#19 Building a Supportive Culture Across 148,000 Staff … & Looking After Yourself
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Amy: This is the Headtorch Podcast. Welcome. Our mission? To create a mentally healthy culture at work. Keeping the conversations alive, our podcasts bring you great presenters and stimulating discussion on mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. Enjoy!
Hello everybody, welcome, very warm welcome to this Headtorch Wellbeing Hour. I am Amy McDonald.
Angus: I’m Angus Robinson.
Amy: And we have our special guest, Sunita Wazir, who I will introduce more fully shortly. For those of you that don’t know us, we are Headtorch. Our colleague Nick Lander is also here, working away in the background, helping with all things.
Technical. And at Headtorch, what we do is we work with organizations to develop a mentally healthy culture. So we like to meet organizations where they are on that journey, working with senior leaders, line managers, frontline people. We work face to face, online. We work in a way that works for you, essentially.
So if you want to find out more about what we do and how we do it, we’d be happy to have a conversation after today’s session. So let me just tell you a little bit more about the format for this hour, for those of you that haven’t been with us before. So first of all, I will introduce our guest and then I’ll hand over to her and Sunita will introduce herself a little bit more, giving us a flavour of who she is.
Using a mystery object of her choice, she and I will then move into conversation and then after some time, Sunita will pose us all a question and that will be our chance to respond to that question and also just to have some Q& A with Sunita. It’d be lovely to hear some of your voices. So do be thinking of what you’d like to ask her during that time.
Sunita and I will then return into conversation where she will share some top tips. And finally, we’ll finish off with some quick fire questions before Angus closes up today’s session. So, Let me introduce our guest, excuse me, I’ve still got the sort of long COVID cough thing going on, so apologies for that.
We are recording this as well, by the way, so that others can listen and or watch later on. Sunita Wazir is the Senior Manager Global Wellbeing at Unilever. So delighted that you can be with us today, Sunita. We first met each other, didn’t we, earlier this year when we had the pleasure of delivering a head skills session online to your wellbeing champions at Unilever.
It was really great fun and quite an honour. Sunita is amazing. Based in Mumbai, she’s a human resources and leadership development professional with 26 years of industry experience. She started her career off with Delta Airlines in general management before moving into HR and OD, leading large company wide change projects with organizations including Unilever, Hindustan Unilever Ltd.
and the Tata Sons Group Human Resources, working on simplification, process change, talent acquisition, ED& I, to name but a few. Sunita is currently living her purpose of helping people become the best version of themselves through her role leading the global wellbeing agenda at Unilever. So we’re really delighted to have you with us here, Sunita.
I’m just going to invite you now to introduce yourself and with your mystery object.
Sunita: Super. Thank you so much. And I’m delighted to be here talking to all of you and to share. Some of the ideas and some of the knowledge that we’ve acquired over these years working with people on wellbeing. But before that, I’m excited about the mystery object.
So what I’ve got here in my hand that I’m holding up, it’s the medal I got from a race I ran earlier this year. Anyone that knows me knows that I talk about running all the time, and this one is a very special one. This is from a marathon that I ran at Ladakh. So that’s a mountainous area in India, and it’s the highest marathon in the world.
And for someone that only runs at sea level in Mumbai in extreme humidity, it was an absolute delight to, without a lot of training and without overthinking it, land up at an altitude of 11, 155 feet, run a half marathon, and an experience I think I will cherish for the rest of my life. And I was telling Amy and Angus earlier, I’ve done a skydive just at the end of the first round of lockdowns with the pandemic.
I wanted to do something interesting. I did a skydive in Dubai, but this feeling of crossing the finish line was something extraordinary, you know, in the Ladakh Marathon. So it’s what describes me really well, being a part of it. A movement in physical activity, adopting that for a dozen years now, 12 years ago that I started running and it’s given me a lot of joy.
It’s the best therapy I never paid for, is what I like to say. So that’s me. Happy to be here.
Amy: Wow. Fantastic Sunita. I love the way that you say you just landed yourself at 11, 000 feet, just like you do. Absolutely brilliant. So you have an amazing job. Tell us a little bit more about how did you end up working in wellbeing?
Sunita: Fabulous question. I love that. I really don’t know. I have no idea how I ended up in this. It’s a little over seven and a half years now that I’ve been working in this space and working on mental health and, you know, helping people has been, you know, has been really phenomenal. When Unilever had a global plan for wellbeing, we designed a framework that was cascaded to all the countries.
I was working on the India based agenda at that time. I was working with the South Asia business, leading program on people with disability, but also doing a lot of work on change and transformation. And when the wellbeing Program came into India and into South Asia. It needed some adaptation and I’m not really sure why one of the gender managers, you know, approached me and said, we’d like you to do this.
And I said, is it because I’m a runner was my first question. I said, is that it? Or is it that I talk about a healthy lifestyle? And he turned around and told me, It’s actually because you do things that are really tough to do and this one seems like it’ll be really tough because for people to accept their vulnerability, to accept that they need help, that they need to reflect on their wellbeing is very hard.
Now, this is, you know, back in 2015, 16, where it wasn’t a very talked about topic in the corporate world, at least not in South Asia. And yeah, it was an uphill task, I have to say. I often describe it as, you know, the feeling of being against a wall and then an ant trying to climb up the wall and falling down and then, you know, getting up and trying again, because it is really hard.
And also, there weren’t a lot of service providers already. It’s not like I could find an employee assistance program that was ready to go and work with our geographic and demographic communities. You know, complexity, because we work all over India, but all over South Asia, many languages. I had to launch the first EAP in nine languages.
