Summary
Discover how Christine Boucher, CEO of Wellness Worx, used her 20+ years of experience as an ICU nurse to become a powerhouse corporate wellness coach, helping companies save $6 for every $1 invested in workplace wellness programs. Learn about her innovative “Wellness Game” that turns challenging workplace scenarios into powerful learning experiences for teams. Join Natalie Lorenzo, ABP Editor and Designer, as she explores how prioritizing employee well-being is a smart business decision with a potential ROI of sixfold.
Learn more about Christine and Wellness Worx.
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Transcript
Natalie:
Welcome to the A Better Paradigm podcast where we inspire individuals from all walks of business to create a better workplace. I’m Natalie Lorenzo, and I’m joined by Christine Boucher of Wellness Worx. Hello Christine. How are you doing today?
Christine:
Very well. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
Natalie:
Well, we’re excited to have you. It has been awesome to talk and get to know you while learning a little bit about what you’re doing and how you’re impacting the workplace on a positive level. So, to start us off: you were in intensive-care nursing for over 20 years. Now you run Wellness Worx which offers health coaching, Wellness worskhops, programs… all crafted to improve employee health and well-being. How did you get to where you are now from where you were?
Christine:
Yeah, I was in in the healthcare industry for over 20 years. I remember one day I was walking up the corridor and I was dragging my feet, becoming very frustrated and complacent with the way we were treating our patients.
It was common knowledge with our colleges that our patients would be sent home and come in again and again with exacerbation of disease. And I thought to myself there just has to be a better way to get to these people before they get sick so that they don’t end up in hospital. About ten years ago, I transitioned out of nursing and into the Corporate Health sector, working with groups of people to keep them well, to keep them healthy, to keep them engaged and contributing to their workplace, to their families, to their communities, and to their economy. It just made so much more sense to me to work in that preventative health space — be proactive and provide individuals and groups of people the support that they need to promote their own health and well-being. I’ve been working as the CEO of my company, Wellness Worx, for 10 years and changing that whole trajectory ultimately with my main goal and passion to keep people healthy at work and out of hospital.
Natalie:
Yeah, it’s a big deal across the world. We’re all facing so many issues in the mental health space, in the physical health space. Having companies like yours out there can really help advance the ball on this movement.
Christine:
Yeah, the global wellness workplace industry is currently valued at about $55 billion and that’s expected to exceed over 85 billion in the next 5 years. It demonstrates and showcases that employers are being a lot more considerate of their staff and taking care of the biggest asset of their business, which is their people.
Natalie:
Right. So in addition to my role here, I’m also a yoga teacher. I’ve heard a lot of definitions of wellness. For some, it includes meditating every day. It includes spending time with your friends or going to the gym. Those are all aspects of a Wellness plan, but an all-encompassing definition is a little trickier to come by. How do you define wellness in the workplace?
Christine:
The World Health Organization defines health and well-being as not just the merely the absence of disease. It incorporates the physical, mental, emotional, social, financial, spiritual… that whole-person approach. And for every individual, it’s different. You know what I see is being healthy and well in my life may not be the right fit for the next person. It’s about really understanding your own health needs and identifying what interests you. Uplifting and improving your own health and well-being looks a little bit different for everyone. That’s where the health coaching comes into it, because it’s really understanding each individual… understanding their needs, understanding their challenges, meeting them where they’re at and supporting them through their own health journey so that they’re motivated, engaged, and taking the actions that they need to in order to promote their own health and well-being. It looks a little bit different for all of us.
Natalie:
Oh yeah, definitely. Because wellness for one person could be the exact opposite for another person.
Christine:
Exactly. I’m an avid open water swimmer here where I live in Victoria, East Gippsland. Some of my friends say that would create so much stress for them.
Natalie:
But for you, it works. That trial-and-error process sometimes is not available to people. Programs and coaches are so good at helping other people find where wellness is for them… where that pinnacle balance of life and work resides.
Your website talks about the correlation between employee well-being and business profitability. How have you seen wellness improve workplace performance?
Christine:
Yeah, there’s a really strong correlation. We know that if we’re heading to work when we’re tired, unwell, or emotionally distraught because something’s happening in our life, we’re not going to be as efficient, effective, and productive. That has an impact on the bottom line of an organization. Most wellness programs will incur a return of investment of around six-fold for every dollar spent. That’s quite significant. If you’re looking to improve the health and well-being of employees, you’re getting them to meet their key performance indicators. They’re going to be communicating better within the organization, so they will have better team dynamics and relationships which is going to reduce stress in organizations. You’re going to keep and retain people at work if you’re looking after them and they’re happy.
