E088: Healthy Workplaces

hello. This is James, and this is Jane,

and here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast. So we've got an exciting one this week. What are we speaking about? Jane

this week, we are speaking about worker well being and healthy workplaces, and we are talking to Dr Kevin Tio, who specializes in that area, particularly with healthcare workers,

right? That's exciting. I think there's, there's a lot to learn about well being in general, and I think the roles that organizations play in worker well being are really interesting. So I'm sure we will learn a lot of good stuff. That sounds great. Let's get started.

Okay, so here we are in the main body of this podcast, and today we are speaking to Kevin Teo, and we're going to be speaking about healthy workplaces before we get into that. Though, Kevin, would you be able to introduce yourself to your yourself to the audience and say a bit about your background and maybe some of your research and your interest in this area.

Of course, hi James and Hi Jane, and thank you for that invite. And hello everybody. So my name is Dr Kevin Teo. I'm an occupational health psychologist and a lecturer in Organizational Psychology at Birkbeck. So really, what that means is I'm interested in how workplaces are designed, how they're organized, how they manage, and what impact that has on the mental well being of individuals in the workplace and more generally. Basically, what I'm interested is is not so much the individual, but really the wider system, and how individuals cope within that system, how they're influenced by all of that. And I'm also the European Academy for occupational health psychology, and very much interested there at a policy level, because I think if we are talking about supporting individuals in the workplace, we also need to look at some of the bigger picture stuff that happens at a national and even international

level as well. Right? There's some fantastic stuff in there, and we're going to be having some upcoming conversations about more systemic approaches to things as well. So it's great to have that in there. If we start off with, I guess, a really simple question, what is a healthy workplace? And what is it that that a healthy workplace looks like? Or what what makes a healthy workplace?

So I think a healthy workplace is really quite a general statement. And if you want to consider it very simplistically, it's basically you're saying it's an environment where individuals go in and that allows them to be healthy. And that could be healthy from a psychological point of view, but also from a physical point of view. What you want is for individuals to go into work and not have to come out injured or sick or unhealthy, essentially. But you can also broaden it up and to look at other aspects and say, Actually, a healthy workplace is one which allows or facilitates an individual to achieve or do what they want to be, what to what they want to sorry, what they want to do or what they want to be. And that can be quite broad. I think we often think that a healthy workplace is something which gives someone meaning and purpose. And if your workplace allows you to do that, then that's great, and that's fantastic. But maybe for you, if the workplace is somewhere that all you need is a wage that allows you to pay for your you know, your living costs, or to cover things that you have for your family, or allows you to pursue interests outside of work, then that could also be a healthy work environment. But you could also then extrapolate that even further up and to look at it from an organizational point of view, and say, actually a healthy workplace looks after individuals outside of the workplace as well. And that could again be physically or mentally, but also their development. So you are talking about maybe building people up and giving them opportunities to develop that might actually help them outside of work, or perhaps even in careers or in the career further down the line. And then you can take one final step up and look at it more from systems, from a community perspective, and say, actually healthy work environments get involved with not only the lives of their individual workers, but also their families and the communities that they're embedded in. We hear a lot about how organizations and workplaces can get involved in the health of their local communities and their neighborhoods, but also other things like sustainability, environmental issues and education as well. So there's lots of way layers in terms of how you can explore this in basically what healthy workplaces?

Yeah, that's cool. There's some really, really interesting things in there and and I like the sweep from the individual, simplistic objectives of people on their own, through the organization, through the community, and up to the societal level. There's a great swathe of things in there. Do you find when you look at how. Healthy Workplaces that that you see real consistent impacts on individuals based on the way that organizations or workplaces work. Or do you tend to find that even within set organizations, that you get clusters of different levels of health of individuals in there, in this context of health that you speak about?