So it wasn’t easy. It is really a fantastic job. There aren’t too many, though. There aren’t too many jobs of this kind in other companies. So you get spoiled as well for the rest of the work. Business World, but I do enjoy it and I’m very grateful that they picked me. And I only found out later that it’s connected to my purpose.
I didn’t know then that it was going to bring me the joy that it did, but I did a Discover Your Purpose workshop after and found out that was where I was meant to be. So a little bit of that whole icky guy is happening there.
Amy: Yeah. So let’s just, we’ll come back to the, to the purpose bit. So you said it was an uphill struggle, like being that an climbing up, the climbing up the wall.
You know, Unilever’s got 148,000 staff, we believe world worldwide. So where do you even begin? Nice.
Sunita: I moved into the global role three and a half years ago. So, you know, it’s been now three and a half years that I’ve been working on the strategy and the deployment. And where do you begin? I mean, just to say it, you know, obviously, we’ve got a very culturally diverse population, the 148, 000 people sit in, you know, 190 countries, they have Different cultures, different backgrounds, different health and wellbeing issues, and more importantly, what’s available in those markets is very unique.
We don’t have the same level of service, for example, for mental health support in smaller countries that we serve, like Myanmar, Pakistan. We won’t have the same level of service. Mental health support, for example, in all of these countries, but we do have to have a standard when you want to rule something out at scale.
Amy: So, I think simply what Do you mean, sorry, do you mean you don’t have that level of support nationally or within the organization? Nationally. Right. Society. Socially. Because it’s
Sunita: so, you know, society has not set us up for successful mental health and wellbeing programs and so it was really hard to find the right partnerships.
Now, we obviously have a lot of global partnerships. So what we do is, I think simply put, Amy, we globally enable and we locally land, right? So we plan everything globally, we design, but it has to be locally activated. That’s the strategy we have because we need to be able to adapt. Everything we do is made, So, we do a lot of sort of culturally, you know, bland almost so that it can fit in with all the different cultures.
We also do a lot of translation. We offer all our material in 9 or 14 languages globally. But then we also make it possible for our markets to translate everything. So, we do it in a way. Let me take the World Mental Health Day campaign. We have an annual storytelling film that our employees do. We have The number of assets we produce, we have virtual events, we have in person events.
We make sure as far as possible, it is possible for people around the world. So all of our events are always at 12 noon UK time. So large parts of the world can attend them. And we try and make sure that people have the material in advance to do the translations, to do the subtitling, and that’s how we make it possible.
So how do you do something like that? I think we, I see myself as a conscience keeper. Also because I, you know, I’ve learned with great admiration how advanced the UK, the United States, Australia are in terms of offering support to people, but that doesn’t hold true for everyone everywhere. So I see myself as a conscience keeper, talking about the rest of the world and making sure we accommodate for the nuances that we need everywhere.
But I think more important than anything else, you know, we have a framework, we have everything else, but there are a few factors that make all the difference. The first one I would say is culture. Culture, you know, culture, you always say this in wellbeing, right? Culture will, you know, eat strategy for breakfast.
It’s important to culturally have the right cues that help build a wellbeing. A positivity and openness to wellbeing, but you also need to have leadership sponsorship. If you don’t have leaders that are aware and that have knowledge, you just don’t have any hope of landing this because a lot of role modelling, a lot of habits and behaviours are formed.
Especially for the younger generation, observing leadership approaches. We also offer a lot of prevention, so tools and materials for awareness that help mental health and resilience. And then lastly, of course, support anytime, anywhere, unquestioning, confidential. Support. And we back all of this with very consistent communication and campaigns.
We make sure we repeatedly state the same messaging because it’s important for people to really buy into it. You can’t just turn on an employee assistance program and expect people to adopt it. You have to keep telling them what the benefits are. You have to keep explaining it. And then I think the last thing that helps us unlock is the power of the community.
We don’t only depend on experts. And I’ve said this to you before, we don’t only depend on people who are qualified to do this. We actually bring the community along because there’s a lot of people within our workforce who would be more than happy to support others. We saw this with our Mental Health Champions program.
We asked people Do you want to equip yourself? Do you want to be able to speak the right language? Do you want to offer a listening ear? And do you want to be a mental health first aider? We set out an ambition to have 3, 000 people in the first year and a half, and we got 4, 500. I mean, just like that, 4, 000 people volunteered.
They put in the time, the effort to equip themselves to learn. And we’ve, you know, we’re delighted. There is a peer community that knows the language, that knows how to support others. And that knows their role is limited to just extending it, you know, a sort of connecting people to the right resources. So that’s another way to unlock it, right?
The power of communities.
Amy: Yeah, absolutely. Wow. I love the way that it’s that, that, as you say, you’re, creating a strategy globally, but actually it’s bland in that each country, if you like, can take it in the direction that they need to take it with that as a steer and the way you’ve cascaded it through the organization is a, it must be hugely empowering for each country to go, okay, that’s what we’re doing.
And this is the way we’re going to do it. Right. Yeah.
Sunita: Absolutely. They, you know, we’ve obviously had a network of people who are driven by passion, but now we’ve also consolidated our health and wellbeing work, because ultimately physical health, mental health, emotional health, they’re all connected, right?
Our wellbeing framework was physical, mental, emotional, purposeful. And of course, we cover financial and all of those elements. But what we also realize is that there’s a strong correlation between all of these. And so when you isolate or separate physical health from mental health, you’re not giving mental health the room or the opportunity to get all of the help and support and people won’t speak up, right?
