How SoFi is creating a Culture of Wellbeing
In this episode we are joined by Anna Avalos, Chief People Officer at SoFi to discuss How SoFi is creating a Culture of Wellbeing.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
09:56 How Sofi is creating a Culture of Wellbeing
11:03 How to develop a tailored well-being strategy
13:46 How to choose the right wellbeing partners
30:29 How to Measure the impact and ROI of well-being initiatives
34:31 Anna’s advice to the leaders of tomorrow
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Create a culture of well being at work is crucial in today's fast paced and demanding work environment. Establishing such a culture not only demonstrates an organization's commitment to its employees, but also fosters a supportive atmosphere where individuals can thrive both personally and professionally. prioritising wellbeing contributes to an increased productivity, reduced absenteeism and improve employee retention. By encouraging open dialogue around mental health, offering tailored wellbeing programmes and empowering our managers to support their teams, organisations can create a nurturing environment where employees feel valued, engaged and motivated. Ultimately, investing in a culture of wellbeing is a strategic move that benefits both employees, and the organisation driving sustainable success and a healthy work life balance. On today's episode, I'm joined by Anna Abalos, who's the Chief People Officer at Sofi. During the episode, Anna shares how Sophia is creating a culture of wellbeing, how they're developing a tailored wellbeing strategy, how to support managers through wellbeing initiatives, how to choose the right wellbeing partners, and how to measure the impact and ROI of wellbeing initiatives. As always, before we jump into the video, make sure you hit the subscribe button, turn on the notification bell and follow on your favourite podcast platform. With that being said, let's jump in. And welcome to the show. How are you? Great, Chris. Nice to see you. So I forgot to earlier today. No, not really this is. This is a normal time start for me. Yeah, I noticed over your side of the world that everyone gets up really early. It's like an early start. Yeah, yeah, I really do. And honestly, I think it's I think it really does have to do with the time zones. I've lived on the East Coast and started my day at like East Coast time. I've actually lived in Europe and started my day much, much later. Yeah. So I is just to maximise the time when you're working cross time. So it is okay. Because I normally I see when it gets Spokane and I'm like, why have you booked in somebody like Chris this time? I guess I get stuff done. Yeah.
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It's still dark outside.
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I like having people on the show. It is dark outside the sun's rising in the background throughout the book. Like what's going on? Nice, very normal for us. Yes. And refreshing to see you in the office as well. It looks like a really quiet seat. It looks like a really nice, cool open panned office. It's a beautiful open concept office that we moved into in summer of 2019. Oh, wow. Just timed for everybody to fall in love with it and then go home.
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We just started to enjoy it. Nice. Before we jump in, tell us a little bit more about you personally, and your journey. Where we are now. Yep. So I lead the people team at so phi which is a finance company, personal finance company. This is actually only the third company I've worked with and my professional journey. I spent 15 years at a medical device company. I was there for 15 years because I absolutely loved the company loved the culture. I honestly thought it was maybe going to even retire there. Wow. I joined they did really heavy campus recruiting. So I had my list of all companies. Yeah, all the companies I was interested in talking to they weren't on that list. I'd never heard of them before. And I was taking a break from all of my, you know, aspirational companies, and met a recruiter and just fell in love with their philosophy, which was hire for talent,
3:43
really drive engagement and help people develop and grow in their career. So the fact that that I was there for 15 years, it wasn't necessarily an anomaly. A lot of people within the organisation had really long careers there. I started in supply chain, did production leadership roles and then moved into HR. And that stuff I've been doing hrs ever since.
4:05
So yeah, the the, you know, the only reason I left is a friend and mentor went to Tesla and started reaching out. And I I remember telling him there was a 1% chance I was going to make a move.
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But just to get him to stop calling and texting and emailing all the things. I went on site to Tesla and by the end of the day I was I was sold. I really for all of the reasons that you can imagine it's you know, a great mission.
