27. Understanding the ROI of Employee Wellbeing - with Gethin Nadin

27. Understanding the ROI of Employee Wellbeing - with Gethin Nadin

Hannah Munro: 0:48 

Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of CFO 4.0. Firstly, I want to say thank you to everybody for all of your recent feedback and suggestions. It's been great to have some ideas for the podcast. So, please keep them coming and I've got a great lineup over the next couple of weeks as well. Talking of great lineups, I also have today, I have Gethin Nadin, who is an award-winning psychologist, host of the Word of the Good podcast and author of The World of Good. So, welcome Gethin, fantastic to have you on the show. Yeah, great to have you today. 

Gethin Nadin: 1:20 

Thank you very much for having me. I'm really excited to have a chat with you today. 

Hannah Munro: 1:25 

So, for those that don't, obviously haven't heard of the word of good podcast and haven't perhaps yet read your book, tell us a little bit about what it is that you do and how you ended up here. 

Gethin Nadin: 1:38 

So, I guess my journey into kind of employee wellbeing began at a large financial services firm in my early 20s when I had responsibility over kind of 25 people. And I had no people training, had no experience of kind of mental health or dealing with people who were struggling with mental health or leadership or coaching. And I think that's the position increasingly people are still in, that they're kind of being given responsibility over people without really any experience or knowledge of how best to do that. And so, kind of that was my first experience. experience into kind of dealing with actually You know, to create a well-performing team, you really need to look after people. They need to be happy, content, and well. And, you know, for 20 years or so, now, I've been working in and around kind of employee benefits, employee engagement, employee experience, and the last few years focused almost entirely on employee well-being. And the journey to kind of the book and the podcast started because as I became more interested in kind of employee well-being and the employee experience as kind of concepts, I read a lot more. I started speaking at conferences and did lots of reading and writing. And it started to dawn on me that we were really focusing on big progressive companies like Netflix and Amazon and Apple and all the things that they were doing with their millions and millions of dollars of budget and really experimental nature. But when you look at what some of the most progressive things we do to support employees at work are, they're not that far from the kind of tribe and fire of what humans have always needed. And so, we can kind of peel the... peel back the pages of the history books and see people like Joseph Owen and Robert Owen who kind of ran some mills in North Lanarkshire in the UK. And they started to realise that, hey, we're pushing these people really hard. You know, 12 hours is a long working day, and they're worried about their kids. So, should we put a nursery on site so, that they don't have to worry about childcare? And should we give them education opportunities? And should we open an employee shop so, that people don't have to waste their money giving profit to other people when we can just sell things at cost? will make people happy and healthy and protect things like their financial well-being. And that was in the mid to late 1800s. People started doing that kind of thing. And there were quotes from people, those philanthropists at that time, that I could show you now and you'd think Steve Jobs had said it a few years ago. And so, I think when we really peel back kind of what it is that makes us happy and content and well, it's not the big gesture stuff that your Google does. It's the things that most SMEs can do around encouraging people to live their lives a certain way and support their lives outside of work. And so, the book really focused on that. And I was very lucky that that went straight on to the HR bestseller list on Amazon and has hopefully inspired some people to make some changes in their organizations around the world. 

Hannah Munro: 4:19 

But isn't it incredible that even, you know, so, that was in the 1800s. So, hundreds of years later, we're still trying to figure out how to do employee well-being and how to do it well. So, just let's take a step back and talk about what do we mean by employee well-being? What does that mean for organisations today? 

Gethin Nadin: 4:39 

I mean, it's a great question. I think if you asked... 100 people, 100 organizations, you'd probably get 100 different answers. I think well-being has become a really marketable term. Generally, as a society, we've started to become more conscious of our well-being. So, we've had celebrities set up well-being businesses, you know, Google and Twitter searches or updates using the word well-being have started to kind of really kind of take off over the last couple of years. So, people are really kind of focusing on wellbeing just as a concept. And I think what's fascinating when you think about how the workplace has embraced that, they've really started to realise that we have a responsibility over people, but also, we might be causing some of these issues. And throughout 2020, burnout was a really big issue, kind of record levels of burnout. And so, I think we need to move away from the idea that it's about buying lots of products and putting those in front of employees and more about how we design organizations. So, to me, well-being is about creating the right environment for people to thrive, if I was to kind of put that in a sentence. 