Yeah, I think you is the letter. So you'll see a lot of variation even within organizations, and it could be because you've got a large organization and they've got different pockets in terms of how they practice. I do a lot of work with the NHS, and we often talk about having good practices and bad practices. And within a single hospital, you've got some departments which are very well run, and others which are, you know, really horrendous places to work, for example, and I think so you've got the system that is actually different for the individual as well. But then also you've got individuals and what we bring to the table, or what we bring into the working environment, and that could be how we interact with the people around us. So we have a direct impact on our colleagues, our supervisors, on our subordinates, but also in terms of us, individually. Psychologically, we have individual differences, whether that's things like biology or physical health or mental health, but also psychological states, things like resilience and self efficacy and optimism and all of that basically interacts. So it's very difficult to say from a top down perspective, this is what you have to do. This is what a healthy workplace looks like because it does actually vary. Yeah,

and, and underlying all of this is i Based on my interpretation of premise that we're looking to improve the health of the individuals in this broader definition of health, in the work that you do and in your exploration of this, are you looking to maximize that, or is there an optimal level? I know we can't really put numbers on it, but, but where on that, that swathe of of health for the individuals into society, do you see organizations desiring to get to is it about 100% is it about 80% is does that type of thinking come into it at all? Or is that just me going down a rabbit hole? Well,

I don't think it necessarily go, we go down that route, per se, I think then we are talking about well being, essentially being on a continuum and having sort of a very high level, functioning individual. And I think well being is quite is such a broad construct that it's it's very difficult to say that someone's has a specific score on this, because my understanding of well being, of my desire for well being could be different to to yours. I might be interested in saying, actually, it's about physical well being. I want to be able to to, you know, run a marathon in three and a half hours. And you might not be interested in that whatsoever. For someone else, it might be something more spiritual or something more purposeful. So I don't think you can have that comparison from from, from that point of view. And I think fundamentally, when we then talk about, well, how do we what we want for individuals, it's more of saying, Well, what do they want, and understanding how we can support the different desires and intentions that our employees have. From an organization's point of view, we might be looking at things like objective metrics, things like absence rates and things like that to say, well, we want to reduce sickness absence rates. We want to reduce levels of presenteeism or turnover. Because all these are probably indicators that well being might be poor. Positive manifestations might be things like, well, you know, how long people stay, how quickly people progress within the organization or schools around job satisfaction or work engagement. If these are things that that you are you are collecting, but I don't think there is a, there is a, yeah, necessarily an optimal level. And again, because it varies so much from context to context.

Yeah, interesting. I was just curious about, curious about whether you know, maximizing or where we were heading with that. What are some of the things that prevent healthy workplaces from coming about? What are some of the enemies or challenges that you get in that space? I think

that to broadly separate them into sort of two areas. The one is saying that is lack of understanding of why this is important, why the well being of our our workforce, is important. And again, you could create many different arguments around that. And fundamentally, I think there is an ethical and moral argument. I don't think anyone should go into work and come out of work more unhealthy than than they went in. You know, when I first started out, I always used to think that actually everyone had a right to be healthy and happy in the workplace. And actually, I don't think we need to necessarily force happiness on everybody. It's perfectly okay for you to go to work, and if you want to feel miserable or you want to just be content at work, that's okay. I don't think we need to be going down the route of creating a culture where we're all happy, clappy and all that sort of stuff, because that's not right for everyone, and also why it's important, then it's thinking about, well, when we go back to the wider system, I always think that it's a public health argument on why having healthy workplaces are important. When I started my training or work in psychology, as many people can, do an undergrad degree in psychology, the intention was to become a clinical psychologist, and with a lot of my earlier work. And clinical placements, I realized that we were working with individuals who were pretty much so far down the line that they had very little hope of reintegrating back into society. And I found that quite concerning. And I felt that actually, if we were able to intervene and support individuals further upstream, earlier along in their journeys, that actually they will have a much better prognosis in terms of being able to to live their lives healthily, maybe even happily. That's what they want, and not then have to go all the way down and end up in a in a psych ward. But we spent there for so much of our time in around work that I think that's important. It's almost a public health argument as to why we need to be having healthy workplaces. But with a lot of organizations, there's a second argument, which is a business case around there, where, generally speaking, there is considerable evidence saying that there is some relationship between the well being of your workforce and things like performance. Is not, you know, it's not a perfectly strong correlation, but there is pretty good evidence saying that there is some sort of relationship between them, that ultimately, even if you don't care about your employees and all you care about is the bottom line, that you do need a productive and and healthy workforce. So I think that's the that's the first thing, I think it's understanding why well being is important, and a link to that. The second one, I think the second enemy, probably, is recognizing that who is responsible for an employee's well being. A lot of how we understand well being, and therefore how we intervene, places the onus and the responsibility on the individual. If you're not healthy, or if you're not well, then that's because of you. It's because you're not sleeping well, you're not exercising, you've got bad genes, or you've got a bad mindset, whatever that might be, and actually not recognizing what I alluded to earlier on, that we are essentially, often the product of our system, and that could be our families, it could be our workplaces, it could be the wider societal context as well. So that's the second enemy, is recognizing that actually, when we talk about well being, it's not just the individual's responsibility, but it's a collective responsibility. And in particular, if you're an employer, you have a lot of sway in that, and therefore you have a you have a big responsibility. Yeah, and I think

