Unlocking Well-Being as a Business Strategy (Not a Side Perk) with Richard Safeer

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Timestamps
00:00 Intro
03:30 Why Wellness Programs Flop (and What Works Instead)
05:56 Well-Being in the Strategic Plan, Not the Perks List
09:42 Leaders as Mood Mirrors: Why Your Energy Spreads
13:24 Building Health into Systems, Not Side Projects
15:10 Johns Hopkins Story: From Program to Culture Shift
17:32 Small Wins: Blood Pressure, Breathing, Better Choices
19:34 Why Work Can’t Ignore Well-Being Anymore
21:27 Core Values Matter (If You Actually Live Them)
24:28 The Six Building Blocks of a Healthy Company
29:00 Making Well-Being Everyday, Not Seasonal

Richard Safeer (00:02.67)
I don’t think that every leader recognizes that they play a role in the well-being of the workforce. And it’s not just about making a benefit decision. It’s about their own well-being. But as a manager, you cannot do an excellent job in every one. So, you probably need to narrow the field. And beyond the particular topic, you need to help make sure managers are aware of how their decisions impact the well-being of the people on their team.

Now just because you were stressed when you were in college in preparation for a test doesn’t mean you have to go through your life stressed because you’re constantly preparing for the next possibility with your patients.

Skot Waldron (00:53.422)
When I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the world. I’m helping leaders and I’m helping teams communicate better. I’m helping them build trust faster and actually enjoy working together. I’ve spoken for companies like The Home Depot. I’ve spoken at national architectural firms. I’ve spoken for pharmaceutical company offsites. I’ve spoken at associations, you name it.

With 99% of attendees of all those events, over 1800 people have reviewed me at this point. 99% of them saying they got some value. That’s pretty awesome. Even the caterers have thanked me. And if they are thanking me and they’ve heard a lot of talks and they’re busy doing their jobs, that’s saying something. If you’re an event planner looking for a speaker who’s really easy to work with, trust me, I want to be the last thing you’re worried about on event day. I’m going to take care of you. And who actually delivers value for your audience that they are going to use on Monday morning when they return to the office, then let’s talk.

Skot Waldron (01:51.734)
Are you ready to leave work a little bit healthier and a little bit happier than when you got there? Raise my hand. Yes, please. Because sometimes we leave work, and we’re drained. We are blasted. We are a little stressed or we’re a little, we’re just something. And what if we didn’t have to leave every day that way? Some days it’s going to be that way. But what if?

And I think that there’s some interesting things that Dr. Richard Safeer is going to share with us on the show. And it’s something that’s a little bit of a twist on this whole employee well-being idea that we are probably all very familiar with that has been talked about for a number of years now.

Richard Safeer became a family doctor in 1996. However, within two years of practicing, realized he needed to be where his patients were – at their workplace. So, he shifted gears and made his way to lead the employee health and well-being strategy at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Dr. Safeer has been quoted in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and New England Journal of Medicine. His work has touched the lives of millions of people. Leaders and conference organizers have turned to him to share the secrets of how to not only stay healthy during the workday, but also how to finish the workday with energy and a positive emotional state.

Well, I’m ready. You ready? Here we come, Richard.

Rich, so good to have you, man. I’m excited.

Richard Safeer (03:32.00)
Great me too. We have two positive energy people here. We are on fire.

Skot Waldron (03:37.00)
We’re on a- we’re off to a good start. We’re on fire. I know, I know, you would think man, this is what fire looks like everybody. This is what looks

Richard Safeer (03:46.00)
Just saying hi and welcome to the show as we’re on fire.

Skot Waldron (03:49.00)
We are on fire. All right. Here’s an opener question for you to really get us on fire. Are you ready?

Richard Safeer (03:56.194)
I’m ready.

Skot Waldron (03:57.00)
Ok man. All right. So, most leaders, I’m going to say this. I’m going and you can disagree with me, but it’s not most, but I would say, you know, most have adopted this wellness thing of like, you know, making sure we go on walks and yoga classes or you know, like fruit baskets, make sure we’re making sure there’s nutritious stuff in the office, not just like candy or maybe like a meditation app or something that we’re doing together. But and you say that’s not necessarily wrong, right? It’s not that that’s wrong. But it is, I’m going to argue. And probably what you would say is why most programs fail. Would you say that?