Hannah Munro: 5:43 

So, it's not necessarily about the big fancy office slide or the beanbags. It's more about how we work with our teams and how we, I guess, how we respond to them. Is that what you mean? 

Gethin Nadin: 5:55 

Yeah, exactly. So, if you look at some of the bigger studies on things like employee happiness, you can start to look at the things that people value most. They don't want to worry about money. They want to spend time with the people they love. They value the relationships and social time. We like purpose and belonging. We want to have a voice. We want to feel recognized for the effort we put in. We want to be recognized by our family and friends and our workplace. And so, those kind of really intrinsic motivators are just about being human. It doesn't matter what job you do. Yeah, I think we've been carrying with the idea of we need to offer mindfulness, and we need to do all these kind of tools when actually the reality is we just need to give people what they've needed for hundreds of years. 

Hannah Munro: 6:34 

So, you make it sound incredibly simple that we need to look after people, we need to give them enough money so, they don't have to worry, we need to make sure that they have time with their friends and family. But why do you think it's so, difficult for organisations to do this? 

Gethin Nadin: 6:53 

I think part of it is... You're right asking the question. I'm not sure how many people really define well-being in the way that I think it probably should be defined. And I think what I've seen in my experience has kind of been as well-being has become kind of quite trendy Boards and CEOs have made really kind of large claims about wanting to support their people. And then actually what happens is they almost look through the business and say, OK, right, where does this go? Because most businesses don't have well-being teams. I think that will happen. It's already starting to. But at the moment, you don't have people focused on well-being. And so, they look around the organization and kind of think, well, it's HR, so, it's people. So, let's put it over there. Or reward and benefits are already sorting out private medical, health screening, gym membership, cycles of work schemes. Let's put it with them because that all feels like health stuff. And so, I think we're just kind of reacting to the situation and not really being massively strategic at the moment. And I think the events of the last year will force people's hand to be more strategic and to have longer term plans in place. And there's certainly lots of my work now is being spent with customers really looking at that whole experience, looking at all those micro experiences we have from, applying for a job requesting leave going through pay review all these different micro experiences you have at work and thinking are we designing those in such a way that they're either helping or hindering well-being and when people start to look at the organization and how it's structured in that way we start to realize oh shit yeah actually maybe we're doing some things that are causing anxiety or kind of causing people to be upset um and I think that's the kind of really kind of The kind of panacea I'd love everyone to get to is this idea of kind of we build businesses and we build organizations with well-being in mind. And that's certainly coming, but I don't think we're at that point yet. And so, I think there's a lot of confusion in the market about kind of what well-being is and what problems am I actually trying to solve. And also, I guess, we focus very much on being reactive. So, lots of the mental health support is reactive. Do you support me if I'm in a mental health crisis? If I develop depression, anxiety, if I'm struggling, what support is available for me without as much concentration paid to how do we stop people from getting to that point in the first place? And clearly, lots of things will happen in people's lives that employers have no control over. You know, people, death of a spouse, divorce, money worries, all those things will happen to us, and we will bring that to work. And it's not necessarily for the employer to solve those problems. But I think also we can't just react. We need to be proactive around, are we building organizations that are actually, you know, things like you've seen people like France do instigate some laws around kind of checking emails outside of work times. You know, that's proactive steps to make sure that employees are taking care of themselves as well and to make sure that you're not part of any problems that might develop. 

Hannah Munro: 9:41 

And I guess if we look at it through a strategic lens for a second. So, it's obviously got to be a strategic priority. And I think I completely agree with you. COVID's really brought it to the fore. But what is the benefits of having a good employee well-being program? Is there a financial benefit? Is there anything you can share with us about sort of the proof points that companies have seen? 

