Good morning, everybody. Thanks for sharing your Saturday morning today. I am the Chief Medical Director of Employee Health and Wellbeing at Hopkins. I report to the Chief Human Resource Officer, and Johns Hopkins Medicine has like a $7 billion or $8 billion budget. I work closely with the Vice President of Talent Acquisition, and most relevant to today's workshop is that I lead a committee on the connection between wellbeing and employee retention. Today with me is my friend and colleague, Dr. Kristen Pascucci. She's a PhD in organizational psychology, and together we've built a program that will get you started on a different path that will help you and your coworkers personally, and will also help you retain and recruit new employees. As you will see throughout the deck, there's plenty of evidence to show the connection between wellbeing of your staff and the success of your practice and organization or business, specifically focusing in on the connection with staff retention and recruitment. As I continue to take on additional leadership and administrative responsibilities, I continue to see patients up until about two years ago. I was seeing patients part-time for the first 10 years I was at Johns Hopkins. Like many of you, when you saw your patients or you still see patients, you're seeing one patient at a time. Now imagine my patient John sitting here in front of me. By the end of my first year of practice, I realized that John really wasn't sitting there alone. John has many people in his life. He's got those he lives with, those he sees in the community, and those with whom he works. And as you know, humans have some very basic needs. We need food, water, shelter, and humans need humans. Well, penguins aren't very different. And when penguins get cold, they move into a huddle to stay warm. And when the penguins in the middle of that huddle are warm enough, they'll waddle their way back so that the other penguins have a chance to take a step forward and get warm with the help of their family and friends. Now, perhaps in your role, in your current practice or business, you've had a similar observation that someone on your team has been influenced by a coworker, their manager, or someone outside of work. Perhaps that person's even been influenced by you. Now, earlier, you were informed about this worksheet, and I hope you've been able to find it. But if not, look up through the message box, or you can private message Eden. There's not necessarily a space for this on the worksheet, but you might want to write down who in your office plays maybe an outsized role in influencing the health and well-being of those in your office. This will become more and more relevant as we work through this, through our workshop today. Gallup published a book about a year, well, six, 12 months ago. It's called Culture Shock. Gallup's published many books. This book looked at data from the first couple of years of the pandemic, and they found that when employees say that their employer shows a genuine concern for their well-being, good things happen. The employees are more likely to try to get other people to work at their company. They're less likely to be looking for a new job, and the employees are not going to get burned out as easily. There's a lot of benefits to people who feel just knowing that their employer is concerned about their health and well-being. Now, if you have any familiarity with workplace wellness, that buzzword, or sometimes, you know, that's not the word you might be using in your area, but thinking about employee health and well-being, too often, well-being is thought of as like an app, or a portal program, or a prize. Make no mistake about it. These alone do not equal well-being, and they can help. However, they are not at the crux of what you and I consider to be what we need for our well-being. When I go around the institution where I work, and I ask people what they need to support their well-being, they're not saying another webinar about apples. It usually has something to do with their work-life balance, or the stress of their work, or their workflow, things that are are intimately woven throughout their workday. Have you asked your staff what they need to support their well-being? Now, you don't have to answer that now, but I'd like you to think about it, because sometimes, we're looking for data, but other times, it's really just helpful to get out there and ask your employees directly. I promise you, at the end of our time together today, you'll have a much better understanding about how your own well-being, and the well-being of those you work with, is intimately tied to the success of your business. I'm going to introduce you to some concepts that many of you probably haven't been exposed to before. I want you to be involved. Be active. You committed time this morning, and you showed up. The more you put in, and stay engaged, the more you're going to get out of this program. What I like to say when I'm doing a webinar in my hometown, for the Hopkins community, is, hey, put your phone away. At least turn off the buzzers, beeps, and bells, because they're a distraction, and it'll keep you from getting the most out of our time together. You're not going to hear me talk about fruits and vegetables, or exercise today, not too much. I agree they're important, but as I mentioned previously, that's not the crux of most people's concerns when it comes to the workplace