My guest today is Sara Martin. She’s the CEO of WELCOA, the Wellness Council of America. WELCOA is one of the country’s most respected resources for building high-performing, healthy workplaces. In this episode, Sara and I talk about creating a psychologically safe workplace, about work and families, how stories impact us, and where the future of work and living are headed.

In this incredible conversation, Sara talks about her work at WELCOA and how they create diverse, equitable, psychologically safe and healthy workplaces. You’ll also hear her talk about her passion for employees.

If wellness, wellbeing and a discussion about whether workplaces can truly change interest you, this conversation can answer some of your burning questions.

Punk Rock HR is proudly underwritten by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is a B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head over to thestarrconspiracy.com.

WELCOA’S Mission to Incorporate Wellbeing at Work

Many workplace leaders talk about bringing your whole self to work, finding purpose in your work and “creating environments that allow you to thrive and flourish,” Sara says. But those are lofty things to ask of employees. WELCOA has tried a different focus with helping employees while defining wellbeing in a way that most people aren’t.

“What we’re really talking about is basic human needs. And for WELCOA, those are needs that we think that work an impact,” Sara shares. “So there’s other needs that people have — spiritual and otherwise — that may not really be something that the employer can really make an impact in. But for us, it’s about, beyond physical health, having those needs met that really allow you to meet all the goals that you have for yourself.”

Your wellbeing goes beyond “summer Fridays” and nap pods at work. Most people will look at wellbeing as an end goal or a marker in life, but Sara disagrees. “It’s not something that you’re always trying to achieve; it’s something that’s walking alongside you, your wellbeing,” she says. Anyone is able to tap in or out of their wellbeing because it’s a personal space created by individuals —not by organizations.

WELCOA provides members with training and other resources to improve their wellbeing strategies. Sara shares that there is software and other tools that people can buy that address wellbeing, but WELCOA’s mission goes deeper. “What we ultimately do is help professionals in the HR and broker communities understand how to weave wellbeing into the fabric of how they do business, or how their clients do business, and ensure that their wellness spend is well spent,” she says.

Leading Change in the Workplace

Some companies haven’t fixed their bad cultures and yet are trying to solve their workforce’s wellbeing problems. That raises the question, “Who is speaking truth to power?” The fact is, businesses can’t blame a lack of wellbeing on employees when the organization isn’t creating a psychologically safe work environment.

Sara encourages leaders to have the tough discussion about whether their workplace is psychologically safe. “One of our big fears, one of the things that keep me up at night, is the people that have been leading the strategic work are often in the HR space, and they don’t have that direct line to leadership,” she says. “And leaders aren’t coming to them and asking for their help in solving these problems. And the reality is, they have the solution, but leaders are going to have to give them a wider scope of influence to get that work done.”

No one understands the gap in wellbeing at an organization more than wellness managers and  coordinators. At small companies, that source of knowledge could be HR generalists. Leaders might have a sense of the wellbeing gap but often lack a full perspective. At WELCOA, Sara and her team try to help leaders move forward with the right information. “We try to help arm them with the data, and we do a lot of benchmarking across the thousands of organizations we work with,” she says.

“When they get that opportunity, they can say, ‘It’s not necessarily me — the Wellness Council of America is benchmarking these organizations, and they found that when CEOs do these six things, performance across the other benchmarks increases by this amount.’”

Psychological Safety in Work, Life and Beyond

There is a global conversation occurring about quality of life and putting life first instead of work. These conversations are essential in society today, and when Sara is working with clients and members, she is looking for every aspect that can hinder progress.

She explains, “We are generating resources and training and skill-building around our members, the people doing this work, also understanding that there are societal factors — health inequity, racial disparities, growing economic divides — that we have to be honest and say, they keep some people from the resources that they need for basic survival.”

Psychological safety is a priority in WELCOA’s operations and offerings. “Every single training that we’ve built for the year is around psychological safety, trust and positive cultures for those things. And we think that’s a good baseline for moving forward,” Sara shares.

Quality of life isn’t limited to the workplace, and it’s not something that can be siloed. “We are really trying to help our members understand that link between safety and security and dignity and, ultimately, the wellbeing goals that they thought were the most immediate goals,” Sara shares. “And we’re saying, the future of work is going to require that we might need to go back to a point of departure and solve some basic other needs first.”

[bctt tweet=”‘We are really trying to help our members understand that link between safety and security and dignity and, ultimately, the wellbeing goals that they thought were the most immediate goals.’ ~ Sara Martin. Tune in to the latest episode of #PunkRockHR!” via=”no”]

People in This Episode

Full Transcript

Laurie Ruettimann:

This episode of Punk Rock HR is sponsored by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is the B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head on over to thestarrconspiracy.com.