So now we have a fully integrated health and wellbeing agenda. And that again, serves us because whole person health and, you know, using technology, using The right support systems can help us take this to another level.
Amy: Yeah, absolutely. So what, I mean, what have been the bigger obstacles that you’ve come across in this journey to create this program, if you like, across the organization?
Sunita: So I’m not sure that they’re all obstacles we still have, but there are a few that I can sort of talk through because for anyone that wants to start on this, first of all, I think it’s important not to overthink it. You know, the more you try to get everything perfect, you want to get it organized, you want to get it right, we just need to start offering support, right?
It has to be, it has to be the right kind of support. It has to be support that will be useful, that is qualified, that is trained, but also don’t overthink, you know, how you do it. For us, we’ve reached out to people crowdsourced and then come forward with some of the solutions we have. And we keep, you know, keep developing them.
We keep devising them. We keep testing them. I think the obstacles are, first of all, not a lot of immediate metrics. So take a program like Mental Health Champions. We invest in it. We’ve got a lot of people that are participating. But how do you really correlate that to better mental health or better health?
Or how do you correlate that to better productivity or performance? Where is the clear, That always tends to be a challenge and that always leads to fighting for funding, fighting for investments. I’m not saying that I have that challenge. I think we’ve been able to prove to some extent that the power of community is something that has shifted the culture because you can see that in your surveys, in your engagement, you can see how people start speaking out.
But that poses a challenge. is Intent to Action. For a lot of people, I certainly believe, Amy, that people come into the workplace with good intent. You know, there’s no one who gets up and says, I’m going to go to work today and mess everyone’s day up. No one’s intentionally, you know, damaging to anyone’s psychological safety or mental health.
It’s, it is just a factor of behaviours or habits or cultural beliefs or styles of working or cues from, you know, pressure, performance, not having enough skills. That’s what makes people feel strain or stress, which they then pass on to others. So, if we are to go with the principle that everyone has decent intent, at least, if not, you know, bad intent, but, you know, if not always good intent, I think the difference between intent and action is critical.
A lot of people are not skilled. They don’t have the right language to engage with people and don’t know how to check in with them. And so, they end up offending, they become probing or they become, you know, almost sort of. It could be that they’re imposing their questions or they start to show judgment on their face when someone’s talking about what’s bothering them.
When someone is sharing their vulnerability, having the right conversation skills makes all the difference. Now, who does this boil down to? We always talk about the poor line manager. But most of us are line managers. And, you know, we don’t see ourselves in that darkly painted corner as HR professionals or leaders.
We don’t see ourselves as those people that are oppressors who are, you know, making it impossible for people to continue to work. I mean, we talk about people don’t leave workplaces, they leave managers. There’s so many narratives and so many stereotypes that we have. We just need to equip people. We need to give them the right, you know, knowledge, skills, attitude, awareness, you know, help them to change their behaviors if they are counterintuitive and counterproductive.
So, those are the two I think that really strike out. Not a lot of proving, proven track record on metrics. There’s just not enough data out there. Which shows that invest in this, it’s worth it. So you might have some resistance and the other one is intent to action. There’s a gap and that could perhaps be sometimes difficult.
I’m sure there are many other barriers, but for me, those are the ones that it’s a soft stuff that’s really hard. So getting people the right language and the right attitude is, I think, very significant in this journey.
Amy: Yeah, absolutely. I think that for people within, an organization where the, financial question is a big one, it’s important to, to have, be armed with that, right?
We like to promote the use of, in the UK here, we’ve got the NICE costing tool, the National Institute of Care and Excellence costing tool, which is an independent costing tool, obviously, which enables organizations then to, to look at. How much is it actually costing them? So it’s quite a personal we find.
So let’s go back to the, you mentioned purpose and the purpose sessions. I know it’s a big driver within Unilever from what I’ve, from what I’ve heard. So would you like to share a little bit more about the move to, to promote purpose and that sense of purpose within individuals?
Sunita: Very,
happy to do that. And I think as someone that has partaken fully of the program, I also feel a bit like an ambassador and someone that has enjoyed the fruits of it, because just knowing what your purpose on the planet is, it’s just such an enriching, you know, reality for yourself. It just, starts to explain, it’s almost like things start falling into place, like, that makes sense.
So, our purpose movement started a number of years ago and it used to be a program offered to our senior most leaders and then, you know, Tim Mundin, who was our former Chief Learning Officer, he was someone that was doing a lot of the crafting of this purpose and we also started to find
that’s what keeps them engaged at the workplace and ultimately we want to retain good talent. The Purpose Movement started with the intent of bringing this wonderful program to everyone down the line and it got cascaded and I got to, you know, be a part of it through becoming a facilitator and then holding people’s hand and journeying them to, you know, to their finish line of identifying their purpose, which was again so lovely for me.
The movement started with us cascading this training, we made it a simpler version, we Called it Discover Your Purpose and the beauty of it was, I think at the very start, we knew that not everyone will find when they discover their purpose. Not everyone’s purpose will be something that keeps them stuck to Unilever.
Maybe it’s something that is outside of the workplace. Maybe it’s something where it’s a society passion or community or maybe a startup or maybe they want to do their own business or whatever the outcome may be. But we went into it with very open eyes that we want you to discover your purpose so that you feel connected to what you’re doing.