Richard Safeer (04:44.00)
Yeah. Yeah, I’m in agreement with you. So many leaders are trying to do the right thing, but they’re not sure what the right thing is. So reflexively, they offer programs and benefits. Now granted, a walking meeting is hopefully not a program or a benefit in the eyes of the leadership, and it is a nice touch.

However, leaders and organizations would benefit if they use a more sophisticated approach where well-being is built into the workday so that you don’t have to take a break to take a walking meeting or take a walking lunch.

Skot Waldron (05:26.00)
Okay. And, and what are you seeing out there that a lot of, a lot of people are doing? Are they just, I mean, they probably mean well, but I mean, I mean, what’s going on?

Richard Safeer (05:37.00)
Well, I mean, traditionally, most companies are offering programs and benefits. You mentioned yoga class, I think, and some other methods. What most organizations are not doing, though, is thinking about how to get every person, every team manager, and every leader involved in the solution.

You know, I call it a well-being culture and the model I propose is really the majority of it is about how people work together and it takes people to create a culture. Culture is the shared behaviors, beliefs and attitudes of a group of people. And so really what we need to do is figure out how to harness social sciences so that the behaviors, beliefs and attitudes of this group of people it’s all pointing towards a healthier and happier day. So, it’s not like a cookie cutter answer, like, hey, we’re going to offer you this app. It requires a much more sophisticated approach, which we can get into. But I wanted to give the high-level view first.

Skot Waldron (06:48.00)
Okay, good stuff.

Alright Rich, so if I gave you a magic wand, okay, a special one, like it could be black and white, or you could make it fun colors if you want. If I give you a magic wand to fix every… This is big, dude.

Richard Safeer (07:07.00)
This is big. It’s huge magic wand.

Skot Waldron (07:11.714)
That’s a huge one. Every workplace, just in America, we’re not gonna say the world. Okay, just in America, you have to fix every workplace in America tomorrow. Where are you gonna start? Okay. And where are you not gonna waste your time? So, I wanna know those two things. Where are you gonna start with a, like a wellness program or, and where are you gonna just like, I’m not even gonna mess with that.

Richard Safeer (07:33.00)
Okay, so I’m going to start in the annual strategic plan. So, if a company really wants to succeed in this space, you need to treat it like any other business priority. And that means having it as part of the strategic plan for the organization. And a strategic plan requires long-term planning.

We have to recognize that humans are complicated. And when you put a hundred or a thousand of humans together, that’s even more complicated. So, depending on the size of your organization, a year at minimum, we’re talking small businesses and it’s probably three to five years, depending on your size. And that means laying out all of the necessary steps, the best practices and supporting employee health and well-being, which means knowing what your goals are, how you’re going to measure, what are the human resources you need and the other assets. It’s a big deal if you’re going to do it right.

Unfortunately, too many leaders are hoping that they can just make a benefit decision and be done. It doesn’t work like that. Your employees are not coming to work hoping that you have just the right app to solve their well-being problems. So, make sure that it’s part of your business strategy. I could go on, we could do the rest of the show about that, but I’m gonna not because there’s a second half of the question, is, where do I just don’t wanna go?

You know, that is an equally difficult question. I would say most organizations already have benefits. So, I would spend very little time on that at the outset. The only, if you’re going to spend time on benefits, think about whether or not you want to reallocate your budget from benefits to whatever infrastructure you need in this, you know, business strategy that you’re creating. Because most benefits are underutilized and your employees are not taking advantage of them and therefore you as the employer are not getting your money’s worth. But, you know, that’s not necessarily the answer to your question. What do I not want to put my hands on? And maybe we can come back to that because if…

It’s possible that every piece, I’m sorry, it’s possible that every idea that you have can contribute to a well-being culture. But since we don’t have unlimited time and unlimited financial resources, we have to be focused and it’s not okay to go after every idea. That’s all I can give you.

Skot Waldron (10:44.00)
Okay, well, I’ll take it. I’ll take it. I mean, you are the doctor, so I’ll just believe whatever you say.

Richard Safeer (10:51.00)
no, no, no, no.