Staff turnover alone for every individual that walks out the door of an organization is a loss of around $60,000 per employee when you look at all the logistics involved in onboarding, training, and getting them up to speed.. If people are dissatisfied, unwell, unhealthy and not being looked after, it costs the organization significantly.
When organizations implement fit-for-purpose, well-being programs that their employees need, want, and are engaged in, then they’re going to give back in so many different ways that increases that bottom line. I’ve seen in my organizations that I’ve worked with return of investments up to tenfold, which is really significant. I demonstrate that by doing pre- and post-data comparative analysis to showcase where we made the improvements and that return on investment. It’s a great business model because often enough the organization will want to continue working with my organization to continue getting those healthy results.
Natalie:
You really want to balance in business. Yes, you want the people , emotional, and mental aspects involved, but you need the numbers to back it up in business. So, having that kind of a model is so, so important for programs like yours and people building coaching business opportunities like yours.
Christine:
Yeah, it’s a good business decision to be looking after your employees. It should be the number one priority in any business to look after it people because your people will then look after your business.
Natalie:
Right, it seems like we’re both really aligned on that cause of bringing compassion and kindness in the workplace. What I love about that mission in general is that you don’t need to be a leader. You don’t need to be working in a B Corp to make a difference. What advice do you have for people looking to make a positive change in the workplace?
Christine:
Yeah, it doesn’t need to start from a SEO or from leadership. Anyone within an organization can be the leader when it comes to well-being initiatives. Starting a social club within an organization… implementing some mental health directives… having a Wellness program/day… or just starting conversation around the water cooler or in the tearoom. In those discussions, you can be the leader, even if you’re not the CEO. If you see someone that’s not looking quite right, if they’re isolating themselves, or they’re pulling back, check in on them: Are you OK? How you? Do you want to have a conversation? It’s having that emotional awareness and that emotional intelligence to first and foremost, you know, look after yourself, but also look after those people around you.
Natalie:
We’ve seen a number of Return-to-Office mandates or RTO initiatives from companies across the globe. What are your thoughts on how that impacts employee wellness and health?
Christine:
It’s an interesting concept, because, here in Australia, we still do have a concept of working from home. I know some large organizations are trying to bring people back into the office. It’s great for work ethic, performance, productivity. I think everyone got a bit Zoom-ed out, so it does have its benefits. I think there’s also a lot of benefits in the hybrid working model where we can be in a more casual attire and still be productive in our own space. I think there’s benefits in both.
The risk to wellness comes when there’s pressure to change. Often when people get into a habit, whether it’s working from home or in an office, and they are forced to change, that’s where it can elicit stress and challenges. It needs to be approached in a way that’s accommodating the needs of individuals because we all operate a little bit differently. Understanding the needs of the individual to bring them back into the office or otherwise is crucial.
Giving people a little bit of flexibility, a little bit of choice, and understanding where their needs will accommodate them and not elicit the stress, ensuring that we are catering to the needs of individuals. Individuals… I think that’s the important word because some people are quite adaptable, flexible and can just do what needs to be done and others need a little bit more support or guidance. It’s understanding the needs of every individual in the workplace and not just treating them with a blanket approach.
Natalie:
You know, you covered a really, really powerful topic in there. We are individuals and everybody’s going to react differently. Springing something on somebody after they’ve made accommodations to work from home could elicit a lot of stress and worry. They’ve built their life around this work situation and it’s changing all of a sudden. It is about working with your employees on an individual level to figure out what works for them and how you can get it to work for you.
Christine:
100% yeah, totally agree.
Natalie:
Yeah, it’s amazing to see all the different reactions that you get from Return-to-Office. Some people love going into the office every day, bonding with people and seeing your friends and coworkers. For others, it elicits some sort of stress of change. It’s finding that happy medium and knowing what work situation is going to work best for your employees and your teams, not just for the leadership. It’s not just for numbers of people coming to the office, your solution has to be tailored to work for your company and your employees.
Christine:
Yeah, I think you said that really well, Natalie. It’s not about the numbers — the figures — it’s about having that human-centred approach. What does the person need as opposed to looking at the metrics and the numbers and the profitability and the bottom line? Of course, the bottom line is essential for a business to operate successfully. But if we’re really catering and caring to humans, which are our most valuable asset of any business, then we’re going to get results. We’re going to get good productivity and performance, which is going to impact the bottom line in the right direction. If we start from that human-centered approach, that’s going to be the most successful approach for any business.
Natalie:
Yeah, I totally agree. Something you say on your website is that $1.00 invested in corporate wellness yields $6 in corporate savings. Companies with tighter budgets may lack a strong wellness advocate or maybe hesitant to start that investment. What are some things that you would say to recommend a company to start investing in their wellness journey?