Gethin Nadin: 10:05 

So, this is why I'm really excited to be talking to you today, because I don't get the opportunity to speak to finance leaders about this issue. You know, maybe one or two conferences I've spoken to people responsible for kind of the purse strings in an organization. And I think what's been fascinating, and this has absolutely been exacerbated by the pandemic, is this kind of growing kind of corporate transparency and kind of the stakeholder influence kind of changed. So, the stakeholders in the business have started to kind of flex up and down and stakeholders from 10 years ago are not necessarily the same stakeholders today. And so, you know, in 2021, early research that came out of the US showed that 94% of investors say they want to know about how a company treats its employees before they will invest. So, you've now got investors kind of looking at employee well-being and looking at the treatment of employees and that's quite significant. 94% of 600 investors in the US is a big chunk of the people deciding whether they kind of give you the investment you need to grow. And I think one of the things we also saw in 2020, which again was a growing trend but is exacerbated by the pandemic, is the role that the consumer plays in driving some of these workplace decisions. So, we now know that one fourth of consumers say that a company's treatment of its employees has now become one of the most important buying criteria when you're deciding to work for or buy from an organisation. 82% of consumers said last year that they must be able to trust a brand to do what's right by their people. And a third of consumers now say that how a company treats its employees is the most important factor in deciding whether to become a loyal customer to that brand or not. So, all of a sudden you start to see employee well-being is not this HR and reward or well-being team. It's actually merges into kind of employee experience and customer loyalty, sorry, consumer experience and customer loyalty. And there is loads of evidence for any finance team to suggest that actually the value of investing in people is pretty significant. So, the stock values of companies with high employee health and well-being scores are 235% higher than the rest of the S&P 500. So, huge shareholder returns. So, we're going to see this as well as investors. Shareholders are going to start thinking, oh, wait, actually, if you need to do more around well-being because we get more money, the more you do. The more comfortable people are, the happier they are, the more content they are. the more that they're innovative, the more that they're creative. And I think that's about creating this environment where we're not just measuring employee well-being by what our kind of voluntary turnover is or what our absence rates are. We're starting to see that employee well-being is an investment in the individual. And when we do that, we get more out of that person and the business succeeds because of it. 

Hannah Munro: 12:49 

And that's a really good point to make is that it's not just about how much you spend. You know, like any investment, it's more about the impact you make with what you're doing with your wellbeing. So, how does, you know, so, finance, you know, our finance listeners are thinking, well, that's great, but how do I measure employee wellbeing well? You know, how do I get a gauge of what we're actually doing well, what we're not and where we need to focus? 

Gethin Nadin: 13:15 

It's a great question. It's the one I get asked the most. I've just been asked to write an article about it, and I find it so, difficult because my personal belief is it matches that of Margaret Heffernan, who's done a really good TED talk on kind of beyond measure and how you measure stuff in an organisation. And she says that the most exciting things that happen in a modern organisation, we can't measure. And I don't know if you talked before about our obsession with wanting to measure stuff. And I get it from a finance point of view, because you want to see that return on investment and that argument's not going to go away. At Benefx, we did some research with King's College London a few years ago, and overwhelmingly, HR told us that they wanted to invest in wellbeing because it was the right thing to do. which is great, but I know that they're going to have some difficult conversations inside when they say, I need a million pounds to do this project. And somebody said, well, we're not just going to give you a million pounds because it's the right thing to do. Many companies aren't at that point yet. And so, I think it's a mixture of kind of what I would call kind of subjective and objective measures. So, the objective measures are the traditional measures of, you know, what's our turnover rate like? You know, employees are an appreciating asset. We get more out of them the longer they're with us. And we need to get more people to pass that two-year point. yet around 50% of turnover happens in the first 12 months. And people are really expensive to kind of train and replace. So, that's always been a really, really important measure of are you taking care of your people? Because you look at CIPD and PwC type figures, the average cost of replacing somebody could be 50% to 100% of their first-year salary. So, six months in, you could be spending on average kind of 20 grand to 30,000 pounds just to replace somebody. And that's an unnecessary expense. And so, those traditional measures, I think, are still important. That voluntary turnover is really, really important. Obviously, absence rates and claims data when you've got income protection policies and you can see how many people are paying for mental health support and how much is that costing you in claims for employers. So, there's those kind of traditional objective measures. Well, I'm much more interested in the subjective measures, which is asking people how they are and asking people, you know, does your employer care about you? Do you feel like if you went through a divorce or your spouse or partner died, would we be there for you? Do you feel like we'd be able to support you? If you went through a mental health crisis or you have gone through that crisis, have we been there for you and have you felt supported? Because I think that sentiment is really, really important. And I think, you know, you think about things like financial well-being as an example. It doesn't matter how much money people have got. If they're worried about their situation and they need your support, giving that support and feeling supported is far more important than the money they've got. So, I think with well-being, you can use all these kind of objective measures like our employees drinking eight glasses of water a day, getting eight hours sleep, drinking five bits of fruit and vegetables, all these heuristics we've been used to in our lives to kind of health and well-being. But at the end of the day, if you say to your employees, do you trust us? Do you feel like we actually take your well-being seriously? Do you feel like we'd be there for you if you really needed it? I think the answers to those questions tell us everything we need to know about well-being before you even look at some of that return on investment stuff. 