Skot Waldron (10:52.00)
Not everything. Not everything, Rich. No, I think that there’s…

Richard Safeer (10:54.00)
I got a bridge for you, by the way.

Skot Waldron (10:57.00)
A bridge?

Richard Safeer (10:58.00)
Yeah, I’m going to sell you a bridge. I only take Bitcoin though.

Skot Waldron (11:02.144)
I don’t have any of that. So no, have a little bit. But if we’re thinking about adoption. I mean, think about that, right? Like, because I’m going to say, you know, you’ve got an organization. Hey, as, as a leadership team, we see the value in helping our employees stay as healthy as possible because we know if they’re healthy, then we’ll get healthy output, and we know that we want them to be happy here. We want to reduce turnover, and we want all the other stuff, and you can talk to the benefits some more.

But I think that it’s, but it’s going to be, okay, we, got this idea at the top, but now we have to get everybody else underneath, like on board with this thing. And we’re going to have a lot of people. They’re like, I don’t want to do any of this help. I’m just coming here to work. Just give me a paycheck, man.

Richard Safeer (10:55.00)
Yeah. Well, it’s nice to think that there might be everybody in the C-Suite on board, but I think that’s probably an exception to the rule. I don’t think that every leader recognizes that they play a role in the well-being of the workforce. And it’s not just about making a benefit decision. It’s about their own well-being. Because if the individual leader is not well, they will subsequently negatively impact the people they lead. You can’t avoid it.

You are probably familiar with mood contagion, and a leader has an out, you know, sized influence on spreading the mood amongst the people they lead. And that’s just the least of it. Leaders are role models in a variety of ways. Leaders can make the decisions to remove obstacles to well-being. Leaders are in charge of helping you find your purpose, giving you the tools you need to do your job well, helping you grow. I mean, there’s so much opportunity for leaders to play a positive role in the health and well-being of the people they lead. And right now, most employees are saying they’re playing a negative role in their health and well-being.

Okay, so let’s pretend that that magic wand had just got even bigger. And I had two wishes.

And so, all the leaders are taking care of in the C-Suite. So, then the next magic wish is to make sure that you’re supporting the well-being of your managers because, you know, they’re really influencing the bulk of the workforce. And that’s pretty complicated in itself. And I would say it starts during new manager orientation. Make sure that new manager orientation is more than just a tour of the software to make sure their team gets paid. Make sure it includes how they can care for themselves and make sure they’re aware of how their health and well-being impacts the health and well-being of the people on their team. That will go a long way, much longer than some of the apps that companies are making available.

Skot Waldron (14:19.00)
So, I hear you talking about integrating the mindset of well-being into the culture and the systems and the processes of the company itself. It’s like, this is an onboarding thing. This is in strategic planning. I have never heard such a thing in a strategic plan.

Richard Safeer (14:46.00)
Well, yeah, this needs to be integrated. Now, lots of people are doing pieces and parts, which is great. You know, there’s a role for many experts and internally and externally. And yet the company has to have an infrastructure and a strategic plan to make sure they’re staying on the path and getting to the goals that they’re hoping to achieve.

Because as you know, any human resource leader could pick a dozen topics easily to focus on. We’re going to focus on kindness. We’re going to focus on civility. We’re going to focus on growth. And the list goes on and on. And all of them have their merits. But as a manager, you cannot do an excellent job in everyone. So, you probably need to narrow the field and beyond the particular topic, you need to help make sure managers are aware of how their decisions impact the well-being of the people on their team and how their own health and well-being spreads to the people on their team.

Skot Waldron (16:01.00)
Do you have a story or something you could share of an example of somebody or an organization that has gone through this change that has, you know, started out one way, ended up another way through some of the well-being practices they’ve implemented?

Richard Safeer (16:17.00)
Well, I mean, if you don’t mind, I like to share examples from our home turf at Johns Hopkins Medicine because we’ve made a transformation. In 2012, when I joined the organization, there was a health risk assessment, an annual walk, and a affidavit that said, if you didn’t smoke, sign here and we’ll give you an incentive.