that echoes, certainly what James and I talk about quite a lot on the podcast, when we talk to some of the people working in the area, it's responsible business, and when we've talked about businesses with Triple bottom lines and things about that, recognizing and trying to perhaps spread the idea that it's not just about the individual worker, but there's all of us have a part to play and take responsibility. You do personally a lot of research with healthcare workers. You've mentioned the NHS already. What is it about that sector that you're so interested passionate about

at a very personal level. I think it's because I consider going to med school, and then didn't go to med school. So I think this is my way of trying to reinsert myself back into the environment. But more But more seriously, I think we, a lot of our healthcare workers, do very important work, and they're another one where if you talk about performance outcomes, their performance outcomes has a massive impact on wider society as well. Because if you are talking about cancer treatment outcomes or operation outcomes or mortality rates, that has an impact on on all of us. And therefore, when we then talk about performance I think that's to me, that's that's important. I find it a lot more interesting sometimes than if I work with some more corporate organizations who are really more interested in stocks, you know, share prices and bottom lines and stuff like that. I feel, I think there's almost a value in trying to improve both the productivity but also the well being of our healthcare workers. And then the second thing is also, because healthcare workers, they do a lot of caring, they care for all of us. So the question is, who's caring for our carers? And because of that, I again, feel like there's almost a responsibility to go back and and give them some additional support in terms of what what they are, what they are doing.

Yeah, and, and probably never been a period, certainly for a little while that it's been more relevant to the wider population as well. So we're recording this in the summer of 2020 and I guess that asks leads the question, What's worker well being like in the UK healthcare sector, generally, and more specifically, in 2020

Well, I think, well, up to this point, if we talk about everything that happened before the Coronavirus, it wasn't looking good, to be honest, depending on how you look at the data, or anything, so between 30 to 45% of doctors and nurses are probably at any point struggling with elements of their mental health, and that is quite. Concerning statistic, and everything that we see in that pattern, both in terms of prevalence rates and levels of poor mental health, has been increasing or has had been increasing up to this point, and all the factors that contribute to that, things like high patient work, patient loads, lack of resources, long working hours, the pressures that they face out there, that healthcare workers face. They've progressively been increasing over the last decade. And I think that's the most worrying thing, is not only are they high, but they were on course to be even higher, and that was all pre pandemic, and with everything going on right now, I think it's a very interesting position to be in, because early indications suggest that, yeah, we the reality is we don't actually have a lot of good quality data at this point to give us an accurate picture of what actually is going on, because we're only a few months into the pandemic. But all the things that we learned from previous pandemics in other parts of the world suggest that actually things will probably get a lot worse, both directly because of the pandemic. So you let things like healthcare workers being experiencing more psychological trauma, more psychological strain, because everything that's been going on in the last few months, so that's the manifestation of that. Then there's also concerns, because the NHS, many parts of the NHS, has essentially been put on pause for the last three or four months. So whenever that resumes, some of that has already resumed. The corresponding workload has gone through the roof, or is expected to go through the roof, and that would put additional pressures on healthcare workers as well. And I think more importantly, there's a lot of uncertainty. There is uncertainty about, is there going to be a second wave, a third wave? How long will this last? What's going to happen in terms of resources and funding that the NHS might get? How is the public going to respond? And all of that is just going to compound the pressures that a lot of healthcare workers are facing.