Hannah Munro: 16:24 

Yeah, and I think the ROI piece is really interesting because, like you said, the ROI has already been proven. If employees are happy and they feel good exactly what you said, they can trust their employee, then they work harder, they're more productive. And I think the hardest bit is about getting an honest feeling for how employees are feeling, especially in a smaller organisation. I think that's actually sometimes more challenging because people might be a bit more afraid to speak up rather than a big... So, have you got any tips for how people can get that gauge whilst still getting an honest version of the truth rather than what they think they want to hear? 

Gethin Nadin: 17:05 

Yeah, it's a really good point. And I think wellbeing at work is so, kind of richly underpinned by trust. that if you don't have a trust in an organisation, if your employees can't trust you, they can't tell you the truth and they won't tell you the truth. And that's really, really important. We want people to bring their truth to work. We want them to bring their whole selves. We know from past data that many, many people have phoned in sick in the history of their careers because they've been struggling with their mental health, but they phone in sick with a flu because that's an easier conversation to have or the stigma attached to mental health means they don't want to tell you the true reason. And if we're not getting that true data, if we're not getting that real data and the kind of truth from people, then we can't change it. We can't act on it. We need to get the truth from people. And a lot of that comes with kind of how we communicate, how we speak to employees to create those environments where people can be honest with us. Because if they're honest with us, we can do something about that. And so, there's an awful lot about just kind of generally being more transparent. Last year was a great example of how we really probably should be treating employees. Because in this country, in the UK, during the first lockdown, two thirds of companies said that their engagement scores went up. And then by kind of September, October time, they went down again. And people were about 25% less likely to say they worked for an employer that supported or cared for them. And I think what happened during the first lockdown is we kind of had this this camaraderie that we were all facing a kind of a common enemy and we all pulled together. And so, organizations got their CEOs in front of people on Zoom calls regularly, every week in most cases, they said to everyone, you know, we care about you. We've got the support. You're not on your own. We're with you. And we know you've got childcare responsibilities and you're home educating your kids. And so, we're going to be more flexible with you. And we're going to be just given you more breathing space and kind of give you a bit more of our kind of time and attention. And so, we, during that short period of time, employers started treating people the way they really always should have been. I think the risk is that we forget that when this pandemic is over, which is, I think, quite a big risk. But we started being transparent with people last year and we trusted them. And that created some really nice conversations and environments. And I think people just need to keep that up and make that a permanent part of their organisation. 

Hannah Munro: 19:51 

So, we've talked a lot about getting a good gauge of where you think your employee well-being is at. What sort of programs have you seen be particularly successful in terms of improving that employee well-being? You know, both for small organizations, but also larger ones as well. What works? 

