Business

Daily Buzz: Wellness at Work Starts With Culture

Wellness perks don’t mean anything if they are happening in a toxic work environment. Organizations should promote trust to improve culture and reduce stress on employees. Also: Twitter is testing new features to promote positive interactions.

Want to increase the wellness of your office team? You’ll need to offer more than yoga classes and healthy eating demonstrations. What every workplace needs to create a healthy environment is a culture of trust.

“Are we really doing ourselves a favor pursuing mindfulness training in the evening while continuing to endure constant daily stress at work?” Manfred Kets de Vries, a professor of leadership and organizational change at INSEAD, and Katharina Balazs, an associate professor of management at ESCP Europe, ask in a new op-ed for INSEAD’s Knowledge blog. “Unfortunately, too many organizations are permeated by fear and paranoia. When this happens, creativity disappears by the wayside—and so does wellness.”

Instead, the team argues that true wellness is a state of mind that must be infused in company culture and day-to-day tasks. More specifically, workplace cultures need trust, a trait that promotes mutual respect, integrity, and fairness.

“Their point is not that every wellness perk is wasteful, but that these kinds of programs will do little to counter the negative effects of a fundamentally toxic work culture,” says Lila MacLellan in a post on Quartz at Work. “What if, when it comes to wellness, the only thing workers need from their employers is a work culture that allows them to lead balanced, healthy lives in the first place?”

Will These Features Make Twitter More Friendly?

Twitter is a great platform to interact with members and new audiences, but it has its faults—a big one is that conversations can quickly turn nasty. In an effort to address the problem, Twitter is turning to its users to test new features that would keep conversation on the platform more civilized.

The company announced a few thousand users will be granted access to a special app with potential features, including different colors to help users follow different threads or indentations to help organize replies. The app and the features will be public, so those who aren’t invited can still see and interact with them. Twitter will then monitor whether the features hurt or improve conversations.

“What we don’t want to do is work on this in a black box for some time and then do some major unveil and hope everyone loves it,” said Sara Haider, a product director at Twitter who’s running the beta, in an interview with Recode. “What we do want to do is bring people in as early as possible, which is what we’re doing.”

Other Links of Note

Offer a member directory to facilitate member relationships, says the Wild Apricot Blog.

The right copy can generate more action with an online audience. The Bloomerang Blog explains.

Business relationships should be respectful, but that isn’t always the case. Inc. shares the rights you have that ensure you aren’t being mistreated.

(KatarzynaBialasiewicz/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

Jeff Hsin

By Jeff Hsin

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