And if you have a larger ambition, then every day, every month, every week, every year, track whether you’re doing something to achieve it, because that’s ultimately then helping you to move towards your purpose. And now quite a wonderful movement. I think 53, 000 people at last count had gone through it. It is something that we’re identified for, but what it’s become is it’s also become a movement across the company.
Excuse me. So we’ve also got brands that have adopted purpose. Our company purpose is clear. Individuals have discovered their purpose. And what happens to someone when you have a clear purpose? I think a few outcomes, at least the fruits that I enjoy. One is, you know, I love Monday mornings. You never have a problem.
If you like what you do, you love what you do. It’s connected to who you are. Then Monday is as joyous as Friday is, right? And I, don’t get me wrong. I’m looking forward to Friday evening as well, but I do enjoy Monday mornings because I love what I do. Another fruit is, you know, you feel real pride in speaking about what you do.
You, you know, you, kind of connect to it so much. It means something to you. And then you’re able to find innovative solutions. You’re able to, you know, become far more productive, enjoy it far more, even with the challenges, you’re able to take them in your stride. And I think for us as an organization, it’s, borne so many fruits when our brands started to articulate their purpose and they, for example, our Clear Shampoo, it works in the space of resilience.
We used to partner with Lipton Tea. Because, you know, we started this whole, have a conversation over a cup of tea, check in on someone, see how they are. So, you know, let’s have a cup of tea and let’s talk. So, what this has done for us, Dove, for example, right now, has such a strong purpose and self esteem for women.
And they’re doing a huge movement in that space. When our brand started to drive purpose, the company started to articulate its purpose, people started to articulate their purpose, we all began to thrive together. And that’s ultimately a wonderful outcome, right? When you know that there is room for you to share both your passions and lift them out, but also share your vulnerabilities and get the right help for it.
I think that’s where, you know, you can find a little bit of magic happening.
Amy: Yeah. And, obviously that, that, and it’s so tied into our, wellbeing, isn’t it? And our resilience purpose being one of the key. Resilience Resources is hugely powerful. Can you share any top questions that people are asked within these sessions that help to discover your own purpose, if you like?
Sunita: So it’s a journey, Amy. We take them through a journey. We, you know, we get them to reflect on our four life stages. So, you know, when they were young, so we do ask them to think about that because that’s where you draw your energy. you know, sort of establish your values. You get to know who you are.
Then we talk a little bit about, you know, what are some of the achievements you’ve had? So reflecting on those times, what is it that you felt where you were in a state of slow, where everything was working all right, what’s going on with you there? What were some of the successes you had? We asked them to think about a crucible moment in their life, somewhere where they were really challenged, somewhere where, you know, where they had to draw their own strength.
Because I think oftentimes we don’t honour ourselves. We don’t honour the journeys we’ve had. Especially for people that keep on doing, you know, who are constantly on the go, that are not taking time to reflect and not, don’t have enough self awareness. We tend to think our crucibles was, you know, were that time and then we’ve moved on from there.
We don’t reflect on how we evolved as an individual, how we changed. And then we, you know, we ask people to also talk about. Where in the workplace they feel their joy? Where is, you know, where do they feel happiest? Where do they feel in a sense of flow? What’s that part that gives them a biggest amount of joy?
And then it’s a beautiful process. I mean, we have subgroup facilitators. So we have people embedded into the crowd. The people who volunteer their time to get these 53, 000 people to find their purpose. But you’ll have someone to steer your subgroup. And. Together, the group helps you articulate what your purpose is.
So it’s a beautiful journey. You have other people to bounce ideas off. It becomes very intense and you also really get to know people. I think what I enjoyed is I was, you know, I had moved over at this time from a South Asia role to a global role. It became a real connector. I got to know a lot of people.
I got to know people from across the business. I got to know them really well because, you know, you shed light. All your inhibitions and you open up all your vulnerabilities in this, in these conversations, but then around the corner comes a self discovery that was perhaps either a blind spot or something you did not acknowledge or you did not honour.
So, I think you get to develop self compassion, you get to develop self awareness, and you come away empowered. Even if that’s not the ultimate purpose that you have, maybe you keep articulating it, you keep crafting it. It’s a great starting point for some degree of reflection and some degree of soul searching to see, you know, what your meaning on this planet is.
Amy: Wow. It sounds like an amazing course. Sign me up. Yeah, no, it sounds really great. And I love the fact that it sounds like a very safe space that’s creative for people and one where, as you say, It sounds like you’re almost creating a buddy system moving forward as well. And that’s a hugely powerful gift for any of us, isn’t it?
Absolutely.
Sunita: It’s, you know, you develop a strong cohort and you get to know each other. And yeah, those relationships run deep. You know, you ever have a business issue, you reach out to someone that you’ve shared this purpose conversation with, they will take your call. They will help you. They, you know, your network becomes pretty powerful, but I think it’s also just the sharing and the lightening of a load, so to speak, you know, that happens with this.
Amy: Yeah, absolutely. Great. Well, thank you so much, Sunita. Let’s move on now to share your question with everybody here. So, I’ll just put it up onto the screen for you folks so you can see that. So, Sunita’s question to us all is, what’s your biggest challenge? In supporting people’s wellbeing. So we’re just going to put that question into the chat for you so that we can also just drop this, drop the screen there as well.
So just like to open up the floor then, and if anybody has a response to this, Big question of what’s your biggest challenge in supporting people’s wellbeing and or you maybe got a different question for Sunita, then this is your time to, to put your hand up if you are, if you’d like to use the reaction app, then I can invite you in.
Sunita: Yeah, we’re getting a few in the chat.