And we have come a long way. So, we have an annual strategic plan. Every C-Suite of every one of our hospitals, as well as the other parts of our organization have accountability. We have measurements so we can share with these different C-Suites if they’ve met their goals at the end of the year. We have well-being integrated into new employee orientation, new manager orientation, into executive leadership training, and into a drop-in 10-minute well-being tips for manager series. We include well-being through a peer support system. We have almost 400 Healthy at Hopkins champions. So, we have really built quite a robust infrastructure where we often get organic stories from different members of our community about what they’re doing and how it helped them. And that’s what you’re looking for. You’re looking for enough infrastructure and business strategy to move the momentum in favor of supporting health and well-being so that not only are you seeing you having your organization hit the metrics that you set, but you’re getting a lot of anecdotal stories coming from your workforce about how this helped them in this way and that resource or training helped them in another way. And it’s just such a fabulous feeling when it all starts to click.

Skot Waldron (18:36.00)
So, what types of things are you hearing? How is this helping people?

Richard Safeer (18:40.00)
Well, we have an emphasis on blood pressure. So, here’s one of our metrics. We measure how many of our employees voluntarily submit their blood pressure from a doctor or nurse over the course of the year. Then we track blood pressure to see if we’re moving in the right direction. And we have programs people can join to help them lower their blood pressure. And we have some different interventions, and we have our food labeled with green leaves. So, if they’re trying to lower their blood pressure and they pick a green leaf item out of the vending machine or the cafeteria, they know it’s gonna be low in sodium. So, we hear stories from our employees who’ve been able to lower their blood pressure.

About two weeks ago, I had a story that stuck in my head. It was from someone who’s attended one of our BP squared programs, which stands for blood pressure and breathing practice. And I don’t know how many she’s been to. We’ve had like 26, 28 sessions already. And she told us in this email that she had gone to the ER because her blood pressure had been too high, more than once. And she recently went to the doctor’s office and was told that her blood pressure was perfect, and she was thanking us because there were things that she didn’t know she could be doing, and she was doing them now. So, it’s stories like that that help us know we’re making a difference.

Skot Waldron (20:16.00)
I love hearing that. And I wonder if there’s people out there that say, listen, the stuff we do at work isn’t necessarily going to change what the people do at home. And if the people aren’t exercising and if they’re not eating right at home, no matter what we do at work, it’s not going to matter. So why I’m not, can’t worry about that. I’m not responsible for that.

Richard Safeer (20:44.00)
Well, there’s always going to be people like that. It doesn’t matter if you show them the data or tell them stories. What I would say is that we spend most of our waking hours in the workplace. So, if we don’t address health and well-being during the workday, there’s very little chance that your employees are going to be able to optimize their health and well-being. And to the point that the employees have outside influencers.

If you’re able to integrate a spouse or other adults who live at home in your strategy, that’s beautiful. You will be much better off for making that available on a broader scale. We don’t ignore the fact that every one of our employees comes to work with habits that they developed during their childhood that are difficult to change. But we also acknowledge that we can create a workplace culture where it’s easier to make a healthier choice and it’s easier to be happy than to be miserable. We have that in our control.

Skot Waldron (21:58.00)
And I think as we learn to integrate these things, that it becomes a mindset, like, almost what, what I’ll say, a brand, an essence of who we are. Like we are the type of company that prioritizes this thing. We prioritize well-being here. That’s just who we are. That’s just what we do. And when you come to work here, you will sense that when you get here.

I think there’s also a danger or almost a fear of saying that we’re this thing, but then not being able to walk the talk.

Richard Safeer (22:35.00)
They should be afraid of not walking the talk if they’re going to say it. You lose credibility.

Skot Waldron (22:41.00)
But does that prevent people from engaging with it because they’re like, I don’t know if we can fully commit to that. I don’t know if that’s, I don’t know if we were, we’ll bite off too much right now. We have to make quarterly numbers, and I don’t know if we’re going to, you know,

Richard Safeer (22:54.446)
Listen, every company has to make a decision what their priorities are. And when a company makes 20 priorities, they’re bound to fail. I contend that if health and well-being isn’t one of your priorities, then you will not be able to optimize the success of your organization because I believe the human resources within the company are your greatest asset and they cannot be replaced in their entirety yet by AI.