Yeah. That certainly sounds a little bit scary, but also makes a lot of sense given the sort of even public indicators we've seen prior COVID, prior to COVID, about some of the mental well being of our healthcare workers that have even sort of made it as far as the news in your in some of your research, you kind of group factors into individual and organizational or you talk about different levels, how are they different? What does, how do they show up as different within the workplace? Well,

I think there's a, there's a very useful model in trying to think about how we might understand the factors that contribute to well being, but actually also how we might intervene when it comes to well being. And this model is basically called the igloo model. And basically we ask people to build igloos. And what we're saying is there are different levels. You've got the individual, you've got the group, and then you've got the leader, and then you've got the organization. So you've got all different factors and antecedents at these different levels. At the individual level will be things like someone's biology, but also their psychological states. As a psychologist, often, we might work with things like someone's level of resilience or optimism or self efficacy, things like that, all that's quite important. And then at the organization level, or the group level, we talk about, well, that wider workplace environment. I think in one of your previous podcasts, you talk and you you've introduced and defined psychosocial working conditions, which basically is how workplaces are designed, organized and managed, and they refer to what we call job demands, which are all the negative and bad things in the workplace. Things are being bullied, having a high workload, working long work, having long working hours, being an emotionally demanding job, and then you've got job resources, which are to put it simply, all the good things in the workplace. Things are being supported by your colleagues, by your managers, having control, having autonomy over your workplaces. So all of that are some of the different factors that contribute to someone's well being, but crucially, what we find is, although all of that is important, we find much stronger effects for things at the group, the leader and the organization level. So that demands and those resources. So basically saying that if we want to intervene and support someone's health and well being. We should really be focusing more on those group level, those organizational level factors, because if you only focus on the individual, you're actually ignoring what is probably a lot stronger and more important in affecting someone's well being.

So I've got a question for you. I mean, quite often when we hear stories and narratives about, you know, working conditions in organizations in and the parts of the world that I hear those stories about, what people tend to say is, if we had more resources, if we had more money, if we had more staff, that would lead to a fundamental shift in, I guess, for well being and. And efficiency of those organizations. What's your view on it? Some of the things we've spoken about there don't necessarily feel like they're directly related to financial input. What's your view on the role of money in this?

Well, money is always important. If you've got infinite or you've got loads of it, then that will just allow you to create more resources or generate more resources, which are more supportive, and I think that will always have to be part of the conversation. But having said that, I think lack of money or lack of resources doesn't mean things cannot change. And often when we talk about managing, basically what we're saying is, how can we try and reduce demands, and how can we try and increase resources? And often that comes back to how well a team or department or an organization is run, even within the NHS, I've done sessions and work with teams where there hasn't been more funding, but people have come together and said, How can we be more efficient in what we do? Because in us being more efficient then we are actually reducing the demands that we face, and what that looks like will vary considerably from one department or one context to another. It could be something as simple as how we change the flow of how paperwork is being done in this department. We change the flow in terms of how often we communicate, or how we communicate with each other. I've got a one of my favorite examples in the NHS is of of an emergency room emergency department and one of the hospitals on the on the south coast of England, who basically needed were struggling with staff turnover. Their consultants and senior doctors were turning over because the working environment was just too difficult. They wanted more money to hire more staff, but the hospital wasn't wasn't able to give it to them, so they said, Well, what can we do? And the problem was actually with shift patterns, and what they decided to do was to go and change it to essentially an annualized our system. So rather than saying, I work 10 hours a week, or something like that. I say, over the course of a year, I work so many hours, and then you could pick and choose when in the year you would go and work. And what that actually created is it allowed a lot of consultants who perhaps had working lives or home lives, which weren't conducive to the existing structure, to come in and say, right, I'm only going to work weekends because I've got, you know, I separated from my spouse, and I on the weekend my kids go to my husband, and therefore I can work weekends. So only going to work weekends where else? And then, under the previous model, that wasn't possible, they had, you know, a consultant who was with the British Antarctic Service, and she would disappear for three or four months at a time, because she will be on the south south in the summer months, because she will be in the South Pole, but in the summer months, she could come back, take her years workload and put it in the summer months and work throughout that period. And that meant that her colleagues, who in the seven months wanted to go on summer vacation with their families, were able to take their time off. And I think that was a powerful way of a group of doctors saying, we are going to change the way we work without asking for more resources. And actually, their senior board of directors were quite resistant to the idea. And they just said, You know what, we're just going to do it because we think it's we think it's going to work. And the implication of that was they were able to retain staff. They were able to attract staff from other hospitals who were who wanted to work in that environment. And there's a knock on effect where they then reduced the number of locum of temporary doctors that they were hiring, and actually generated savings. Yeah,