Amy: Excellent. Yeah. Getting their attention. Jennifer McDonald, would you like to share a little bit, Jennifer? Of course. Nice. Jennifer, just want to share with everybody where is you work and then a
Guest: little bit. Yes, I’m Jennifer McDonald. I work for the National Manufacturing Institute of ScotRail, which is a race route.
And. I am the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Manager there. So tell us a bit more
Amy: about getting their attention.
Guest: Yeah, it’s one of those things I have tried emails and it’s the same kind of four or five percent that you get back in road checks and I’ve tried going into everyone’s teams every quarter and highlighting the things they do and there’s a lot of positivity and then You follow up and everyone’s just very busy and exhausted and it feels if they attended whatever was going on or they gave themselves the opportunity to just take part, they went through the volume of it, but it’s getting that initial input that is sometimes a challenging thing across the board.
Amy: Right. Excellent point. Yeah. what’s your thoughts on that Sunita?
Sunita: I agree, Jennifer. it’s so hard because the very things that serve us, you know, the same technology that keeps us connected to others also distracts us so much. And for a lot of people starting on their wellbeing journey often is, you know, you know, False starter, at the start of the new year, at, you know, birthdays, or, you know, when they see something or they hear sad news about losing someone else to a health issue or something like that.
Different, things that provide stimulus. So not everyone is able to stay the course and especially with busy work lives with the full calendars, multiple meetings, time zones, it’s, really hard. For me, I think the thing that I’ve always stuck to is, you know, pick a few initiatives to do because when we offer just too many, people get confused and they just don’t make the choices and make it very easy and accessible.
You know, earlier, we all insisted on in person events because we didn’t know otherwise. But just like what our friends at Headtorch are doing today, we’re doing this conversation, it’s going to be recorded, people can digest it at the time that works for them. So make things small, make them digestible.
Ultimately, building awareness is, you know, the bigger part of that is sharing some statistics, some facts, some data. And when we are able to do that, when people really buy into it and want to have a behaviour change, I think we should also make it bite sized, you know, that 1 percent change, the James Clear Atomic Habit concept, you know, what’s the small things you’re going to do?
I’ll give you a simple example. When someone says they want to start running and I have a lot of people that tell me, you know, I want to do a marathon. What do you do? And I give them a simple anecdote. I’m like, yeah, sure. The hardest part is waking up in the morning and, you know, putting on those shoes and then getting out the door.
The minute you do all of those, you’re committed to the rest of the run, right? So making it simple to people, making it Less volume and repeatedly sharing the same message. Those are some of the things I’ve found. keep it going. and the last thing I would say to that, I know this is a very long answer, but the last thing I would say is don’t do just transactional stuff, right?
Do something that’s a transformative and impactful, you know, transformation is great. If you offer someone, you know, a class, a yoga class or a breathing class, that’s not going to be enough. Give them something that They think about, but then they’re able to reflect on and really make a change. So maybe, you know, design a nutritious food menu and help them understand how to navigate it or talk about movement or drinking water, just making it easy and more accessible.
That sometimes helps, but
Amy: yeah,
Sunita: tough one. Great. Yeah.
Amy: Fantastic response, Sunita. And I would also throw into that, of course, Just tying back with what you said earlier, Sunita, the importance of senior leaders being on board with this, because when we certainly find when senior leaders are on board, there tends to be a lot more uptake further down the line, right?
Rather than people going, Oh, it’s not important, actually, it’s, if it’s fed down from the top, then it tends to be more of that. Thank you very much. Thanks, Jennifer. Amanda Way, you’re saying they think it’s a tick box exercise and almost feel it’s a trick. Do you like to share a little bit more about what you’re thinking is there, Amanda?
Guest: Yeah, so I work for West Dunbartonshire Council and HR advisor, but with a focus on wellbeing. So I’ve only been here about a year and a quarter, and I have noticed that people are generally sceptical of any kind of wellbeing things that we’re putting out, but I can also see their point of view as well because we are now having to make significant cuts.
So, we’re almost saying to people, we need to cut jobs, we need to change job roles, you’re going to have to do more with less, but we care about your wellbeing at the same time. And to me, their answer is, well, Do you know what would help my wellbeing? Having some extra staff. So I think it’s tough to promote wellbeing in these kind of challenging times when the things that would improve some people’s wellbeing are not organisationally possible and where you’re sort of, I don’t think, sorry.
Maybe we’ll unfreeze in a second.
Amy: Sorry. There we go. I’m back. You’re back. Brilliant. Can you say that last bit again for us?
Guest: So when you’re kind of offering them like, oh, a yoga or, oh, it’s mental health day, and they’re just like, big deal. Like, so it can be a bit challenging to promote it when they’re just thinking it’s, you’re just doing it to get, you know, Tuck in the box and say, we’ll follow this process, but you kind of don’t really care.
That’s the vibe I get a lot of the time.
Amy: Sure. So a tick box exercise, Sunita, how do we get away from that?
Sunita: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks Amanda. That was quite an interesting reflection, right? And it’s very true. People, have low trust because ultimately what they want is just more people to do work rather than having a free yoga class or healthy fruit plate offered to them.
I think ultimately. And I’m going to actually conflate that with the next question, which Bep Dhaliwal has put in, which is not people not realizing the value of this for themselves. Both those are very valid because for a lot of people, If their organization plans, you know, six days a year, when you say, okay, now we’re doing wellbeing in the rest of the year, you’re expected to work long hours and meet unlimited demands and everything.