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Really smart people but for me, it was more so to see if my skills translated in a completely different environment and Tesla and my prior company could not have been more different. Culturally. Yeah, yeah, very different. I spent three years at Tesla, the first year and a half in the US the second year and a half in Amsterdam
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in Tilburg,
5:01
So we have a manufacturing. We have a manufacturing facility in Tilburg. But the HQ the mea Oh, he was actually a name. Oh, was it makes sense. You know, it's easy to get to everyone is as well. Yeah, I remember I actually, in my previous role, I managed our supply chain
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division, all because it was an events business. So I ran HR portfolio events supply chain, and supply chain manufacturing and oil and gas. And we actually went to Tilburg, and did a tour of the Tesla manufacturer are you doing? Yeah, the little test track indoor test drive, or unfortunately, I can't drive so they'll take you out. I didn't get the opportunity to do it. No, I think the guests did. I was the organiser. So I was trying to have probably busy coordinating. Yeah, but it guested. But yeah, that's the only reason I know where that is.
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Because most people might have no idea whether
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it's well, but to your point now isn't all around it? Yes. Yeah, you'd never know. It's similar with Lego just got back to you know, you go to the area of Denmark. And if it wasn't for Lego being there, you probably would never go there ever as well. So it's really cool. But to your point of your career before isn't interested in that, kind of we end up carving out careers in companies that we never thought that we would like, you know, I worked in a company for 10 years. And I met someone by playing a game of Paul in a bar, literally. And it was the CEO and founder of the company. And I interviewed there and I was there.
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I had a company that I'd never heard of, and in a career that I never thought I would pursue in sales. And and it took
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we kind of went the extreme view of like, we couldn't see an opportunity anywhere else. So we like let's start a company just kind of version of that. With me and Shane universe. That's a plan. Yeah. Although at the time, it was probably to scare or still probably is the scariest thing ever.
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So
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it's been apparent, it's probably the scariest one for me. Then next after that was starting a company, but really cool telephony about the company a bit more. What was it that attracted you to this new role? Yeah. So after kind of two very different career experiences actually took some intentional time off. So I took a year off to travel around the world, and kind of blacked out on what I wanted to do. And honestly, it was everything from maybe I, you know, open a yoga studio to like get back into the comfort environment. And what I ended up realising is I wanted a mix of my prior to company. So the two other companies I'd worked at, I loved the pace and intensity of Tesla, I loved how
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ambitious the company was like it was really intoxicating to be part of an organisation that's helping to shape an industry. But I missed the culture of Stryker, my first company, I missed working for a company where we were really striving to be a great place to work, or that was part of the priorities. And especially, you know, practising the craft of HR, as we all know, that's really, really critical to work with a company that aligns to your values. And so finding a company where culture was really as important to the to the other members of the leadership team was was really critical. So that's, honestly how I found myself, I had never heard of a company before.
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You know, and just take what it is I was struck by how big were they at the time, they were just under just under 1000 employees?
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And yeah, I mean, I remember talking to people in my network about this move, and they were like, how could you go from, you know, a Tesla, which was the hottest company at the time to this company that that? Yeah.
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Yeah, yeah. So one of us want to talk about today, because I know we both have a shared fashion for wellbeing. You know, it's something that's kind of at the centre of HR leaders, we have our global wellbeing summit we run every year, personally, I've kind of hormone challenge, gone from my own challenges of well being with, you know, anxiety and depression, and something that I struggled with for many years. And that's why it's a source of really focus on that if it's okay, have you you know, could you share, like, what, why is it that you and the team decided to go on this journey? And just kind of give us a little bit of background?
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Yeah, I think it's always been a really important element to me of just bringing your full and whole self to work. And I think that includes, you know, your challenges, and when you're going through a rough spot, and so creating a culture where people can talk about their challenges and where there's support as you're going through those, those rough patches is really important to me, it's something I think that, you know, my first company did really, really well.
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Tesla, maybe not so much, but that wasn't part of the culture necessarily. And so, you know, at SoFi when I joined, we've got these 11 core values. One of them is take care of people and help them grow and I think an element of taking care of people
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is recognising that we're all struggling human beings.
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You know,
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meeting people where they are and helping people overcome when they might be going through something that's that's a struggle, because either we've all gone through it or know somebody who has. And so having that empathy and compassion, I think is, is just the right thing to do.
