Ep 7: It’s Personal: Workplace Wellbeing Starts with Trusting Relationships

Meet Rebecca Heald, Workplace Wellbeing Specialist and Executive Coach at More Than Nutrition‍

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As a Workplace Wellbeing Specialist and Executive Coach, Rebecca Heald develops leaders to support and strengthen the wellbeing of their teams through company culture. She has worked with a range of businesses from medium sized startups to global PLCs.

Using her personal and professional experience, she applies a trauma-informed approach that promotes inclusivity and creates cultures that sustain productivity through sustainable employee wellbeing.

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About More Than Nutrition

More Than Nutrition is a corporate coaching and training company offering a 1:1 coaching, workshops and training for people leaders and teams. With a wide array of topics available, More Than Nutrition aims to support the body and mind, promote healthy lifestyles and build engaging workplaces.

Learn more at morethannutrition.co.uk

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Episode Highlights

How Can Company Culture Drive Greater Profits?

“Profits don't create great workplaces. It's the other way around.”

Rebecca Heald: The employee experience, how we treat our people, is one of the strongest predictors of business results. So when you're investing in your culture, your business is fundamentally going to be more profitable. I always encourage organizations to think about relationships before they think about hierarchies. Because when we are creating a sense of belonging in the workplace, we're creating high trust cultures. We're creating workplaces where there are higher retention rates; people don't want to leave. And if people don't want to leave, you’re saving money by avoiding the recruitment and training processes. 

There's so much research that shows that when people are recognizing their teams [and] when companies are great places to work, their turnover is lower than that of their peers. It's the Fortune 100 Best companies that experience half the turnover of their peers, so the evidence is there to show how focusing on cultures is having an impact on the bottom line. Profits don't create great workplaces. It's the other way around.

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What have you found that employees need to truly thrive and do their best work?

Rebecca Heald: Two things‍

‍A leader who listens: The first one is, having a leader who just listens. And when I say listen, I don't just mean, giving them 10 minutes or giving them half an hour to actively listen. And for a leader to be able to do that, they need to have done the work and be continually doing the work on themselves. Because if you're not being aware and mindful and checking in with yourself, you can't listen with empathy.

Relationships: And the second one is relationships. There is so much evidence and research to show that when people feel they have a friend at work, when people feel that they've got a relationship at work, they are more likely to feel valued and more likely to be productive. 

Matt Vance: I would just echo that I have seen that as well as I've helped companies through this company culture transformation. You have to recognize that businesses are made up of people. It's not the inventory, the facility, or even the branding. If you take the people away, there's nothing left to move things forward. As emotional beings, we have to understand how people think and operate and take the time to build trust so that work relationships can be efficient, supportive and creative. 

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Where do you start a company culture transformation? How long does it take to make meaningful change?

An on-going discovery process

Rebecca Heald: It's one thing equipping people with knowledge around nutrition and movement and how to manage their wellness. It's another thing creating that environment. I'm not going to sit here and say to an organization, “you do this” because that’s not how it works. I go in and I will have conversations with the leadership team, which usually then turns into a conversation with HR and we talk about the importance of developing the leadership team. 

We look at their biggest pain points and center training on those issues whilst I'm getting to know them better. So it will take me a good two to three months to really understand what is going on in an organization. We'll do staff surveys. We'll do leadership surveys, but it really is crafted towards your organization. My ultimate aim is to make leaders more aware and more in tune with themselves. 

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