They’re going to have low confidence. I think my earlier point, make it transformational and not transactional, you know, throwing people an event or an engagement or a party. It has a feel good for Six hours, and then they forget it. They wake up the next morning, they reboot it, and they’ve forgotten everything.
So making it transformational is one of the other important parts. Take a step back, and it’s about building awareness. Sometimes you have to talk about the dangers. Sometimes you have to show the data. You have to show what’s going on out there. And so people start realizing that, you know, this is something useful.
And the other thing I think that’s also important is, you know, looking at the way we design interventions, let interventions be very confidential. For very many reasons, people don’t participate because they don’t want to be seen there, because they might be seen as not having enough work, they want to project themselves differently, they want a posture that I’m perfectly okay.
I think it’s a combination of cultural cues, how you speak about it. Making everything really confidential. If someone shares how they’re feeling, keeping it very confidential. No one else should know. It should just be the people designing the programs when you ask them for feedback. And lastly, not having, you know, one off experiences, but planning for longer term interventions that people can adopt and they can keep learning piecemeal.
So almost imagining it as concentric circles of learning. Give them lots and lots of awareness, lots of opportunity to use stuff. And then, hopefully, they will adopt it and not see it as a tick box exercise. I think the cue comes from all of those four pieces I spoke about, culture, leadership, prevention, and support.
If they’re all together, then it’s likely that people won’t see it as a tick box and they’ll see that there is, you know, authentic care and sort of a sense of belonging that the company has for them and a sense of, you know, Concern for them is what they have. Yeah.
Amy: True sense of concern. Thank you, Sunita.
And thank you, Bec. Lovely to see you for your comment as well there. Lindsay, you have noted down there, Getting Investment, People’s Appetite and Monetary. Do you want to just expand a little bit more on that, Lindsay?
Lindsay: Yeah, well, when I started, sorry, I worked for RSA Ltd. in a mobility business. So, I’m mostly insured.
People are very creative. They’re very into the detail and underwriting insurance policies and delivering excellent customer experience, but when I started this journey, people were going off in my department with enjoying two to three months off a year with mental health absences. Not doing anything about it, not seeking medical attention, or even support from leaders, to be honest.
So, I used the word enjoying, because there were people who enjoyed being the victim. They enjoyed not looking to help themselves, but also they didn’t want to go into waste. They were, taking the Michael. And then there was the genuine cases who didn’t know waste again. You know, they really couldn’t see that, light at the end of the tunnel.
So, I started, you know, literally just being curious, looking into mental health development. I was coming to the Wakes Mental Conference, that was one of the first biggest things that I did. And I came away from that eventually satisfied and motivated. I sat my manager and director down and said, you know, we need money.
We can’t, we just can’t do it with nothing. So, what I found is, If I’ve got a budget, so I’m lucky to, I lead engagement. That’s our parts of the business for 600 people. If I have money, I get engagements because it’s entry level staff. They’re not on a lot, the biggest salaries in the business, but you told us about their mental health.
Right now, everyone’s talking about cost of living. Everyone’s worried about Christmas. Everyone’s worried about the heating bills, et cetera. So we do things to say, you know, what are you worried about? And we’ll run the competition with you and some vouchers. It starts people Central Health Awareness Week, we will ask questions around, you know, what are your hints and tips, or if you found a self listed situation, what advice would you give to others?
And, you know, we start off, there’d probably be maybe 20, 30 people. Now, we’re seeing like over a hundred people getting involved, but six or seven hundred people, not even in our part of the business, looking. So. The enticement is there by putting a little voucher in as a little incentive, but actually what you get off the back of that are the conversations at the coffee machine, and it becomes a culture, and, you know, my heart sings when I see men getting involved, at first it was all women, and then it was women of a certain age, and then it got younger, and now men are coming in, and men are talking about support groups, to me at my desk and things like that and it doesn’t matter.
Everything we do is regardless of your working location, since Covid, because we work hybridly. But I always think, I always find that if we do something and they’re so incentive, people aren’t as interested. So, you know, get them where, With their attention is piqued and then, you know, the culture, the ripple effects across the Basel and Anabir are phenomenal.
Amy: Wow. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you, Lindsay. And for those of you that aren’t aware, Lindsay actually was our guest some time ago, weren’t you? on the Wellbeing Hour and your podcast is as available as all of them are. So do you want to hear more from Lindsay? Do look that up. Sunita, have you got any thoughts about using incentives?
Sunita: You know, it’s a very interesting one. And I think we need to weigh these in terms of how many people actually use them. When you give someone a subscription to technology or an app, or you bring out, you know, sort of gym memberships or anything like that, most often than not, we know that even when people are paying for it themselves, they don’t adopt a habit.
So for me, I think a more critical, step in this whole path is to sort of almost build awareness to such an extent that you build that appetite for behaviour change. And yeah, absolutely, Lindsay, I loved everything that you talked about because that’s true. It’s, such a hard journey and it’s what you hear at the coffee machine that ultimately what is culture?
That’s what it is, right? It’s what people are saying about the company. It’s how they’re feeling. You know, do you see them getting engaged? Do you see them caring about their own health and wellbeing? What is it that drives them? So, ultimately, you know, whether it is you giving out something which people are using responsibly, you building experiences at the workplace that people adopt, what we’re after is habit change.
We’re after behaviour adoption and whatever gets us there, depending on the group we have. If it’s very young, very junior staff, chances are they’re not buying this for themselves and they’re very, relieved to have it. For the more fortunate, for the better paid, I would say awareness building is far more important, giving them, you know, enough information that they build an appetite to stay on the course is equally important.