that's a great story. It's pretty cool when in the last place I worked, which was a large bank, we looked to do a similar thing with particularly call center staff and sort of semi seasonal staff, and that was starting as I left. But I don't know, I don't know where the outcomes were, but based on what you say, I can absolutely see how powerful that is. Another large sort of narrative that I hear about work, where we are at the minute is there's been sort of a continual decline in worker productivity, is the type of headline that I'll read from time to time. Do you see any sort of relationship between that narrative and that story and the healthiness of workplaces that we see? Is there anything related in that as larger trends at all, or any reflections on this. Are you

saying that productivity is going down and that might correspond with well being going down potentially? Yeah, I'm just kind of exploring first a link between them, or the other way. Yeah.

I mean, like I said earlier, there is some evidence of relationship between well being and productivity, but I wonder, I'm just sort of thinking out loud over here, that when we talk about productivity going down, I just think the world is changing, and how we understand what productivity is is also changing. And I wonder also whether we've almost peaked to a certain extent in terms of what we can expect. Out of people or organizations or societies, and we've had, you know, tremendous amount of growth in terms of productivity outputs. And maybe it's not always sustainable to carry a carry on in the same trajectory. And I also think that, again, the world of work is changing because of this emphasis on productivity. A lot of organs, not a lot, but many organizations are changing working environments and conditions for individuals and saying, Well, how can we place the onus and the risk on individuals, as opposed to on the organization? If you look at zero hour contracts, if you talk about the digitalized economy and precarious work, all that risk is being placed on individuals, and I don't think we can expect the same returns around that. Yeah,

interesting. It's a fascinating, fascinating space to to be in at the minute, if we, if we kind of narrow the focus from some of the larger work you've done in the NHS and some of those more societal things, and then, if we take it down to, you know, maybe smaller organizations, smaller businesses, can you think of anything that might be common challenges or common things that people are getting wrong there that might be undermining the healthiness of those workplaces? I think,

when it comes to small businesses, of course, most organizations are small businesses. It comes back to this lack of understanding. Many don't understand why well being is important, and they also don't understand how to support their company, their organization, or their colleagues in terms of well being. And I think there's often this thing of saying that, Well, we haven't got the resources to buy in consultants or services or employee assistance programs or occupational health and so forth. But I think the most important message that I often give to smaller organizations is that actually doesn't have to be very complicated, and most of well being actually is common sense. We don't need large scale management consultants coming in saying, This is how you have an effective organizations. Even when I do work with big banks or the NHS and stuff like that, you go in and often say, I'm not here to tell you how to do your job or what your problems are. I'm just here to facilitate a conversation, and you can do that in small teams as well, if you're running a shop for a small legal practice or accountancy or whatever that is, is have a conversation with the people in your team and in your company and say, Well, what are what are our problems? What are we struggling with? And what can we change? And what can we do differently to to create a more conducive, a healthier a better working environment, and sometimes with small organizations, you may have more flexibility as well. And then correspondingly, I think in the last five years, there's been a lot more attention and focus by a number of bigger organizations in this space. So the Health and Safety Executive, for example, the Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the CIPD, who are developing tools, many for free, toolkits which can be used by by individuals or small organizations, sometimes specifically for small organizations, which, which, which facilitate these conversations as well. Do

you feel that? Or what's your experience of the Self Awareness of individuals in relation to their own well being in organizations. Do you feel that that people have the language, or, you know, the colors to paint their current state of well being in organizations and to understand cause and effect? Or do you think that they feel sort of buffeted by what's around them without understanding it? That's even a fair question,