Hey, everybody. I’m Laurie Ruettimann. Welcome back to Punk Rock HR. My guest today is Sara Martin. She’s the CEO of WELCOA, the Wellness Council of America. WELCOA is one of the nation’s most respected resources for building high-performing, healthy workplaces. In this conversation today, you’ll hear Sara talk about that, creating diverse, equitable, psychologically safe and healthy workplaces, but you’ll also hear her talk about her passion for employees.

This is an awesome conversation where Sara and I talk about work and families, and how stories impact us, and more importantly, where the future of work and living are headed. So if you’re interested in wellness and wellbeing, and you’re curious about a discussion whether or not workplaces can truly change, well, sit back and enjoy this fun and interesting conversation with Sara Martin from WELCOA.

Hey, Sara, welcome to the podcast.

Sara Martin:

Great to be here, Laurie. Thank you for having me.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, I’m pleased you’ve joined us to talk about my favorite topic, which is wellbeing. But before we get started, why don’t you tell everybody who you are and what you’re all about.

Sara Martin:

So I’m Sara Martin. I am the CEO of the Wellness Council of America, WELCOA. And I’m all about this work because I grew up being absolutely terrified of work because I watched it ruin the lives of the adults that I loved the most. And so I thought as an 18-year-old bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, world in front of her woman, I thought to myself, could my job be fixing work so that I’m less afraid of it? And that’s how we got here.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, that’s a huge journey that you’ve undertaken. And at 18, how prescient that you thought work was making people sick and that you wanted to fix it. Can you tell us a little bit more about how it was affecting the people you love?

Sara Martin:

I think it was mostly my dad, although both of my parents were impacted in some way. I watched him already be someone that really struggled with purpose in his life, and I watched how the job that he was in really perpetuated that lack of purpose. The culture was really toxic, it scapegoated him and it made him feel like a nobody. And that was really tough for him, it ultimately led him to really drink a lot more than he should have and he became, well, really dependent on alcohol, and really bonded with it as a stand-in for that purpose he was losing from work. And that really translated over time into worse substance-abuse issues with cocaine.

And his life deteriorated, spiraled out of control. He lost his job, his family and his home, and his freedom for a little while. And all of that was happening when I had to declare a major in college. And so I just thought, this can’t be what work looks like, and this is not going to be my life. So that’s why I went to school for the psychology of work, which is what my graduate program was, industrial psychology. And did some research in graduate school on cultures that perpetuate that kind of deterioration: alcohol, tobacco, other drug use. And found out, when I got into the wellness world, I started working for a health plan, that this world was doing it egregiously wrong, and it would not have avenged my dad, what we were doing. And so my work since realizing that has been asking people to dream bigger about this thing.

Laurie Ruettimann:

There’s so many questions to ask. But I’m real curious, do you think your dad’s story would’ve been different with a different work environment? Or do you think he was just wired a little differently?

Sara Martin:

He had a really tragic childhood, so it wasn’t like everything was stacked in his favor from the beginning. But his catchphrase used to be, “if I had fill-in-the-blank, then I would really feel like somebody,” or “if I could do that job or show up like that guy, I would really feel like somebody.” And I think that we have to be honest about the fact that we spend 90,000 hours of our lives at work and it’s defining of how we see ourselves. And I don’t know that it would’ve been wholly redemptive in all the areas of his life, but I do believe that it contributed to the downfall.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Our stories are very similar that way, and I’ve written about this extensively. I mean, you’re moving me to tears here. I have often wondered, not only with my own dad, but just family members, friends, colleagues who have had similar experiences, if that statement, “If only I would’ve been promoted, if only they would’ve taken me seriously,” was really about something else. And even if you gave something like that to my dad — because my dad maybe once or twice in his career had been promoted — didn’t really seem to solve the problem.

I want to establish whether, and maybe it’s a chicken and an egg discussion, is it work or is it life that needs to come first? Or maybe there’s no choice that needs to be made, maybe they’re the same thing.

Sara Martin:

I think that we ask a lot of lofty things of our employees. What you’re saying is — and I really appreciate, Laurie, this pushing in on this conversation and how it intersects with your story as well. It’s reminding me of that whole “bring your whole self to work” argument. And at WELCOA, it’s like we’ve been talking a lot about this. These are really lofty things we’re asking of our employees, like find purpose in your work, bring your whole self to work, creating environments that allow you to thrive and flourish.