Amy: Fantastic. Thank you. I love that question that you gave there before, Lindsay, about, you know, Just asking what is it you’re worried about and inviting people to come forward and that again, it ties in with that awareness raising, doesn’t it, Sunita? Lovely. Well, I’m aware there’s lots of questions in the chat.
If we have time later, we will come back to them. Just conscious that Sunita has some further top tips for us. So let’s move on to them, Sunita. So your first top tip then. Talk us through it.
Sunita: Yeah, I think I, I focus the tips on taking care of yourself because you can’t pour from an empty cup. You know, the concept of put your own oxygen mask first.
And, you know, you heard my first role was with an airline. So put your own oxygen mask first, then help others. So the first habit that I’ve developed that really has made a difference sits in physical activity. Well, the habit that gets your heart rate up every day, you know, waking up early is a great way, especially when people say, just don’t have a time, have the time to adopt something.
You know, there’s a way to do that. Wake up earlier. Yeah. The second one is more for the workplace. It’s more organizational. Talk to someone. We know that earlier and earlier conversations make all the difference. Mental health issues, mental ill health, stress, anxiety, all the workplace issues we speak about.
When you start to see it creeping up, when you see the signs in yourself, you know, losing sleep, not enough appetite, feeling distracted, feeling fidgety, constantly always on, any of these signs, talk to someone and lighten them. Wonderful. Yeah, the third one is breathe. We’re all breathing from the moment we’re born.
Till our last breath, right? But we don’t give it enough attention and our bodies tend to be in continuous state of fight or flight with every stimulus, every message on our phone, every time something pops up on our screen, everything we see, our brain just goes into this, you know, overload of information and we’re constantly reacting with fight or flight and we lose our ability to discern between real threat and imagined threat and, you know, imagined information.
And so, So it’s really important to take some time to take a deep breath in and a deep breath out, especially when something is confrontational, when you’re in an argument, when something’s bothering you, you’re emotional. Rather than react, have a bit of a rule. Breathe and allow yourself to respond rather than react.
Amy: Breathing exercises as well, which are hugely powerful for strengthening our sense of self and our sense of control as well. So yeah, do look those up, folks, if you’re interested.
Sunita: The fourth one is really speak up. You know, very often we end up bottling stuff up. It’s not politically correct. We don’t want to see, be seen as weak.
You know, sometimes the stigma is larger in our own head. We have a lot of limiting beliefs we acquire. We, you know, we sometimes tend to become very critical of ourselves. We just don’t have enough self compassion to speak up. You know, be vulnerable, share your ideas, set your boundaries. We saw how the pandemic showed us that it’s good for you.
The more you start to build that into your routine and start becoming more open, you’ll find it easier to speak up in front of anyone and then that’s where those conversations at the coffee machine will change because you’re becoming the ambassador, you’re speaking up, slowly that movement will go on and everyone will start speaking up.
Lovely.
Healthcare is not selfish. I think for many of us when we are caregivers, we’re parents, we’re you know. Take care of elders. We tend to forget ourselves. We feel like when there’s a sinking ship, we’ve got to rescue others before we throw ourselves a ring. But self care is not selfish. Build self compassion.
Speak to yourself nicely. You know, we tend to sometimes be our harshest critic, our own harshest critics. So just building that ability to forgive ourselves and move on from any The thing that we see ourselves as
Amy: failing. Definitely. It’s a lifelong learning lesson, isn’t it? Self compassion.
Right. And build your tribe. Yeah.
Sunita: I think this is more about, you know, today’s day and age, we are not going to be superheroes. We’re not the Avengers. We don’t have to fight the good fight alone. So we need to build our tribe. We need, you know, heroes, champions, supporters to navigate through. We need to build our resilience resources.
Who are the people we need to have? Someone to lean on. Someone to help navigate with, someone to bounce ideas off of. We don’t have to do everything alone. It takes a village. Let’s bring the village along and not hesitate from building a tribe, opening ourselves up and finding someone to partner with on all of the challenges we have.
Amy: Fantastic. So important, isn’t it, to look for and build that tribe. Wonderful, Sunita. Let’s move into some rapid fire questions for you then that you haven’t heard before. So here we go. Sunita, what does vulnerability mean to you?
Sunita: It means being able to share, you know, everything that comes up in my mind.
Good, bad, ugly. All of it, just being able to show when I’m tired. When I’m burned out, I’m burned out. When I’m exhausted and just need a cup of tea or I need to walk away, I do that. And it’s taken me a very long time to get there.
Amy: Lovely. Yeah. Showing up as. As yourself, right? As you are. Fantastic.
What do you think is going to revolutionize workplace mental health? I
Sunita: think just talking, everyone talking, just a lot more conversations. There’s, I find it very conflicting when, technology tries to take over the human touch, that doesn’t go away. So, you know. Speaking to someone, talking to someone that cares enough, equipping people to have the right language.
There’s just not enough knowledge about mental health. So, we need to equip everyone, educate everyone so everyone can have a conversation and make it as commonplace. If you break an ankle, we’ll talk about it. You have a broken heart or you have a mental health issue, you won’t ever say anything to anyone else.
So, Building the ability to speak about it.
Amy: Nice. So actually building that vulnerability, if you like, in everyone. Fantastic. What message would you give your younger self, Sumita?
Sunita: You know what? My younger self was so involved in being what I am. Others were viewing of me. I would say, you know, just leave that behind.