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Where do you start with something like that, in terms of developing the strategy, the vision direction, Could you walk us through the steps the team took. So for us, we start with those kind of core values and linking back, you know, taking care of people, helping them make them grow, embracing diversity are a couple of them, where we really tried to pull out those those elements. So really highlighting that and then we've, we've launched some really cool partnership UPS over the time that I've been here. One, in particular, with modern health,
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that we were, we were speaking to them actually right before the pandemic hit. And I think there was a little bit of scratching of the head of like, oh, you know, you're when you're looking at just overall people team spend is this is this the right spend the pandemic kit, and became really clear that it was a time of, you know, just extreme stress for everybody. And for all different reasons. Some people were dealing with, you know, isolation, other people, we're dealing with tonnes of kids climbing all over them, while they're trying to work and, you know, maintain their sanity, you know, still others that might be, you know, in a bad home situation that now don't have that, you know, that release of going to work or school. And so just recognising that it really put a lot of strain on us, for a lot of reasons, including the health concerns at that time. And so it really provided probably just, you know,
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a rallying cry for this is something that we're really going to lean in to and you know, using that partnership with modern health to provide a safe place for people to share some of their challenges, and tools and resources. But it wasn't enough just to have that support system, it had to be really
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supported and talked about and reinforced from our leadership team at all levels. Yeah. Probably good for the audience. To give them a bit of background, what is modern health? Because we both know the company, but they may not be aware of that. Yeah. Yes. So modern health is a
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is a well being platform as the way I'll describe it. And you know, hopefully, I'll do them justice
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satisfait page, it just gives him a bit of background.
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But they were the reason one of the reasons we liked them is we love them is because they've got a lot of digital tools, as well as like in in person and you know, phone services that you can use. So they offer counselling they offer they offer, coaching, they offer, you know, things like meditation on the app, etc. And so it's it's a safe place to get the help that you might need, be it like I'm having a challenge with my manager needs one on one coaching, I had to work through it all the way to I might be having a mental health crisis. And this is a safe place to kind of talk through what that looks like. What are some of the criteria that you and the team had when you went out to look for a partner? What were the things that you we need to have? It needs to have these things?
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Yeah, so we are a digital first company. So we the digital experience had to be really slick and kind of map a little bit our, our company.
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Culture in that way, and then we were just looking for partners that would help us create a safe place to kind of destigmatize this topic. And I think, I hope my my sense is, is that that's happening, you know, has happened over the past couple of years. But I think for a very long time, just like talking about certain topics, like talking about mental health issues has been something that's been taboo, and we wanted to take that away, again, you know, knowing that we are all struggling human beings, how do we make it? How do we find a company that can help us to create really safe and entry points for people to get the help that they might need and very low barriers of entry? So, you know, we also have an employee assistance programme, which I'm sure many of the viewers do as well, sometimes that feels like a high higher hurdle to like call and say you actually need help. And so how do we create a space where the language around your right employee assistance programme is kind of got a stigma attached to it already? Right? Yeah. Yeah. And what we've found is, for example, in modern health, a lot of people will use the one on one coaching as an entry point to say like, oh, gosh, this is a great tool. Let me see what else is available within this within this platform? Yeah. Nice. It's less intimidating to say hey, I just need a little coaching to talk through, you know, dealing with my manager or teammates or whatever issue I might be having at work. Yeah. And then you kind of work there, gosh, maybe I've got you know, some other things that would be helpful to get support on because to get the gateway in, into, I can tell you a personal story. Like during the pandemic, I I suffer from anxiety
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I used since I was a kid, and I had panic constantly having panic attacks by hid it from everyone. So no one knew my wife didn't know, for 15 years, my friends, my business partner, you know, there'll be weeks I didn't turn up to work and I would make excuses. But I was because I was ashamed of people gonna see that I'm weak. And you know, all of the stigmas attached to that. And it was during a conversation with the chief learning officer at Unilever, actually on the podcast live on LinkedIn that I first opened up and shared that. So that's how everyone in my entire circle found out about this.
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Yes, crazy, right.