Gethin Nadin: 20:10 

I mean, some of the best things I've seen is where organizations and smaller organizations can do this far, far easier than large organizations. So, it's one of the big advantages they've got when it comes to employee well-being for small companies is the fact that they can ask people. You can ask 50, 100 people quite easily, what do you need? What aren't you getting from work? What more support could we be giving? And I think lots of people really appreciate just being asked that question sometimes, even if you don't have an answer. That's what gives you this idea of, Will they be there for me? Yeah, well, I've seen them be there for other people, so, I think they would be there for me. And so, you don't actually have to do stuff sometimes. You just need to give people the impression that you care for them. And I think if you think about any relationship we've got in life with our family and friends, we judge those relationships by the people who are there for us when we really need it. There's this old adage around you'll know who your friends are when you go through a difficult time. I think it's the same with employment. You'll know whether your employer is a good employer because when you go through a difficult time, they'll be there for you. Unfortunately, about 50% of people last year said they didn't feel like their employer was there for them whilst they faced the pandemic. I think some of the most successful things I've seen is where we've just been able to ask people. One small marketing firm spoke to me about a year and a half ago about wanting to improve things for their staff. And they do some really good stuff around buying everyone coffees on a cold day from Starbucks and getting them ice creams on a warm day. And they do loads of social events and have pizzas sent to the office on Friday. And they do all this kind of great culture stuff. But when I told them to ask their employees what they wanted, the two top things they wanted was we wanted sick pay because they didn't get sick pay. They just got kind of government standard. And they basically said, we can't afford to not get paid. So, people are coming into work ill. This is before the pandemic with kind of flu and colds. And that was just annoying everyone else that we sniffled around the small office. And the other one was that they gave the basic rate of holiday allowance for the UK. And so, all of these people's partners had about, on average, about five days holiday extra a year than those people were getting. And they were basically saying, it's just really kind of screwing up our ability to go on holiday together because we can't take some of the same time off. And my partner's at home for a week longer than I am. And actually, is that fair? You know, I've got friends who are getting 35 days holiday and you're just giving me 21. And so, all of a sudden, all the cool culture stuff that they were doing paled into insignificance because actually employees are like, actually, this is two basic things we'd really like you to change. And thankfully, they went on and changed that and increased the allowance and started paying sick pay. But it goes to show that some of the shiny things can be quite easy to implement and to buy, and they look quite cool. But intrinsically, some of the things people want are pretty basic stuff. We might be surprised that if we ask them, what more could we be doing for you? 

Hannah Munro: 22:59 

I guess it's if we think about Maslow's theory. of needs. It's coming back to that, isn't it? What is the basic level that you need to get right? Are you paying the right amount? Do they have enough holidays? Can they call in sick? Not worry about it. And then you can get onto all the cool stuff like the free swag and the awesome gear and the pizza on a Friday, which I have to say, I think is a good one. 

Gethin Nadin: 23:26 

Yeah, well, I think that stuff is really important, right? But it's the icing on the cake of exactly, as you said, some kind of corn needs and you know it's interesting if you look at the world happiness index and you look at kind of revenues and kind of income per capita in different countries money doesn't make people happy as soon as it's bought them basic health care basic education roof over their head food in their bellies past a certain point money doesn't really make you that happy in the US and the UK in the US it's about 70 to 80 thousand dollars I think is the figure at the moment once you start earning that your happiness does not increase. And it barely increases even if you become a billionaire. And most of the Forbes 500 in the US don't have happiness ratings that are really any significantly higher than the average American. And so, I think if you take that, it's basically, as soon as we start having those basic needs that you just mentioned, the luxury stuff on top of that is you kind of purpose and belonging, things like that. And then you start getting to some of those more kind of perks and benefits that people really value. And I think exactly as you said, some of those Maslow hierarchy of needs is, do I feel like I belong? So, do I kind of feel like I contribute, and my contribution is recognized? Do I feel like I'm part of this machine that I work for? Do I get recognized regularly? Do I feel appreciated at work? Do I have a voice? Am I allowed to give my opinions? And do I feel like my ideas and opinions are listened to? Again, back to the start of this conversation, all that really core human stuff that hasn't changed for hundreds of years is still really important to us. And you don't need to be spending millions like Google do on slides and bringing borough market into the office and doing all these things. Anyone listening to this now who runs or holds a senior position in a business can give people that voice and give people that attention. It's more kind of time and strategy than it is buying stuff and spending money, I 

Hannah Munro: 25:17 

think. Yeah, well, there was an interesting statistic actually kind of on the online. The lines of what you're saying is actually when they analyze the spending habits of those that were more well-off is when they spent money on things that gave them more time, like cleaners, and allowed them to do more of the things that they love. That had a much bigger impact on them as an individual than buying the fancy handbag or the nice car. 