And we need to be honest with ourselves that maybe that isn’t what employees need at all. To exactly your point, we just need to first do no harm. Have we created an environment that meets basic human needs, allows people to feel respected? Do they have dignity? And do they have 40% net disposable income? Can they actually afford their lives because of our compensation structure? And if we can just do that stuff, then maybe yours and my conversation, or at least the one about wellbeing, becomes a lot less interesting. Which, ultimately working for a nonprofit, I would love that, I would love to put ourselves out of business.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, I certainly wish you nothing but the best of luck with that. I think your mission, though, is so timely, maybe we can talk a little bit about WELCOA’s specific mission and also how the organization defines wellbeing. So what is it that you do? And what is wellbeing?

Sara Martin:

So the way that we define wellbeing is across seven aspects, and we can find them on our website. But what we’re really talking about is basic human needs. And for WELCOA, those are needs that we think that work can impact. So there’s other needs that people have that, spiritual and otherwise, that may not really be something that the employer can really make an impact in. But for us, it’s about, beyond physical health, having those needs met that really allow you to meet all the goals that you have for yourself.

It’s not something that you’re always trying to achieve, it’s something that’s walking alongside you, your wellbeing. And any point you can tap into it. It’s always available to you, that’s something that our COO Maggie Gough always talks about. It’s not something the organization can paint a picture for you to help you understand. It has to be very personal to you.

So for WELCOA, what we do is provide evaluation training resources. We have 4,000 member organizations nationwide. Their impact spans 13 million employees, so we have quite an impact, or ability to make an impact. And we use real business data to bring our members that resource, those trainings and recommendations for their wellbeing strategies.

And so we like to say, there’s a lot of things you can go out and buy when it comes to wellbeing. And I think a lot of people think about that when they think about — I’m going to go do wellbeing, they think, what do I need to buy, tech platform, or an app, or a coaching service for my people? We work with those folks to help them figure out what to build and how to speak to the buyers of their product. But what we ultimately do is help professionals in the HR and broker communities understand how to weave wellbeing into the fabric of how they do business or how their clients do business, and ensure that their wellness spend is well spent.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, when I think about the wellness spend, you’re right though, that much of it goes to technology. Can you talk about that space, that industry? Because a lot of people now associate a platform or an app or whatever with wellness, instead of the way it used to be, which just a couple years ago was yoga or a 5K, and before that it was weight loss and smoking cessation. So what’s the role of tech right now?

Sara Martin:

Well, the reality is, for most companies, if you have 1,000 employees as the bottom threshold, you have one full-time dedicated person who’s thinking about wellness. And if you have less than 1,000 employees, you have half or less of one. It’s someone in HR who is doing multiple things, and one of them happens to be wellness.

So when you have a problem to solve, you have to go out and buy something, very often, to help you solve it, whether it be a resource or data collection tool, or what have you. I think what people get mixed up in is they don’t understand, one, what the goals are for their wellbeing strategy first, what their leaders are expecting, what other collaborative tools they have across their organization that they could leverage to go ahead and start making some grass-roots kinds of changes, solve the problem first. A sense for what cultural barriers exist that might be standing in the way.

And so what we often see is while there are really amazing HR tech vendors out there, and there’s a lot of them, and that industry keeps growing and it gets very confusing and really overwhelming. We see that we are overlying on those vendors when what we need to do is understand, first, what our goals are, and then figure out what we might want to plug in from a resource perspective to help us meet those. And the vendors want that, too. The vendors don’t want to be over-relied on. You can only do so much.

So we often say, so many companies think that to do wellness means to buy a wellness vendor service or platform and drop it on top of their shitty culture, and then expect wonderful things to happen. And the wellness vendor isn’t successful, and the company isn’t successful, and ultimately they want to fire their wellness vendor and hire another one. But what they don’t realize is they’re not optimized to deliver on wellbeing for their people. And that’s what WELCOA does. We help them figure out whether they’re optimized. And then we help them figure out if they need to go buy something, and if so, what to buy to help them meet their needs. And we’re completely agnostic in that space, we don’t benefit from any of those decisions.

Laurie Ruettimann:

It’s fascinating to me on a lot of levels that companies are trying to solve wellbeing problems when they do have these shitty cultures. So who is speaking truth to power? Who is having that tough conversation with the CHRO or CEO, saying, “there’s no way, this is not going to happen, the problem is you, the problem isn’t your sweaty, out-of-shape workforce that you like to blame,” right? The problem is that you don’t create a psychologically safe work environment. Who has that conversation?