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So I was like, all those excuses you were making and everything right? It was all and I was like, it felt right, because there was this amazing leader and Tim being vulnerable. And sharing the He just returned from two months leave because he was struggling with mental health. And I was like, wow, like, even even the most successful people, which I realise now, actually, still, high performers are actually one of the biggest, the biggest struggle, right? And I tell you that story, because even after I'd shared that I was still like, really nervous about going to seek help. So even though I'd shared it on my first theory, and especially if you've been struggling, that for that long, you don't know that there's a better way. Yeah, it needs your way. But the first time I did it was for an app, a digitally
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booked in a call with a therapist and had a conversation. And it felt easier. Because like, when I was walking through the idea of leaving my house, and travelling to meet someone in person, it felt really like a you know, it felt really intimidating. But there's just so much inertia going against getting the help that you need. And so anything you can do to break down, so that half an hour call was a game changer for me just to book it in easily on my schedule and my time and it was yeah, it was really cool to be able to do.
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Yeah, so I thought I'd share that you didn't have the excuse of a flat tire
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myself out of it as well, probably I'll probably be like, I'm too busy today, I'd probably talk myself out of it, which is what a lot of us do. And I don't think yeah, I don't think you're alone in that. I think that's just human nature. Yeah. What was the project that you look back on or campaign that you ran? With it in that whether it's in the app, or the platform or outside that that you're proud of? That stands out to you? Yeah, I mean, there, I think there's so many the things that make me proud are, I'll share a campaign. But before I share that, like what, what makes me the most proud is the way that it's this, the benefit is just woven into our language as a company. So for example, we were sending our end of your message at the end of 2022. And our CEOs note, you know, talked about, like, you know, it's the holiday times, which is a great time for many, but we have to admit, we have to remember for some folks it is it is not a great time, it's a time of really high depression
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and mental health challenges that people face. And so there was a there was it just a an a couple lines in there of like hey, we also recognise that this might be a challenging time to many and here's some modern health resources just as a reminder so hitting people where they might not even think about it but need the
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that reminder the most post is the things that are the thing that I'm probably the most proud of is when it comes up kind of in those organic ways when we might be getting people
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this reminder when they when they wouldn't expect it. But last year in terms of campaigns or you know, programming that we've done last year we did
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we did a
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a programme between our soul phi which is our black ERG group, we found a glaze in name just
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salva is
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so cool whoever came up with that
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so anyway
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it's so important by the way for everyone listening that you come up do you take the time to create a brand and a name that people will remember I will never forget that if someone says to me hey so if I have like they did a campaign and evaluate the group school itself fine. So anyways, it's those things are so important. Sorry carry on. The spelling of it is even better because it s oh and then like little parenthesis you owl FYI. Takeout Robertson parenthesis like this.
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Oh
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nice. Yeah, they're very crafty. The tea was very crafted coming up with the name
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but did it did programming last actually last year for Black History Month with modern health talking about that black resilience
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and so you know, really, really great to see our we have
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our, our our SoFi circles which are ERGs they each get a tentpole month so we have nine args and so each each of them has one month where they've got programming that they bring to the company talking about their mission, you know a little bit
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about, you know, their their ERG group, what are the what they're focused on, get a chance to do some like special programming not just for members of the ERG or sofa, circles, but also for the just the broader employee population.
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So we did some they did some programming with modern health, which I think was really, really well received. And folks still talk about, what does that look like in terms of employee experience? So is it like an app and they get a notification? Because not like, the reason I asked that, like, in the past, right? When I was working in your workplace, you had like these really boring intranet that it was hidden away somewhere you didn't even know about, if you didn't even know a lot of these things existed.
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Part of the challenge honestly is like, I'm sure most of your listeners have, like, amazing offerings for their
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people to understand where they are, and how to find them is like the biggest challenge. Yeah. So what did that look like? In? How does that look? Yeah. So for our benefit, benefits, offerings, like first of all, I think we've got the most amazing benefits team who really does a great job working across the company to weave in different benefits offering not just in modern health, but things like our employee assistance programme, we have a programme where we can not only help with people who are going to school, but also help you pay off your student loan for folks who have already completed their degree is, as an example that just amazing benefits kind of more broadly. And so we're always thinking about how do we weave in the messaging of our different benefits to touch points for our employees, for our managers. So that way, it's not like on a porthole or like a portal somewhere that you need to remember to go to. But it's, it's just rather like part of your regular course of business and kind of hitting people
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when they might be
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looking for just that, that type of resource. So like it obviously a big, big focus for everyone, right as employee experience, for example, in in the in the app, can you like tailor things to people and create journeys?