Christine:
Investing in your most important asset, your people, makes a good business. By looking after your people, you’re essentially looking after your business. Every time we lose an employee in an organization; it’s approximately $60,000 to $70,000 that we’re losing in in profits. Because if you think about all the logistics that go into education, training, and getting up to speed, promoting, advertising, and interviewing to recruit someone else, it’s a significant amount of time and cost.
If you have a large staff turnover, you’re going to be leaking profits from the organization. By retaining staff alone, it’s going to increase your bottom line and make good business sense. Beyond that, by caring and catering for our people, they’re going to be giving back with their optimal performance. They’re going to be engaged, innovative, and creative within the organization. That includes better systems and processes, more efficiency, better team dynamics and communication, and healthier relationships. All that helps to exceed the normal KPIs (key performance indicators) so you get a return on investment. As I said, the normal ROI is sixfold. I’ve managed to reach as high as tenfold for some of the organizations that I worked with.
Investing dollars into your most valuable asset, your people, is going to get you a significant return on investment. When we talk numbers, it’s a no brainer. Decision makers within organizations going, “Yeah, this is not just a nice-to-have, tick-the-box kind of wellness approach. It is a must have.” This is the most important decision that any decision maker within an organization can make to yield the best return for their business.
Natalie:
You really covered it well there. As a fun question, what would you say is your favorite part of your job?
Christine:
You started with the word “fun” and the thing that came to my mind is a game I invented called The Wellness Game. After delivering for over 10 years at presentations and workshops, I have seen there’s a lot of value in it and a lot of engagement. People walk away with a lot of information that they can implement into their organization.
The Wellness game is a fun, interactive game where I put people within organizations in situations that may be what they normally experiencing, but they don’t have the underlying understanding of. After we play the game, then we discuss how we played the game and that’s where the learning is uncovered and all the “a-ha” moments are unveiled. And it’s so much fun.
So instead of sitting there and watching a boring PowerPoint presentation, we get everyone integrated and active in playing this Wellness Game. There is so much value and so much learning through just playing it. It’s probably one of my favorite things to do in my business. I love interacting and communicating with people, so I’d much rather be face-front with employees than sitting in my office doing the admin type of work for my business.
Natalie:
Yeah, that sounds really fun. Yeah. Honestly, I would like to try that out as well!
Christine:
Yeah, you would need a a group of at least 40 people to run your game.
What’s really interesting is just to see the creativity and the innovation of people, because there’s only baseline sort of guidelines so it can go any which way. I give them cards they’ve got to play out. Perhaps a health issue. It might be a physical health. It might be a lack of emotional intelligence. It may be in, you know, ineffective communication skills or mental health issues. And they play this out unbeknownst to them. It’s watching and seeing how their teammates deal with the challenge that they’re confronted with. For example, we had one of the managers of the team lack complete emotional intelligence, so he was very gruff in his communication. He was very, very forceful in his directive. He was very inconsiderate, and this was what he saw as a lack of emotional intelligence. Witnessing how the rest of the team managed that lack of emotional intelligence and how they managed to continue through playing all the aspects of the game with that element on board was really interesting. People were getting really frustrated wanted to give up. Some people were really trying to communicate. So, it’s kind of like business as usual. We’re all confronted with challenges, but what was really interesting we were doing in a safe space where we then got to pull it apart at the end and really discuss: What did you do that was effective? Where were the gaps? What could we do better moving forward? It highlighted how people were operating, where their gaps were, and what they could do better moving forward so that they could be more cohesive teams, better communicators, better with their emotional intelligence and their well-being overall. So, just a fantastic game!
Natalie:
Yeah, the fact that you’re able to try out a situation in this little scenario, you’re able to experience a problem without actually having to experience which is such invaluable. It’s like dipping your toes in the water before you’re actually in it.
Christine:
Within the fun is the learning, which is brilliant.
Natalie:
Yes, that is amazing.
Christine:
Yeah.
Natalie:
So, we learned a lot today and I know that our viewers will be asking to learn more about you, so. Could you share where they could find you and your company Wellness Worx?
Christine:
Yeah, absolutely. You can go to my website www.wellnessworx.com.au here in Australia. If you’re interested in trialing the Wellness Game within your organization, get in contact.
Natalie:
Great. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and insights. The world needs more people like you to make it more kind and conscientious. Thank you so much for coming on.
Christine:
Thanks for having me.
Natalie:
Hey, are you interested in making your workplace better, but don’t know where to start? Check out our free Kinder Workplace Journal. It offers 52 weekly thought-provoking prompts to boost self-awareness and empathy. If you’re interested in learning about a better paradigm and what we. Visit us@abetterparadigm.com and follow us on social media. Can find us on Instagram @abetterparadimABP and on LinkedIn at A Better Paradigm. Catch you next time!