Sara Martin:

It’s a really difficult conversation to have. And one of our fears is that right now, in the midst of this disruption from the past two years, leaders have really actually awakened to a new awareness of both the value and the breadth of what workplace wellbeing is. They may be asking more questions or they are more curious. But it’s a crucial time in the industry. And one of our big fears, one of the things that keeps me up at night, is the people that have been leading the strategic work are often in the HR space, and they don’t have that direct line to leadership. And leaders aren’t coming to them and asking for their help in solving these problems. And the reality is, they have the solution, but leaders are going to have to give them a wider scope of influence to get that work done.

But I can guarantee that no one in the organization knows more about what is standing in the gap between employees and their wellbeing than your wellness manager or your wellness coordinator — or even, in a smaller company, that HR generalist who initially had this work thrust on them but has since become quite a high-acumen professional in this space. And we say to them, this is your moment, they were made for this moment.

So what we try to do, to really directly answer your question, Laurie, is we try to help arm them with the data, and we do a lot of benchmarking across the thousands of organizations we work with. So if they get that opportunity — and we’re doing everything we can right now to help them elevate in that way — when they get that opportunity, they can say, “It’s not necessarily me. The Wellness Council of America is benchmarking these organizations, and they found that when CEOs do these six things, performance across the other benchmarks increases by this amount.”

And by the way, I’ve already written your communication structure, here’s some ideas, I have some questions for you. And we have facilitation guides around all of that. So we can help them get there and get that audience. But right now, the majority of the army of people who are doing this work are not in the thought leadership space to be able to impact at the highest level of the organization, which is a concern that we have.

Laurie Ruettimann:

I would imagine that the training materials that WELCOA provides to HR generalists, business partners, CHROs have changed over the past two years. Can you tell me how they’ve changed and what they look like right now?

Sara Martin:

So we have this really powerful analytics tool called the Well Workplace Checklist that already you can plug in what your goals are, and it spits out to you specific recommendations as those goals evolve. And so, in some regard, we were really well-positioned at the beginning of the pandemic, even though no one really knew how things were going to change. We had a tool that took in what your biggest goals were, your biggest problems were, and gave you meaningful ideas. And then that is a living, breathing application. So as data inputs go in, the benchmarks automatically change. So you can see in real time how others’ programs are also shifting.

To respond, which I think is really valuable, philosophically, we were really bold in our messaging strategy and our resource creation strategy. For decades, our industry has been giving people life rafts in the form of a wellness program, where I’m drowning and my employer throws me a life raft, and that’s going to attempt to help me recover my wellbeing. And it’s like we’re a bunch of Holden Caulfields catching employees in the rye before they fall off the cliff. And I think a better question might be, why do so many of our employees need life rafts? Or an even better question is, who’s upstream throwing my employees in the river?

Laurie Ruettimann:

That I think is the ultimate question, right? Why are they getting in the water in the first place? That’s insane. And as much as I think WELCOA is so needed, I think there’s just this global conversation right now that we’re having around the quality of life and being life first, instead of work first. And what does that mean? And how do we earn income? And all of these conversations are so important. So while you’re focused on your clients and your members today, what are you thinking about when it comes to the future of work and the future of living?

Sara Martin:

Exactly to your point, we are generating resources and training and skill building around our members, the people doing this work, also understanding that there are societal factors, health inequity, racial disparities, growing economic divides that we have to be honest and say, they keep some people from the resources that they need for basic survival.

And we believe that this is not a completely separate body of work — this problem that is in the broader climate that you’re describing — than the work of reshaping the organizations that are part of putting barriers on people and keeping them from reaching their full potential. So for us, even in the near future, we are really trying to help our members understand that link between safety and security and dignity and, ultimately, the wellbeing goals that they thought were the most immediate goals. And we’re saying, the future of work is going to require that we might need to go back to a point of departure and solve some basic other needs first.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, you do so much research in the world of work, the world of living, right? Just the way we exist. And I am so cynical, that’s just my POV in this world. But I know you must find some real optimistic trends about people, the way they interact, what they hope, what they dream for. So what are you optimistic about in your industry?

Sara Martin:

I have two things that I’m most optimistic about. And one I referenced briefly, but I’ll just restate in slightly different terms. I think that the fact that people are having really nuanced, open, curious conversations, they’re asking more beautiful questions — e.e. cummings always said, I always quote, “Always the more beautiful answer who asks the more beautiful question” — about what it means to be well at work and what the organization’s role is in getting there. And the disruption of the pandemic was exactly what we needed to blow up the medicalized paradigm of what wellbeing is. And now we just need to be ready to chart a course forward. So that makes me optimistic.

