Why Safety Is Our 2022 Well-Being Baseline

Safety is one of seven areas of well-being. WELCOA respects the research that underscores a workplace’s responsibility to address this core tenet of wellness. When selecting our 2022 theme, we had an epiphany. For decades our industry has been giving people life rafts in the form of a wellness program when they are drowning and attempting to help them recover their well-being. We do a mostly decent job of ensuring people who are already healthy swimmers can have the support to keep swimming. When we ask ourselves, why do so many people need life rafts? or why aren’t the life rafts leading to more long-term sustainable change?, we realize that we haven’t done sufficient work upstream. The root of why employees are unable to achieve well-being is that they lack the necessary support to meet their basic requirements for safety. We need to stop throwing people life rafts. We need to ensure their safety upstream, and when they are drowning, we need to do all we can to pull them out of the rough waters they are swimming in.

There are inequities in our communities and organizations that prevent people from being able to access basic resources, have enough disposable income to live a fulfilling and whole life, or be treated in a way that upholds dignity and respect. Without this level of safety, well-being is not possible. This realization put the burden of understanding the relationship between safety and well-being clearly on our shoulders. In response, we are dedicating a full year of resource development, collaborative conversation, and tactical skill-building to safety.

WELCOA’s definition of safety includes protection from both physical and emotional harm at work. Safety requires organizational action to protect physical health by creating protocols that protect employees from exposure to potentially dangerous work environments, which the pandemic exposed to be a complex task. Physical safety also includes protection from workplace violence and protection from systemic inequities. Safety also includes psychological safety, ensuring that employees feel secure enough to express themselves, take calculated risks and show vulnerability.

Our 2022 Focus

While traditionally we have focused on aspects of thriving such as regular exercise, a healthy diet, and mindfulness, this year will focus on root causes that prevent and limit healthy behaviors. To create the workplaces of the future, we, the leaders, need to truly understand the people we work for and conversely the people who work for us. We need to set new standards for leaders, sharpening their skills for empathy, compassion, creating psychological safety, transparency and trust.

Our 2022 Why

This focus is not an abandonment of traditional metrics and goals for holistic well-being. This focus for us is about level-setting on what is broken and what will need to change for people to actually be well. At WELCOA, we have lofty dreams for the future of work—of thriving, flourishing, and wholeness for all employees. But we also have to be honest with ourselves that to get there, we first need to create a more near-future where employees have their basic needs met and feel respected by their leaders and the company overall. That is simply not the reality for all working people. There are also societal factors such as health inequity, racial disparities, and growing economic divides keep some from resources needed for basic survival that limit employees’ potential for a healthy life. We believe that this is not a completely separate body of work than the work of reshaping organizations that are putting barriers on people and keeping them from reaching their full potential.

An employee’s ability to thrive begins with their safety. If we care about and support our employees’ well-being, then we must also take responsibility to support their psychological and physical safety. This year we will help our members understand the reason businesses need to play a role in prioritizing safety at the workplace and at home. We will help them understand that wellness is as much about implementing support as it is about removing barriers. And we will all be looking inward, asking ourselves what ways our organizations might be contributing to harm. Great change happens when we ask deeper questions and when we are willing to look as closely at ourselves as we are at others. At WELCOA we see this year as an accelerator for well-being. Let’s get to work! We look forward to your coming along beside us.

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