So, I’ll just rant about the benefits of a healthy and well workforce. They stay longer, they’re more engaged, they perform better, they are more likely to stay longer, they attract new talent, they cost less in healthcare claims, disability claims, workers’ compensation claims, et cetera. If you don’t believe that, then maybe you won’t go in that direction. But if you do believe that, then I would encourage you to review the core values of your organization. And if you don’t include some aspects of employee health and well-being in your company values, then you’re gonna have a difficult time following through on what you’re promising.

So, values is one of the six building blocks that I recommend leaders look at if they’re trying to create a genuine well-being culture in the workplace. Those are the guidelines, the rules, the bumpers, the rails that organizations follow in their business decisions. Here’s what we want to do for our business and how’s it going to impact our bottom line and our resources, but how’s it going to impact the health and well-being of our workforce? Or what do we need to do to adjust so that it doesn’t have a negative impact on the health and well-being of our workforce. Companies that treat this as core business will succeed. I’ll cite great places to work, that organization, they have tons of data, Gallup has tons of data. You just need to keep; you need to read to appreciate the power that every C-Suite has to make their organization more successful through the health and well-being of their workforce.

Skot Waldron (25:25.00)
In your book, A Cure for the Common Company, you talk about these building blocks. You just kind of dropped one there, and can you go through them for me? Like really quick, high level. What are those building blocks?

Richard Safeer (25:38.00)
I like to do that. So, peer support, how the co-workers impact each other. I mentioned that we have a Healthy at Hopkins champion network, almost 400 champions. We know that the people we work with impact our emotional state and the choices we make every day. So why not have champions who get some level of training to make sure that people on their team have someone to turn to when they have a health and well-being question or need help. Because a lot of people trust a coworker before their manager or before HR when it comes to their health and well-being.

Leadership engagement is the second one. So, we’ve talked about leaders a bit. I mentioned leadership engagement, not leadership support, not just leadership. Leaders need to be engaged. It’s not enough just to sign off on a budget. You need to be part of the solution. And we kind of talked a little bit about how leaders could be part of the solution.

Culture connection points. These are the levers that employers can use to make it easier for employees to make a healthy choice. I gave an example of the green leaf that is in front of the healthy foods and beverages that denotes a healthy choice. So, an employee can just walk up to it and say, hey, I want to eat healthy today. Oh, there’s a green leaf. I’ll choose that. There’s a dozen different examples of different culture connection point strategies. They’re not all about marketing and communications or icons that denote something healthy.

The fifth building block is norms. Norms are the expected and accepted behavior of a group of people. Norms are what everyone’s doing just out of habit because that’s the way we do things around here. Does your team reflexively eat lunch while working at their desk or does your team have a norm of taking a break and eating together? Two very different impacts on our health and well-being. We can actually shape the norms on our teams and we can actually shape norms across an organization by using the other building blocks and four or five of the culture connection points. You don’t have to accept the norm as the default.

The last culture connection point is, I’m sorry, the last well-being culture building block is social climate. This is how people feel. This is how the employees feel about waking up and going to work that day. Are they going feeling excited? Are they looking forward to being there? Do they like the people they work with? Do they feel like they belong? Again, we can influence that. It can’t just be the C-Suite. It’s got to be every team manager. They need to understand that when they speak positively, when they help people feel like they belong, when they help their team members, understand that their work is part of a bigger picture, then people feel good about what they’re contributing to.

So yeah, there’s a whole book on it. These are not the typical pieces that companies talk about when they’re thinking about their employee health and well-being strategy.

Skot Waldron (29:23.308)
Very true, because I’ve heard a lot of them and I haven’t heard these very many times, right?

Richard Safeer (29:31.00)
Yuh. Usually, companies spend a ton of time figuring out, how are going to define well-being? We’re going to have financial well-being, we’re going to have nutrition, we’re going to have movement. I’m all for them. We can have the best intentions, but if you don’t have a framework to make all of those different aspects of health and well-being come to life, you’re going to put it out there. There’s going to be a fanfare and three months later it’s going to be crickets because you didn’t put in place a sustainable mechanism to make it part of your organization’s culture.

Skot Waldron (30:07.00)
It has to be systemic. It has to be something that you build into the overall ethos of the organization.

Richard Safeer (30:17.00)
Yes. This is why it takes years.