I think, I think we are getting a lot better as a society in general, but I think most people probably will still struggle. There is struggling in terms of, well, how we actually really feel, in terms of being honest about it, struggling in terms of understanding what the factors are that contribute to our better well being of poorer well being. But I think there's also been a big movement around well in well being more generally, and that could be things on mindfulness, around yoga, about bettering ourself, and one of the sort of narratives and shifts and maybe some of the positive things coming out of this pandemic. I think there has been a lot more emphasis on individuals well being. Again, resources have often been made available, many times for free, for people to engage with and that has given a language and a platform for people to discuss and talk about it. But I do think that, generally speaking, it still is lacking for many, and I think more importantly, a lot of people are able and willing to talk about when things are going well, but they're not talking about when things are not going well. We are still putting on a facade to say where we're you know, I'm fine, I'm doing yoga, I'm going for a walk, I'm doing mindfulness, but actually not saying that. I'm actually struggling, and this is difficult, and I think we. To do a lot more around that part.

Yeah, and I think so probably James and I would agree that that's been our experience of working with various clients over the last few months that they are getting. There's been a more comfortable approach from senior leaders about talking about this stuff, because we've all been under the same restrictions, I guess, if you will. And there's some commonality even where people have got different personal experiences. And one of the things that I worry about, because I'm the pessimist on this podcast, is that we are about to go through what I suspect will be a decline in employment figures and possibly quite significant recession, and that there may be a shift in balance of power between the employee and what an organization as kind of jobs become more sort of difficult to come by. Do you? Do you think? Do you think it's possible that that might mean that people get less confident about talking about their well being issues? Because it seems to go back a little bit and people start seeing it as something that, oh, I don't want that hassle of someone who's got challenges which we know is wrong and not a great way of approaching it, but, but sometimes we see in periods lower employment. Does that? Does that worry you? Or do you think we've made proper progress? No,

to be honest, it does worry me. Around there. We know stigma is still very prevalent in in in the UK, many parts around the world, really, and in all places of work and anything, if you're in a precarious role at work, anything which you think might jeopardize your chances, you will probably try not to disclose. So I think the onus is on everyone else to try and facilitate a conversation and a narrative to say A, it's okay to disclose B, it's not going to be held against you. But also going back, I think when we started this podcast, a lot of the work I do now has increasingly been at the policy level, at a national level, because we need to lobby and work with governments and sector leaders to make sure that we are looking after the people who can't, who haven't got a voice, essentially, because if we're not doing that, then people are going to feel that they can be taken advantage of or that others feel that they can take advantage of others as well. I mean, I'm hopeful because, yeah, I'm not going to end on a negative note. I'm hopeful because there are a lot of people in this space who are trying to do a lot of good things, and I think that the more that we can focus on that, then there is hope that we can try and create that. But I think there needs to be awareness on this. Because even before the pandemic, like I said, precarious work has increased. Many sectors, individuals are feeling very insecure in their roles, and that's before the pandemic already. So I think there needs to be a wider discussion around how workplaces are designed, organized and managed, and who holds the risk. You know, is the risk being placed on organizations and the larger system, or is it placed on the individuals? And increasingly, we're seeing it being placed on the individuals, and that's that, that's the narrative we need to change, and that's the decisions that we need to change.

I am, I would thoroughly agree with that is pretty much all I can say to that response. Last question from me, and you might have given us a teaser there, if you could change one thing about the way that we are currently working in our modern working practices that you think would help improve, improve well being generally, what would you change?

I think the it's, it's having a simple conversation, or an opportunity for a simple conversation between an individual and someone in the line management team to just say, you know, how are you doing? What can we change? How can we better support you? And to generally mean that, because that simple conversation can go a very long way if we actually follow up on that. Yeah, great, great. So, yeah,

I was gonna say that feels like a fantastic way to have a bit of a closing message, which is that everyone who's in a leadership or management position can do that. They can just go and ask somebody genuinely, how are you doing? What can we do better and listen and to go in with the right intentions? And it feels like that can make some difference.