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Yeah, in the modern health app, you can Okay, yeah. So like, what would you have a customer's I think it's so important to do this. So here's all these great things, but none of them relevant for me. So that's also an issue. So people kind of you send it all out. And they're like, there's maybe like one thing that's really impactful for that person, but then it's in the middle of 20 things. That yeah, yeah. So is that something you can do? Yeah.
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Yep, that's something that you can do. Yeah. And that like that, that, you know, customer journey, or that member journey that they have through modern health is like something that we looked through look for as we were looking for a partner, because that's something we have on our so fi app as an example. It's something that's really, really important to us as a digital company. So we, we know what good looks like. And that was part of our criteria. Yeah, one of the things I noticed that everyone struggled with, because everyone kind of during the pandemic looked for a partner around wellbeing, because I think everyone realised the importance of it, as well. But where I saw companies struggle was the execution of it. It's easy to grab a partner, but then the hard part is implementation. And the messaging, what was your strategy? What what what advice would you give to people listening? What worked for you in terms of rolling this out? What didn't work? Maybe you would have done differently? Because that's really the hard part. Yeah, our utilisation with modern health is, you know, is really, really high and modern. That's, you know, why probably, I ended up doing so many speaking engagements with them, it's just because they're so proud of the partnership with so phi, I think a piece of it in full transparency is just timing. The fact that we launched right as the pandemic was close had hit it, like people were, people had the time. And certainly the interest in the topic, probably more so than any other time in my life, at least. So that was a piece of it. But I think it's been this like most multimodal communication. So you know, our benefits team talking about it. during open enrollment. I mentioned our CEO putting it in his end of year newsletter, you know, just kind of the consistent reminders and, and leveraging some of those lower barrier to entry. Tools that modern health has like the one on one coaching.
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So how long did it take to roll out?
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Super quick? Yeah, I mean, it was a couple couple of weeks to like, launched. Yeah, it was very, I say that. But because, as you know, from doing this one time, it isn't normally that's simple. It could be months. So it's sometimes as well do I have to do the most time that we spent with the longest like,
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pulling the tent was just figuring out which
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partner we wanted to use? Yeah, that's a high bar
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as well. What about your managers? I think we've put so much.
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It's never been more difficult time in my opinion to be.
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Role it's never been more important and the role has never been harder to do. Yeah, what kind of support you're giving
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Um, can make a day to day have like a dashboard of like, what they can see for the day? No, absolutely not. And that's like an important piece from the modern health perspective is that that is really all confidence show for that employee. But you know, manager support just more broadly is something that we spend a lot of time thinking about at Sofi.
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And it's, you know, everything from really a really thoughtful manager onboarding for our either newly promoted or new to the company managers with just an overview of all the the tools are really deep dive into dei and making sure that they understand, you know, unconscious bias, like some of the tools that we have to be able to support them to make sure that we have a value of embracing diversity, making sure everybody feels welcome, included and able to contribute. And then managers pay play just a super key role in that. So. So you spend a lot of time on that on their onboarding we have, and then we have monthly manager, training sessions,
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that help to kind of support them and make sure that they've got the resources and tools that they need to be able to be successful in their role. And then you know, all of the things that I'm sure all of your listeners have employee engagement surveys, so managers, and understand the sentiment of their team, you know, talent reviews and succession planning, and just tools and processes to help them ensure that they are thinking critically about development engagement teams. Yeah, no, I definitely think you're sharing Yeah, it they, we have Dallas making more about, you know, having conversations around things like well being, you know, it wasn't something drew, I can tell you right now, during my manager training that never came up,
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you know, how do you have those conversations, right, leading with empathy? And having those those conversations is, for many years, we kind of just avoided it, because we were worried about saying the wrong thing or not having an answer, right. And I think that's an important piece is just giving ourselves permission that we might say the wrong thing. And like just starting, like starting the conversation, especially when you're delving into topics like mental health, like, people might share things with you that you are not prepared to speak to. But just like sitting there with them, and you know, letting them know, I'm not sure what the right thing to say is, but I want to get you the help and support that you need. And I think that's where, you know, then a tool like modern health becomes so critical, because those are trained experts to help to deal with essentially an acute mental health. Yeah, no one's expecting us to be the person solution, right. But again, even from and I don't say just for everyone listening to Faustus, but if you do have an authentic story, like and you share, like kind of like my own challenge, that has also created a culture where my team come to me more often now when they're feeling had literally only a couple of days ago, one of our team members say, Hey, can I just take the day off? I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and feeling a bit anxious. No worries, they would never come to me before if I if I hadn't shared my own journey story. I very highly doubt if I'm being honest, they would have come to me and said that before they would have made it Britain excuse that they're going to go on holiday. Oh, they'll make or do they will do what I used to do and pretend I was sick. Oh, this is how I'd make all the excuses in the world. As opposed to avoid that conversation.