Skot Waldron (30:19.83)
So yeah, I believe that and some patients. So, let me, can I, can I get a little selfish here for a second? My wife is a nurse, and she works her three 12-hour shifts, and it is, she comes home and she is gassed and she’ll every now and then say things to me like, my gosh, Skot, I didn’t even, you know, get a break until 4pm. You know, like she’ll get in at seven and she won’t get a break till four or maybe two or, you know, one day she was like, I got actually got to sit down for 15 minutes before noon today. And I mean, she is going, going and her, it’s very emotionally exhausting. It’s physically exhausting and she’s like, goes to bed right when she gets home and then she gets up, she does it the next day.

When you have a fast-paced environment like that, now, you take nursing and if you want to do that too, but how do you instill in a culture like that? These principles, like how do you change a mindset around this is what the nursing profession is. This is what the doctor profession is. This is our blank profession. This is just how we do things here. That’s how it’s always been.

Richard Safeer (31:45.00)
Yeah. So first, if any of your listeners know a nurse, hug the nurse. Ask for permission if you’re not too close to them but hug your nurse friend or family member because they really work very hard and under challenging positions. So please thank your wife for me. Different professions require different attention and different strategies. So, I’m glad you raised this. And yes, they’re fast-paced occupations. In the case for your wife and her colleagues, we, health care professionals, the health and wellness professionals, need to do a better job of helping nurses and other practitioners learn the skill of being able to, this is going to sound like I’m coming from the Far East, quiet your mind and minimize your energy expenditure while you’re going through your day. In other words, someone who works a 12-hour day on their feet is going to be physically tired, I imagine, but can we help those people finish their day less emotionally drained? And I contend there’s a way to do that.

The path is through being able to stay more present, which can be challenging in a healthcare environment, but it’s not impossible. The chances of being able to do that increases when we cause the whole team, or in the case of your wife, the whole clinical unit, to adopt the same skills collectively. Could I, is it okay to go into that detail a little bit more?

Skot Waldron (33:49.00)
Yeah.

Richard Safeer (33:51.00)
All right. So, stress is the response to a stimulus. We all know people who react very differently to the same event. Some people really feel a lot of stress from an event, and the other people are able to shrug it off a little bit more easily. Some people really stressed before a test in college, and others seem to go into it little bit more relaxed.

Now just because you were stressed when you were in college in preparation for a test doesn’t mean you have to go through your life stressed because you’re constantly preparing for the next possibility with your patients. It just means that you would benefit from learning new skills about how to think more in the present and less in the future.

What happens is when we live or work in a constant state of stress, which is what happens when you think too far ahead of yourself instead of in the present, we release cortisol and other hormones, the stress hormones, which causes our heart rate to increase unnecessarily.

It also causes our heart to have an unhealthy pattern, and it drains us. If we’re able to approach the minute-to-minute flow of our work assignments through the day, then we’re going to leave the workday less drained mentally. And that takes some, it takes someone to inform us how do we actually do that, and then it takes practice. And when a team learns a behavior or a skill together, they’re much more likely to reinforce it with each other, making it easier for it to become a habit or what I’m gonna call a norm. I wanna come back to that building block. And when it becomes a norm for the team, it’s now become easier because we’re going with the flow. We’re going with the current and the river and we’re with the other people, our coworkers on the same raft.

Skot Waldron (36:28.662)
Learn together. Because I think that goes back into your idea of systemic change. Like we create a culture this way. We hire people that believe what we believe. That if we believe in well-being, we want to hire people that believe in well-being. And we want to train people in that idea of well-being. And when we learn it together, we’re more than likely to do it together and to hold each other accountable and support each other in that effort.

Richard Safeer (36:53.00)
That’s right. Now, does your wife work in a hospital those 12-hour shifts?

Skot Waldron (36:57.00)
Yeah.

Richard Safeer (36:58.00)
Okay. I figured it was probably a hospital based on the schedule. So, they likely have a huddle or some type of brief meeting at the beginning of the shift after they’ve accepted their patient assignments. And that time is probably not dedicated to thinking about each other’s well-being. And I would contend that if two to three minutes was dedicated toward the team well-being in a very intentional way, not a, who’s going to join the walking challenge this month? That’s fine. But I’m talking about doing an exercise regularly to help calm the mind, help focus the mind.

then over time that team of nurses and clinical support persons will be more likely to see their well-being through their shift to become more steady. And it’ll be a transformation.