Gethin Nadin: 25:45 

We see it with our benefit platforms. One of the most popular benefits to the UK in particular is holiday trading, where people have the ability to kind of buy additional holiday. So, they'll pay for it, but they buy additional holiday. Flexible working is one of the best things any organization can do for somebody's mental health because it allows them to kind of integrate their work and home lives better. And I think one of the reasons why homeworking will continue to be the norm way past the pandemic finishes. I think we'll have a hybrid of part sometime in the office, some time at home, which I've been doing for a decade anyway. But I think part of the reason why people want to do that is I've heard stories already of mothers who are suddenly waking up, getting the kids ready for school, putting them in front of the computers or dropping them to school, coming back to their home getting the brownies out of the oven that they put in first thing in the morning, putting loads of vegetables and meat in the slow cooker, and then starting work, knowing that as soon as work finishes, I've got dinner sorted, I've done some baking for the kids, they've all been taken off. And so, you know, we've got great stories, even with our own organization of people that have found an extra two hours in their day because they don't have these really long commutes. And they're using that to kind of go for walks and practice mindfulness and go to the gym or go running in the morning where they never used to do that. That is improving their wellbeing, it's improving their mood, and that is going to benefit the organisation. So, I think time is a really valuable benefit. The more time we can give people, the better they perform. 

Hannah Munro: 27:11 

And I love that statement in terms of giving people time and space as well, isn't it, about giving them the choice. I think there's some interesting stuff in the media at the moment about what's going to happen after COVID and whether people will be working from home. And I don't know what your thoughts are on this, but from my perspective, I think it's all about choice, isn't it, about giving people the option. 

Gethin Nadin: 27:36 

Exactly. And I think the only way you will ever deliver well-being to such people a diverse workforce as we have now. You have multiple generations of people, but you have the idea of the nuclear family is now right out the window. I think it's less than 24% of people identify in the kind of 2.4 children type nuclear family. You know, some of the latest research shows that I think something like 60% of people under the age of 25 now do not identify as just gay or just straight. And so, you know, and this isn't a new trend. It just means we're more accepted of it. They're not more gay or bisexual or pansexual or non-binary people than there ever have been. We just created an environment that these people can kind of live the lives that they wanted to. And so, our diversity has never been as diverse. And so, the only way you can personalize well-being is to give people that choice. and allow them to change how they work and the benefits and the rewards they get from work based on what's important to them at that time. Because tomorrow, I don't have kids, I'm not married, but tomorrow that could all change or next month that could all change and my priorities will change. And so, my work and how I deal with work will have to change. I can no longer have 15-hour days in London and three times a week and things like that because that just would not suit my lifestyle. And I think also it's about... do you want the best person for the job, or do you want the best person for the job in that location who can do these hours? And it's this kind of getting people out of this old mould of actually you might have a really good person that works in Scotland but can only be in your office in London one day a week and you might have to pay a couple hundred quid every time that happens. But is that a better person for you to have than the person that lives two streets down the road who isn't as good? I think that's going to be a fascinating change as well as about how do we create and bespoke and personalize those experiences at work. in order to get the best out of people and to get the best people. 

Hannah Munro: 29:28 

Now, you made an interesting comment there about different people being at different stages of their lives. Does well-being change depend on sort of the individual? So, obviously the age and have you seen any patterns and trends around that as well? So, what do our CFOs, what do our strategic leaders need to be thinking about from that perspective? 