Yeah, definitely, definitely a third thought, maybe I'll just sign pulse very quickly. You know, there's, there's a team, I think, affinity health, sorry, affinity work health and well being. Hub is just Google that you come up with a whole list of resources that individuals have collated, which are evidence based practices on how to support well being in the workplace, some of it for large organizations, some for individuals, many of it for small teams and small organizations. So anyone who wants to try and do something in this space wants additional support, that's a really good place to start

cool. That's perfect. We'll share that when we share the podcast. Unfortunately, we are getting out of time, as we usually do, just as we wrap up, though, is there anything that people can do to learn a little bit more about you and what you do in your research? Or. Anything else you'd like to sign post people

towards? Sure. I mean, probably the best place to follow me in terms of what I'm doing, I run my own Twitter account, so Kevin T, O, R h, so it's Kevin T, E, O, H, R H, look me out on Twitter and then get in touch there, or, if not, I'm on LinkedIn as well. Perfect.

Well, it's been a pleasure having you and a great conversation. So really interesting. So thank you very much for me. Thank you, James. Thank you, Jane.

Okay, so that was our conversation with Kevin, and you're back in the room with us. I thought we covered some great stuff there. I loved the sort of sweep what was covered from the individual and their role in well being through to the impact of well being on organizations and others and communities and society. I mean, I love all that stuff, and I love that systemic approach to it and and a reflection of some of the different things that we can do. Did you have any key takeaways or reflections that you thought were worth shouting out? Jane, yeah, I

think, I think there's a couple of things that really struck me. One is, I really enjoy it when anyone says money isn't the only solution. And I think his example about shift patterns is really powerful, particularly for people where money is not the significant differentiator or can't be for a role. So I think, for example, doctors are employed in multiple places around the country, in multiple organizations, they have a a paid you know, there is a scale of pay, and it will change from place to place, but it's, it's within a boundary, and quite often they're relatively well paid jobs, so relative to the population. So therefore differentiating, differentiating a workplace based on the flexibility with which you can work, or your choice of how you approach work, so their shift patterns, I think is a really good lesson for organizations. And I think coming out of where we are at the moment, where people are working remotely, not by choice, I think organizations will begin to recognize that they can attract people and keep people longer, where they offer them a different way of setting their hours, days, weeks, shift patterns, whatever it is. So that is absolutely one. And I love that idea. And I think the second thing that I took away, which is not so much of a takeaway as a confirmation bias James, because it's my project, is the fact that there needs to be a conversation about whose role and what the organization's role is in worker and population well being, because if the workplace is such a significant factor in the general public's well being, then organizations, by by definition, almost need to recognize they have a responsibility, or at least a role, if not a responsibility.

Yeah, and, you know, I couldn't agree with that more, right? I mean, I in my own mind, at least in speaking to some people, I liken worker, well being or lack, there have to an externality of an organization. I think that's all there is, and we should manage those, because I think externalities undermine a lot of the challenges that we have. One other thing that I quite liked on the back of our conversation was a reflection on our own ability to use language and to be open about how we're feeling and the risks around it, and the sort of disclosure around our own well being, and what that's like at the minute. And I think there's some powerful stuff in there about our own I guess, slight obligation to be transparent and to role model good behaviors in that space, and the fact that for more people who do that, the better able we are to to influence what is acceptable and expected from a well being perspective. So I think there's some stuff to consider there as

well. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a shifting the norms of what is normal and what is common behavior around disclosure when you're feeling healthy and well yourself, or maybe you have experience of it, I think is really crucial, because in some senses, whilst no one should have an obligation to disclose their experiences, absolutely when you do, you shift people's perspective about you and about what is normal. And I've got, like, air quotes, right? Because it's not normally, yeah, but I think that's really important. Cool.

All right. Well, let's leave it there. It was a pleasure as ever. So I guess until next time, it's just worth calling out. You can check out our website, www dot, World of work.io. You can get in touch with us on Twitter. We've got various different accounts. We've got upper Wow, Podcast. I'm at JG carrier. We've got Janie underscore s and just stay in touch. Get in touch. Let us know what's on your mind, and we will catch up with you soon.

Yeah, and a final from me. If you would like to support what we do in democratizing learning for the general population, you can go to www dot, World of work.io. Forward, slash. Support.