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Surprised once the conversation happens, I think
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I think it's being similar to you going to the see the therapist, I think it's the anxiety of starting the conversation. That's always the hardest part. And then once you get through that, it's like the support and resources are really I
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I realised I had anxiety about having anxiety,
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like vicious circle that I was I was going in and the moment that all those fears that I had the moment I actually had the conversation. I was like, Oh, my wife's not let's be my friends. So like me, my boys. Oh, what are those things that you've learned over yet. And the crazy part, which I've shared a million times, but I'm sorry for the assistants that listen to the time is that I haven't had an anxiety attack since in three years. Which is crazy, because I used to have them every few months, every day, as well. Because now when I'm feeling overwhelmed, I can just pick up the call, call my wife or my friends and say, Hey, this you got a whole community supporting Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what the goal that we all have is how do we create this community to support each other's managers to support their team members appears to support each other and then like these resources and tools like modern health to help to? Yeah.
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How do you a question I'm sure everyone always asked and this is important one, though, and I'm sure you you this was a consideration when you made the investment is how do you measure the ROI and the impact of something like what a what does that look like? Yeah, so the two key things
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that we look at is utilisation. So as a person
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centage of our team members who are actually using the platform.
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And then we look for just comments and things like our employee engagement survey, feedback that our benefits team gets from team members in terms of just the help that it's given, given them the extra No, you can look at things like absenteeism and things like that. But I think the better the more telling thing is just are people using the tool? Yeah, so is any other anything else to extract from the app in terms of data aside from utilisation?
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Um, we see utilisation. And then we see utilisation. Bye. Bye. So you can see what are the things getting used? What is important? That's an important point.
30:43
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And we all we offer modern help not only to our employees, but also to their qualified dependents as well. So it's really recognise it's like a whole Yeah, doesn't stop at work. Yeah, it's, especially when work is most people's homes. Most people work remote now anyway. So it's literally my daughter's sitting in the living room over there. Right now. It's not it's no longer independent of each other. Right. And I think that's something that also has helped to destigmatize the mental health piece a little bit in that, like, you know, we are all here, not in my home right now. But we're all in general, any Chester's homes more than we were before? Yeah, definitely. We can see it. What's the been the feedback from employees
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about being able to have that both for themselves, but also for their families? I mean, they love it. I think they it, like I said, it aligns to our values, it aligns with the culture we're trying to create, which is, yeah, take care of yourself. And then you can we know, you can better take care of the business, right? Like, it's, it's, we want this to be a place that is a great place to work. And that includes, you know, helping to make sure that you're you're taking care of outside of work as well. Yeah. And I think our leaders are recognising that more than ever, I think it used to be kind of like your work life and your personal life. And now we recognise it's the same person living, living that leaving both of those sides of their lives. That's an important point as well, though, that we just kind of touched on is that you need a solution that works inside and outside and is global.
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Right, it has to be be able to access it wherever you are, whenever, wherever time, wherever you are. And, yeah, I do think that's one of the nice things about, you know, being able to use a lot of these tools in like a lot of the one on one coaching.