Gethin Nadin: 29:52 

So, I think the overarching message is any assumption you have now goes completely out the window. A couple of years ago, you had an executive, senior executive at Marks & Spencer’s who gave birth to their first child at 52, 53. The average age of the first-time house buyer in London is now about 41 years old. The rest of the country, it's kind of 30-something. So, these old kind of ideas we've got about people entering their 20s and wanting to save their house and start a family, they’re entering their 20s. They're paying off student debt. They're trying to live a life. Then they're looking at starting a family in their 30s. Far less people are having families. The divorce rate in the UK is now 50%. So, 50% of marriages will fail. And that's obviously a stressful and expensive experience to go through. So, I think well-being can change on the drop of a hat, I think literally overnight. I do lots of work about financial well-being. And I remember I had a cleaner, an old cleaner that knew I did stuff around financial well-being. And she kind of spoke to me one day about she was only paying interest only on her mortgage. And she had been for quite a number of years. She had a car on finance, and she was struggling to make the payments. And she was asking for my advice and obviously told I wasn't a financial advisor. I couldn't help. But about three weeks later, her mother died. And that was obviously really sad and difficult for her. But the house was completely mortgage-free. Her mother had more money than her and her brother thought. And the house sold really quickly. So, within a space of about four to five weeks, she went from a really difficult financial position to having about 70 grand. And then all of a sudden have a whole new set of problems, which were what is the best way to spend this? Like, should I be paying off my mortgage? Like, should I still be having a car on finance? And I remember kind of introduced her to a financial advisor to have that conversation. But a really good example of how she went from one end of the spectrum in that area of one area of wellbeing almost overnight. And I think we see the same with people who are struggling with mental health. You know, if you've got a mental health condition, you're more likely to fall into a position of problem debt, which causes you a whole new set of issues. If you're in problem debt, you're more likely to develop a mental health condition. So, all areas of well-being are very, very cyclical. They all influence each other. So, solving one problem doesn't mean you then don't create another problem. It's all kind of levers. And well-being, you will never solve well-being. It's a never-ending kind of task. It will always change. Unfortunately, things will happen to us. There's a very core set of really predictable life events that causes a lot of stress. Moving house, moving job, falling ill, death of a loved one, kind of breakdown of a relationship. And every single employee will go through those pretty regularly throughout their lifetime. And so, we just need to be able to make sure I think that we're there for people. But, yeah, very, very difficult to kind of run well being an organization. And part of the reason why it needs to become part of the DNA of the company is because you're always going to be solving a well-being problem for somebody at some point. 

Hannah Munro: 32:48 

So, from that perspective, then, if we think about businesses, the people that are listening to this and they're thinking, right, that sounds brilliant. But from a strategic and a financial perspective, where should we be investing to support employee wellbeing programmes? Because like you said, it's not the slide that makes the difference. What kind of things should we be investing in as strategic leaders to improve wellbeing? Is it training for management? Is it, like you say, flexible working capacity? Or what is it that people need and we should be thinking about? 

Gethin Nadin: 33:26 

Part of my work as Chair for Wellbeing for Engage Success, which is a UK government-backed organisation, voluntary movement, I created this kind of wellbeing matrix. And it's based around the idea that we think of wellbeing as pillars. Most organisations will have some kind of wellbeing pillars. And at Benefx, through all the research we did, we kind of established those as Emotional wellbeing, which is mental health, but the word mental still has a stigma attached to it, so, we use emotional wellbeing. Emotional wellbeing, physical wellbeing, financial wellbeing, what we call leisure wellbeing, and community wellbeing. And community plays a really big part, even before the pandemic, of the social capital we've got at work, the people we can rely on, that we're not lonely at work, that we have friends, we've got people we can trust. That kind of network is really, really important. And leisure wellbeing, again, we established this before the pandemic, doing the things we love with the people we love is really important. So, going out to bars and cinemas and all the things we haven't been able to do is a really important part of our well-being and living a life that's kind of full and enjoyable. And so, I think by categorizing well-being, you can start to think, okay, in just this area, what do we do that helps people? So, you can almost audit your organization now and kind of say, okay, let's look at financial well-being as an example. What are all the things we do that support financial well-being? And you might have the company pay pension, which is effectively free money that you're giving to somebody for their retirement. You might have some associated kind of support with employee assistance programs who can help you with debt or if you're stressed and worried about money. You might pay above living wage. And so, all of a sudden you can start to think, okay, so, we do a few things here that allow people to kind of, or how we support that area of well-being. So, I think that audit and to kind of create that, okay, what are all the things we do is a really, really good exercise to go through because every time I've done it with an employer right around the world, they do a lot more than they think they did at the start of the conversation. And so, I think that kind of works really, really well to kind of just get people to establish What does wellbeing look like currently in our organisation? What do we want it to look like in the future? And that way you start to pull out things like you mentioned, like flexible working, the impact that has on community wellbeing, because it allows people to spend more time with their family, for example. But flexible working also improves mental health, because again, that work-life integration exists. So, I think that's a really good starting point for anyone to kind of audit what you do around wellbeing at the moment. 