It does not matter. Do what gives you joy. Keep doing what gives you joy. I think that’s the only single message I would want to give my children who are teenagers, but also my own, you know, my younger self. Just don’t sweat the small stuff.
Amy: Lovely. Yeah. Be what gives you joy. I love that. If you could make wave a magic wand.
At every workplace in terms of mental health, what would you make happen?
Sunita: If I would wave a magic wand in terms of mental health, I would stop judging people, especially for promotions, growth and opportunities based on their mental ill health or mental health issues. We need that. We need to get rid of that bias.
Amy: Yeah, absolutely. Eradicate the judgment. Fantastic. And finally, do share with everybody the journey that you have taken with your here.
Sunita: Sure. Happy to do that. I love talking about it. All right. So I’m a long haired person, been one all my life, you know, just something that I’ve always identified with. And six years ago, I discovered from a colleague actually, who was in my team, she came into work one day bouncing and you know, she had really short hair.
And I said, What’s going on here, Firouza? What happened here? And she told me that she had donated her hair and I had never heard of that. And it meant something to me also because I lost my own sister to cancer a long time ago when she was really young. It just clicked with me. And that was it. In a few weeks after that, I signed up, went into the salon and 12 inches of hair, just chopped it off, put it in a packet and sent it away.
But what made it so beautiful was that my daughter, who was then just 13. Decided to adopt what I wanted to do and she came with me and she had this beautiful long hair and she chopped her hair off and, you know, we put it in a bag in memory of her aunt and we sent it off. The thing about donating your hair is it means a lot to many of us.
It’s our identity, our hair. You know, we were talking earlier about how people are always trying to style their hair or we’re touching it. I’m constantly touching my hair, but over these past six years, I’ve donated hair three times. To the same organization that makes wigs for people that are dealing with cancer, that can’t afford it.
There’s a lot of people out there that are just about struggling to make ends meet and getting the treatment for cancer, especially in India where primary healthcare is so, you know, not easily accessible. And so this hair gets put into wigs for, you know, financially unfortunate women, and then they get to have a smile on their face and it gives me immense joy.
So I didn’t know somewhere along the way I became an advocate for hair donation. I was at a salon earlier today in the morning and there was a young girl and she was like, my hair is ruined. I was like, all right, why don’t you just donate it? I mean, this is just a stranger. She’s sitting in her chair.
Colouring her hair red, which means she really cared about, you know, making it look good. And my message to her was, you know, go ahead and donate it. So yeah, my message to all of you, if you can do that, it feels
Amy: amazing. Thank you. Thank you, Sunita. What a fantastic story. Thank you so much for sharing. I’m going to hand over now to Angus, who is going to thank you more officially.
Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Angus: Sunita, what a fascinating hour that was. That was really great. I love that you got into wellbeing because you like doing things that are really, tough, yeah? Description of the ant climbing up the wall. I can really relate to that in many ways. Actually, the journey we’ve been on with Headtorch as well.
Also, the whole thing about keeping it simple. A lot of your messages are really straightforward. Yeah. Don’t overthink it. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Keep it simple. Talk. Yeah. All the, great messages you got there. I also love the thought that the language that you’re using. You know, you say that the right language and the right attitude is essential, and you mentioned the power of community, and the power of community shifting culture.
You understand why you’re on this planet. Wow, how powerful is that? That is incredible. You also mentioned that it’s a beautiful journey, you take pride, the joy in it, being in a state of flow, the fact that you love Monday mornings and also really look forward to Friday evenings, not many people I think in this life can say that at the moment, so there’s lots of wonderful things there that I think we all got today and I’d like to, on behalf of everybody here, thank you very, much for that.
And also, I could do with a hair donation, so tell me where to get one.
So, moving on, we have next step on the next Wellbeing Hour, which is at the 8th of December and is at 4pm. It’s a different time. And that is because our speaker is from the Yale School of Management in the USA and it is Professor Orianne Georgiac. She is Professor of Organizational Behaviour and it promises to be a really interesting discussion.
So, join us for that on the 8th of December, 4pm. If you like what we do, please get in touch, we’d love to hear from you. And also, follow us on LinkedIn, that will keep you up to date with what we are doing. We have a number of events coming up as well, we have Line Manager Program, our Headtorch Aware Programme, we have a taster event for that, which is face to face, it is in Glasgow, again, you’ll see the link to that on our website, as I mentioned, we have Ariane, we have Jackie Vaz joining us on in January, who’s going to be talking about financial wellbeing, and then in February, we have Look for Ali, who is Joining us from the CIPD in the UK.
So thank you very much everybody. If there are any more questions, please let us know now. And if there’s not, I think we could probably finish up.
Amy: Thank you for joining us, everyone. Thanks for listening to the Wellbeing Hour. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. These events take place regularly, so do join us for more.
And, if your organisation would like to develop a mentally healthy culture, we’d be happy to work with your senior team, people managers and frontline staff. Please get in touch at headtorch. org. We look forward to hearing from you.
Sunita Wazir will be sharing her experience of Mental Health and Wellbeing in a large organisation – where do you even begin?
Sunita is a Mumbai-based Human Resources and Leadership Development professional who is deeply passionate about Mental Health initiatives in the workplace. While honing her skills in HR Strategy, she is a champion of Mental Health and Wellbeing as well as supporting Diversity and Inclusion initiatives including disability and gender.
She is a trained mindfulness and mental health champion and a Korn Ferry certified SOL coach at Unilever. Her purpose is “enabling joy to help others achieve their finish line…”
Guests on this episode
Sunita Wazir
Senior Manager Global Wellbeing at Unilever
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