Wellness and Well-Being Dominate Conversations at World Workplace

This year’s Award of Excellence in the Book Category was awarded to lead author Rex Miller for The Healthy Workplace Nudge.  Co-authors included Phillip Williams and Dr. Michael O’Neill.

Rex Miller is the principal and thought leader for MindSHIFT, a future-focused consultancy and organizational performance firm. He has received international awards for innovation and works with many top industry leaders. He develops thought leaders who become market leaders.

MindSHIFT is a proven process for organizations and industries to solve WICKED problems. Rex has created a unique methodology that assembles diverse stakeholders to create a safe environment to actively explore and dismantle their collective assumptions, freeing them to look for that mind shifting question to open a door to experiment and create new possibilities – new realities. The MindSHIFT process is the genesis of The Healthy Workplace Nudge.

Both informational and educational, The Healthy Workplace Nudge explains the limitations of ROI thinking when it comes to healthy employees and describes a model of people in harmony with profits to create lasting value. It provides new pathways and practical approaches. Perhaps most importantly, it calls for a new kind of leadership – a leadership of care.  

For engaging insights into the wellness and well-being dilemma, click here for a video of Rex’s presentation at Welcoa.

The book aspires to reach leaders at all levels of the organization, to confirm they can and must rehumanize why and how they deliver wellness. It encourages the reader to make it personal – to think about the people who work around them. Where do they come from? What are their hopes? Do they go home at the end of the day energized and inspired by their time at work? Is work fulfilling? Or do they return home drained and stressed by their time at work? The Healthy Workplace Nudge takes a serious look at why so many wellness efforts fail to improve the lives of employees.

Prior to The Healthy Workplace Nudge, Rex has led a number of MindSHIFT collaboration efforts resulting in other books including,

The Healthy Workplace Nudge started out as an examination of workplace wellness programs and why so many of them fail. The core team, consisting of highly diverse experts and business leaders, met at summits and utilized virtual collaboration tools over the span of about eighteen months. The results of the core team efforts revealed deeper and more complex relationships between culture, engagement, health, productivity, growth, and profitability than initially envisioned.

For Facility professionals, The Healthy Workplace Nudge provides valuable insights into the critical role healthy buildings play into the larger healthy workplace equation. To deliver maximum benefits to employees and the business, The Healthy Workplace Nudge prepares Facility professionals to take their seat at the table alongside other leaders to address the healthy workplace challenge. 

Work is the number one stress inducer and stress can drive chronic disease. As chronic disease continues to rise, its associated cost in both human and medical terms are a direct threat to the survival of business. The Healthy Workplace Nudge offers a guide to reducing stress and the related health costs by offering the strategies for creating cultures of care.

In the book, the authors challenge the typical ways in which most companies deliver their wellness programs and show why so many wellness efforts fail to improve the lives of employees. Throughout the book, the authors report on the research from the Well MindSHIFT project on 100 large organizations that have tackled the problems of employee health costs and disengagement in four innovative ways. These forward-thinking companies know that: happiness leads to health and performance, behavioral economics lead to healthy employee behavior, a healthy culture is essential, and healthy buildings are a must.

The book is filled with vivid stories of healthy organizations from various industries across the country. The stories are not from lofty executives high on the hill, but ideas from serious, down-to-earth, tenacious, and healthy leaders who are curious, courageous, can caring. The examples show how to implement the actionable strategies and approaches that can be put in place – right now. These leaders also reveal what it takes to retain a happy and productive pool of talent and cut unnecessary spending that will boost the bottom line. The Healthy Workplace Nudge is the hands-on guide for creating a healthy environment where employees and organizations can thrive.

The Healthy Workplace Nudge is applicable to a broad range of industries and workplace settings. As a guide for leaders and operations practitioners, it provides practical strategies that can be applied today. While much of the research was sourced from the United States, the conclusions and strategies are widely applicable around the globe as they span ethnic, race, and gender boundaries.  

The book is published by Wiley Press (http://bit.ly/2IIBiDB)