32:31
And therapy sessions are virtual now versus going into the office experience, which means if you're travelling, if you change locations, you don't have to change providers, I think there's a lot of benefit to that as well. Yeah. How does it work as a cost to you? If you're only asking as a business, like if someone's using this many times a week as a first is that like, at work? I'm just I've never, there's always so many different models that would ever ask you. Yep, so it's unlimited access to all the digital resources, which are, by the way, the most like highly utilised piece of the, of the programme. And then you get a set number of counselling
33:09
sessions and a set number of one on one coaching sessions as part of the
33:13
package. And then if you if team members need to use more than that, then they just would pay for that piece. Okay, so they can if I want to add more, I can just pay the addition. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. It's always interesting to figure out how that works. Because so many different ways that companies do it. Right. Yeah, as well. And yeah, what other advice, would you you know, I feel like there's so many CPAs I speak to go on this journey to do something similar. Having gone through, I know, you're still on it, by the way, this is an ongoing journey.
33:43
That's gonna be clear. For everyone. This doesn't end. It's always evolving. But there's an end, but I'm very proud of our progress. Yeah, what advice would you give to other CEOs are on the journey, having been there for so I think, I think probably three things. Number one, make sure that it's not just a benefits push from your, like a team a push from your benefits team, because I think that will fail. I think what helped us to be successful was this, like, really, our leaders, you know, talking about this and integrating this our managers understanding the importance of it. So make sure it's not just a benefits push, I think would be the first one. The second one is like pick a partner that you really feel comfortable with.
34:29
You know, for us, it was modern health, but I think finding that that that partner who can help you to provide those resources where you won't be able to for your team members is really critical. And the third is just start you know, just start the conversations. It is it can be awkward if it's not part of the culture.
34:49
But
34:51
similar to your experience like once you once people start talking about their challenges, they're surprised about how
34:59
supportive other
35:00
Just couldn't be. And so creating more of those experiences for folks, I think it does.
35:06
The the organisational inertia quickly changes once you start. Yeah, I love that advice. Because, you know, this isn't something that should be owned by HR or benefits team should be owned by every individual. Yeah, we provide the resources, but it's owned by our leaders, because our leaders care about our team members. And that's gotta be and that is what creates the culture of wellbeing right. And in the organisation,
35:33
we've ever think that you have working, I said earlier about the data and kind of tracking what people are using, what is actually the one thing is having the most impact of all of these tools, you have all of the programmes, the digital, what are you? What are you seeing in the data? What is the number one thing that is being utilised? Just like curiosity?
35:54
In modern health or just on health, for example, what is the number one you got? Such as rich resources? Have you got coaching? You've got? Yeah, absolutely. Digital one. It's the one on one coaching. Wow. Okay. That's the number one thing. Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's great. You know, because we just make so much investments, but it's very cut few companies drill down and be like, what is actually the fingers having the impact? Yeah. And I feel like the coaching is also moves you from being proactive versus reactive. Because a lot of times, we're just dealing with the, you know, we're sitting with the, you know, we're dealing with
36:33
not dealing, we're just dealing with symptoms, not the problem, if that makes sense. Yeah. So I feel like that's what coaching has helped me with is figuring out actually coming up with some actual practical. So when I'm feeling bored, right, it's a sounding word, somebody to help you ask the right questions to unlock the answers that are already inside of you. Yeah, amazing. Really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks so much for joining, I'm really happy. I said, it's something really close to my heart and the impact that that's having for and I can see how passionate you and the team are about it. And I know, I already know that the authority as someone who's going through it, who I say I know, the impact of things like that have loved to have been working in an organisation that had that something that I was, you know, one of reasons I left the company I left is just that, you know, it would just be you know, Chris man off and get on with it. You know, that was really the culture that I was in which stops me from talking about it for so long. So Sabine, you're able to bring your your self to work and ultimately, yeah, exhausted, absolutely exhausting for you. And it's detrimental for the organisation who spent so much time to find recruits you
37:39
develop you train you all of those things. And, you know, it's it's, it's, that's what we're trying to avoid is we're trying to make sure that people can,
37:48
you know, be the best selves. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love it was before I let you go, where can people connect with you? If they want to reach out and say hi, yeah, LinkedIn is the best place on our list on LinkedIn. Nice. Well, listen, I wish you all the best and hope to get to come see you soon. And see that amazing office in person.
38:07
Thanks for the conversation. Yeah, bye bye.
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Tony Buffum, VP of HR Client Strategy at Upwork.