Now, if you wanna accelerate that transformation, you would start by figuring out how to put aside a half hour for a third of the team, then another half hour for the third of the team, and then another half hour for the last third, so that everybody can get an introduction to like, what the heck are we doing? Why are we doing it? So that they would walk into these short exercises informed and understanding the power that they’re trying to unleash with each other.

Skot Waldron (38:42.798)
So, can people hire you to bring this knowledge to them? Do they just have to read your book? Do they just, I mean, of course they got to listen to this podcast, but I mean, how do people get more access to this type of information, this mindset around well-being?

Richard Safeer (38:58.00)
So, can they hire me? I don’t go into workplaces and try. I’m fully employed by Johns Hopkins. Now I do speak professionally, so that’s a possibility. But to your point to actually learn these types of skills, I think that the leadership has to like at least narrow down which skill in particular.

So, for many of your listeners, you’ve probably already realized that this body of thinking, this body of work is around mindfulness. But there are a number of different avenues mindfulness can take. Now I’m a certified resilience advantage trainer, which means that I passed a training course and an exam to teach something called heart math, which is a combination of Heart-focused breathing and I’m gonna call it positive psychology and I have done this at some conferences, but no, I can’t be hired to do that for your workforce, but I’m happy to take questions. I think we’ll put my email address in the show notes.

Skot Waldron (40:16.00)
Yeah, all that’ll be in there. Um, and you are very accessible. You know, I appreciate you being so communicative with me and, and being on and, uh, sharing the thoughts and ideas with this. And I assume anybody then get your book anywhere. What’s the deal with that?

Richard Safeer (40:34.112)
A Cure for the Common Company, I’m pretty sure you can get it just about anywhere. I also want to give out a shout to A Cure for the Common Workday. It’s a journal. It’s a journal that is designed to flow with the workday. So, it’s set up as morning, afternoon, and evening so that the users of the journal can start to think about how to integrate well-being into the workday.

Because if you ignore the hours that you work, you’re probably not going to have that healthy retirement that you’re hoping for.

Skot Waldron (41:11.00)
Exactly. I mean, we, we dream so much about that, that time, but the wear and tear on us. Yeah. Yes. It’s to that point and we can’t fully enjoy that time that we so well deserve. So, well, thanks Rich for being on. I really appreciate it. Glad we were introduced to each other and you know, I hope the world gets a little bit healthier because of it.

Richard Safeer (41:36.00)
Yeah, thank you and thank you for your good work. I know you’re out there helping companies and that’s great. There’s so many of us who have a contribution to make.

Skot Waldron (41:50.166)
Have you integrated, have you integrated well-being programs into your strategic planning sessions? Like, have you thought about that? I honestly haven’t. And this is a little wake up call for me. And to think that, yeah, of course I believe that the people are your biggest asset. A lot of you say it, a lot of you believe it.

And yet we maintain the machines that run our stuff and the computer systems and the whatever that we use to make sure our companies keep going. But do we maintain the people? People maintenance. Let’s call it that. Well-being programs, people maintenance, whatever. I just made that up. I don’t know if it’s real or not, but if we were able to be more intentional about that, that’d be great. And yeah, not saying that the yoga programs and the individual apps and the walks and the things like that are bad. They’re actually fantastic. I’ve heard so many great stories as a result of those efforts and it’s been really, really cool.

How much of this is systemic? How much of it is integrated into the culture and the ethos of our entire organization? That’s a question. Is it from day one? This is what we do onboarding. This is who we are. This is what you’re going to participate in because that’s what we just do here. And I think if you were able to be more bold and more intentional about that effort, it would go a long way in retention and health and productivity and all the things that sometimes we struggle with as organizations. Let’s face it.

So thank you, Dr. Rich for being on. I really appreciate it. And y’all let’s just be a little healthier and a little happier by following some of these guidelines.

If you want to find out more information about me or check out the show notes where there’s going to be more information and links to the things referenced in this episode, visit skotwaldron.com. And lastly, I’m asking for a little bit of love, just a little bit. So please take a moment, follow, rate the show. The algorithm is like that; it helps me get the word out. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And until next time, stay Unlocked.