I think the other thing that makes me optimistic is that WELCOA has the capability of when we understand what’s working well. We were actually just evaluated by a third-party organization, the Returns on Wellbeing Institute, and they wanted to know what’s working well and what seems to be common amongst the companies that are platinum-level well-workplace awardees. And they did find some trends. And so what makes me excited about that, because I love doing the work, is now that we know what those trends are, we can help more organizations optimize to there. And we have 4,000 organizations who are listening that can impact 13 million employees’ lives. So it’s not everyone, we have not tapped our total available market, but that can make a huge change for a large percentage of employers and employees. That makes me optimistic.

Laurie Ruettimann:

So I love your language, because when you talk about organizations, you also are employee-centric. And I would be remiss if I didn’t applaud you for that and call that out, and wonder if that’s intentional, if that’s something that you do with great purpose, or if that’s just in your DNA. Organizations are people. Because a lot of times when I speak with leaders of associations, they’re very focused on members being an individual state or a company. And you always bring it down to the employee. Is that a choice?

Sara Martin:

It’s a pretty intentional pendulum swing for our industry that was built — at least as it exists today, WELCOA predates this — but our industry as it exists today was built on this idea that employees are broken and if we can fix them, then we’ll have better organizational outcomes. And so if we don’t start talking about the role that an organization has on its people, and what their obligation is to its people, then ultimately what the positive outcomes — close loop back to the organization — will be as a result of doing that, then we’re never going to actually make an impact on employee wellbeing. So I think that’s one reason.

And then maybe my bleeding-heart secondary reason is just that it disarms people. When I tell the story of my dad, I always start my keynotes that way very often because people don’t want to hear from the Wellness Council of America. You know what I mean?

Laurie Ruettimann:

I do.

Sara Martin:

They want to hear that there is a human element that they can impact, and they want to see themselves in their work, and they want to see themselves in my work. And that’s been a great strategy to help onboard people to what the mission of our organization is and help them see it more beautifully.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, I have one final question, because what you do for a living is so intertwined with your life story and your DNA, right? So I know this from my own life experience, I’ve had to find almost like a third path where I’m doing something else other than working and talking about my family of origin, right? I have to go volunteer, I have to spend time with cats, I have to exercise. What do you do to maintain good mental health in your own wellbeing? Because that’s got to be so important for you.

Sara Martin:

I get up early, I swim, I love to swim laps early in the morning, I love to write or meditate. And I’ve learned more and more, especially through the pandemic that if I am not plugged into my community, I’m not well. So increasingly, I’m trying to find more ways to plug in. I’m also, though, to your question at the beginning about work to live or live to work, I am a live-to-work person. And so if I’m having a bad day and I’ve screwed up my self-care, often work will bail me out. Which I’m very grateful for. I think that’s a privilege that I have.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, Sara, it’s always a pleasure to get to hang out with you, to get to see you. What’s up next for you? What’s on your mind? Where are you going? What are you thinking about? What’s top of mind for you?

Sara Martin:

We are really excited that after so many years of not being able to bring people together in a physical space, that we have a safe plan to resume our physical summit this year. And a lot of our energy and thought process right now is going into designing breakthrough solutions that we can share with our members when we can all get back together, it’s going to be a homecoming, and really help them.

I think people are still curious, and I think people are still courageous, and we are, too. And so if we can all get together in a space, we’re going to be in Chicago, August 29 through September 1, at the Fairmont downtown. And we’re going to be talking about how to deliver more effectively on exactly what you and I were just talking about: pay equity, psychological safety, mental health, better cultures, diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and then bringing some really powerful voices to our stage to do that. So we’re really excited.

And we’re going to keep on this track of helping our members understand safety. Every single training that we’ve built for the year is around psychological safety, trust and positive cultures for those things. And we think that’s a good baseline for moving forward.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, I like a leader who knows what she wants in this world, and you are laser-focused on it. I’m so honored that you came on the podcast. It was great to see you. And we will make sure we have all your good stuff in our show notes. So thanks again for being a guest.

Sara Martin:

Thank you, Laurie, for having me. It was great to speak with you.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Hey, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Punk Rock HR. We are proudly underwritten by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is the B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head on over to thestarrconspiracy.com. Punk Rock HR is produced and edited by Rep Cap, with special help from Michael Thibodeaux and Devon McGrath. For more information, show notes, links and resources, head on over to punkrockhr.com. Now that’s all for today, and I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll see you next time on Punk Rock HR.