Hannah Munro: 35:53 

Brilliant. And if people want to find out more about yourself, your book, the work that you do, and also perhaps that matrix that you mentioned, what are some resources that they can access and where can they find out more about these things? 

Gethin Nadin: 36:08 

So, a lot of the writing I do appears on the Benefx blog, so, under the resources tab of hellobenefx.com. I also write regularly for HR Zone, which is an online HR magazine. There are lots of my kind of opinions and personal views, so, I can speak a lot more freely on that kind of on that platform. Engage Success Wellbeing, you can find if you go to engagesuccess.org and navigate to the Wellbeing tab, you can find some information there. I welcome people to connect with me on Twitter and LinkedIn, at World of Good Book on Twitter. I share lots of the research that I come across and interesting kind of anecdotes and where possible case studies as well. So, happy to kind of share resources with any of your listeners. 

Hannah Munro: 36:48 

Brilliant. And for those that are listening and are interested, I will pop the links to Gethin's profile, his book as well. So, it's definitely, that's available on Amazon for those that would like to know. And I'll also put some of those links in as well. So, thank you, Gethin. This has been incredibly interesting. Are there any final thoughts that you'd like to share with our audience? Particularly coming from a finance perspective, what's the thing that you'd most like finance directors and CFOs to understand? 

Gethin Nadin: 37:16 

So, there's a really good Deloitte report on well-being and mental health that was issued in early 2020. And it's one of the best examples we've got of the return on investment you get for well-being at work. And there's an estimated return of £5 for every £1 invested in employee well-being. Very rarely will you get that kind of return anywhere else in a business. So, I think it will easily wash its face when you invest in well-being. The cost you invest, you will get that back and that's easily demonstrable. But I think Any leaders in an organization need to understand the important part that well-being plays in organizational success. Well-being is no longer this kind of progressive idea left to the cool brands. It's a core part of being a successful business. And if you don't take it seriously and you don't invest in it, I genuinely think you just won't have a business going into the future because the investors, your consumers, the government, all the lobby groups, we just have to look at what's happened to Uber over the last decade over the last few years without actually being railroaded by consumers and the London mayor and the UK government and all the courts and the Supreme Court to basically say, no, the way you treat people is not good enough. You must do better. And every time they open the newspaper, you'll see a sports director, Wells Fargo, an Uber, an Amazon. Every time you're not taking care of your people, the media are poised, waiting to tell everyone that you're not a good employer. And I think that is an expensive mistake to make. 

Hannah Munro: 38:40 

Absolutely. And that's definite food for thought for everybody listening. You know, don't follow the Ubers and the, you know, the Ubers of the world. And yeah. And, you know, you can see it in the way that we're reporting now and the annual reporting. It's all about those, you know, it's all about more than just the bottom line. It's about the other investments and the factors that have it. So, thank you so, much, Gethin. It's been amazing to have you on the show. And again, for anybody that's listening, I'll pop all of those brilliant links, and I'll see if we can dig out that. that Deloitte report as well and pop that in the show notes as well. So, thank you so, much. It's been fantastic having you on the show. 

Gethin Nadin: 39:18 

Thank you very much for having me. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.