taking appropriate time off so employees feel permission to do the same.

HR in particular needs to ensure wellness

is embedded into the company culture, not just as a happy add-on, but a strategic imperative.

So that means integrating wellbeing into leadership training, performance reviews, making sure that it's

a business strategy so that it becomes part of the organizational DNA.

And we should be advocating for those

regular reviews that include key purpose indicators as well.

I, I think I also want to add an important nuance about how to do this. I've seen a lot of leaders miss

the mark here when they pretend that wellness is about driving productivity.

I've heard leaders say that we should build wellness programs so we can drive results.

And that's not an honest expression of the truth.

What happens is that when employees hear that, they hear that they should be working more, and that makes them feel

manipulated and not honored.

So if we want to honor what

it means to be human, we need to make wellness a first condition. A first priority.

So we prioritize wellness because it's our

birthright as a citizen of humanity.

We don't do wellness so that we

can work harder or work better, and

that may end up happening, and the

evidence shows that it will, but it's not the true answer to why.

And so I think if we're trying

to develop authentic relationship with our employees, it's important that we make that wellness a first condition.

Nathan, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

Yeah, first I'd say wellness isn't a one-size-fits-all. It should change based on the needs

of your unique set of employees. And it's, it's hugely important to also

say that small changes can make a big impact. So try something small, see what happens. I remember when I was first starting to integrate spirituality at work, I led this large meeting on a particularly thorny,

difficult topic, and I was really nervous about it.

I chose to start the meeting by

inviting everyone to take 2 intentional shared breaths.

And that, just doing that was very countercultural.

You could almost hear people fidget with the weirdness of me asking them to

do that, because this was not a warm fuzzy kind of workplace. But I did that as a small

thing, 2 shared breaths as a kickoff to this meeting. And that was over 10 years ago.

And I still have people from that

company writing me on LinkedIn, sharing about how that impacted them.

So those small things make a big impact. So whether you're a leader or an employee, start where you are, really lean into this, like crawl, then walk, then run. And as one of my mentors shared

with me recently, she said, don't forget

that none of us would have learned

to walk if people chastised us every time we fell.

In fact, most of the time when we're learning to walk, We fell down

and people made it into a game.

They would say, whoopsie, fell. And that's a model for how we

can relate to our work failures when we're learning something for the first time. So don't be afraid to take that first step, even if it ends up in a whoopsie.

Nathan, thank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

Thank you. Appreciate it.