and the well-being. You'll soon see that as we explore well-being, the meaning is a much deeper than what we appear to be on the surface. There are a lot of moving parts. I introduced Kristen before. She's going to keep me on task. She's maybe even going to pipe up if I give the wrong instruction at some point. I do need to disclose a couple of things. As mentioned in my introduction, I did write a book. This is for a conflict of interest statement. I did write a book. I'm going to try not to speak about it, but if it comes up, I apologize. I do work at Hopkins. However, today I'm here as my own person, Richard Zephir. The views and expressions I share with you today are not those of Johns Hopkins Medicine. You can call me Rich. You can call me Dr. Rich. You don't have to call me Dr. Zephir. Most people don't feel like they are pronouncing it correctly, so no worries. Are there any questions before we dive in? Just so the ASGE team knows, I can't see the chat box. Oh, there it is. Okay. I don't see anything in the chat box. No questions or comments yet, Dr. Rich. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Now, this is a framework that we're going to be referring back to periodically throughout our time together. This is the wellbeing culture framework that you will leave here understanding it in a much more meaningful capacity. You'll have a working knowledge of it. You'll see that it's the essence of the worksheet today. There's six building blocks that when used increases the likelihood that you are creating this wellbeing culture, and we'll talk about what culture is in a minute. I'm not going to define all of these for you right now. We'll define them as we go through our time together. If you want to memorize these, which you don't have to because they're on your worksheet, you can just think about the phrase plan for success. The P is for peer support. The L is for leadership engagement. The N in plan is for norms. The S in success is for shared values. The two C's for culture connection points, and the final S for social climate. You don't have to use all six, but the more of these you use, the more likely you are to influence and shape this culture in your workplace or on your work team. Now, you see that these building blocks overlap. When I introduce these building blocks today, I'm going to introduce them one at a time. However, you should know that the things we talk about and the things we do to shape our culture, they're often involving multiple building blocks. I'll try to give you examples where they overlap so you can get a feel for this. I'd just like you to keep that in mind. This data is from Deloitte, a large consulting firm. It basically tells us that we really don't know everything that's on our employees' minds. Let me tell you what this data means. Deloitte surveyed thousands of employees and leaders, and they asked them how the employees were doing in these four categories of well-being. The gold bar is the employee's answer. How am I doing with my physical well-being? The pink bar is the C-suite's answer. This is how I think my employees are doing. You can see that the C-suite has a much more positive impression of how their employees are doing than the employees are saying. There is a disconnect. Even though we might think we know how our employees are doing with their mental health, the reality is we're about 25 percentage points off. The gap is even bigger for our social connectedness, our social well-being. The gap is huge for our financial well-being. There are a lot of employees who are stressed about making ends meet so much that it's impacting their ability to sleep, their ability to focus, the ability to be present in the workday and not being distracted by their financial challenges. We're going to get to some... Does anybody have... By the way, you can continue to put messages or questions in the chat box as we go along. We're going to do a polling question now. If that can come onto the screen. We're getting a great response rate. We'll just quickly read this for folks. What percentage of Americans say their job is their biggest stressor? Here, Dr. Rich, are the results. Let's see. Okay. 75% said between 51% and 75%. This is great. Thank you for participating. Let's see what the research says. This comes from UKG. It's a large human resource company in England. They asked 2,600 employees from 10 English-speaking countries, including the United States of America. The answer is 60%. The majority, 75% of our colleagues today were in that range. That is huge. Now, I'm going to ask... We're not going to do another polling question, but I'm going to ask you in the chat box to take a guess at the next answer. What percent of employees would be willing to take a pay cut in order to have a job that better supports their mental health? Listen, there's only a few dozen of us here today, and we're not going to tell everybody. I hope you can be brave and take a gander in the chat box to guess how many or what percent of employees would be willing to take a pay cut in order to... Well, thank you, Lakeisha. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly for taking a guess. I appreciate that. Just give it another couple of seconds. Okay, Vasu, Edward. Great. Thank you. All right. Let's see what UKG found out. They found out that 64% of employees would take a pay cut. Now, and Kamran, thank you. You're all in the ballpark, which is amazing. I don't know how old you guys are. I know how old I am, but if you had asked me 10, 20, 30 years ago what percentage of employees would take a pay cut, I never would have thought it would have been this high a few decades ago. Things are changing. Employees are putting a much bigger value on their mental health. Now, managers actually have it worse. 70% of managers said that they would take a pay cut in order to have a job that better supports their mental health. Now, this is not the only data that says that managers, in a lot of ways, are suffering more than the frontline employees. I think this is an important part to note because when we think about how are we taking care of our employees, we think about how all of the management team is involved with this, but we have to remember, we have to keep in mind to support every layer of the organization, especially when you think about if managers aren't well and they're the ones who are supposed to be leading and supporting the frontline, that obviously plays a bigger role. If well-being is not a portal program or prize, then what is it? Now, everybody can have their own definition of what they need for their well-being, and yet there are some similarities that all of us need when it comes to workplace well-being. We all need to feel connected. We need to feel like our leaders are behind us, they're genuinely concerned for our well-being, and that we have, some people call it work-life balance, some people call it work-life integration. Yes, we need to eat healthy, and we need to sleep well, and we need to be less stressed, and yet these items on the screen here are fundamental in the context of the workplace in order to achieve well-being, and these things will, in addition, help those healthy behaviors that our colleagues are working on. Now, when we think about the well-being for our team, we also can be a little bit selfish. We can think about ourselves as well, because we all want to feel better, right? We all want to feel healthy. So what's in it for you? When you start to create a well-being culture in your workplace and on your team, you're going to have greater employee retention. It's also going to mean that it's going to be easier to attract new talent, because remember that slide, a few slides ago, Gallup said that I think it was seven times more likely to advocate for your workplace. So your employees will become one of your best marketing tools to bring in new talent, and when I have a vacancy, I know it increases my stress level. I can imagine that it increases yours. It requires all of us to pick up the load. And so when this works, you too will have improved well-being. Now, I have a little story before we roll up our sleeves and get working on our worksheet. I'm not a big basketball fan. I played as a kid, but I was short, I was skinny, and I had braces. And honestly, people didn't pass me the ball too much. I just wasn't a threat on the basketball court. I knew who Michael Jordan was, though, not when he first started playing in the NBA in 1984, but I knew him when the Chicago Bulls started winning in the 1990s. And now some of you are from Chicago, so you know Michael, but others even who live outside Chicago probably know the legend. He's considered one of the greatest basketball players of all time because he won six NBA championship titles. Now, if you don't know Michael, maybe not your generation, maybe you know Tom Brady. He's considered one of the best quarterbacks of all time. Well, just as much media attention as Tom Brady got in the past decade, that's how much attention Michael Jordan got in the 1990s. Now, if you know anything about Michael, I'm sorry, anything about basketball, you know that there are five players on the court at any time. And there's a whole bench full of players on the sideline waiting for a starter to get a break, to go get some water, or to just if they get injured. Michael played in the NBA for 15 years and he won the championship title six times. So if it was really just about Michael, then he would have won 15 times, right? Now, if you've ever been part of a winning team, maybe you're on one now, you can probably remember the positive attitude, the sense of belonging, the collegiality. There's something special about being on a winning team where everyone's shooting towards the same basket or the same goal. There's a high level of trust. Now, these are the essential pieces of why people on winning teams feel good and why they keep winning. So instead of thinking about our well-being as an individual journey alone, maybe we start thinking about well-being as a team sport as well. So if you know anything about sports, sports teams have cultures, and parts of sports cultures are team colors. And what you're seeing is red and white in the stands. So the Bulls uniforms are red and white. The fans wear red and white. The signs are in red and white. Sports cultures also have music, and I'm not sure if my Spotify is getting through on the microphone here, but if it is, you're listening to the theme song for the Chicago Bulls. When the Bulls are in their locker room and they're waiting to be introduced to come out onto the basketball floor, this music is being played, and the fans get really riled up. Music can be used to shape the emotions of the people in a culture. For the Bulls, it's getting the fans riled up before the team runs in. Now, sports cultures have additional pieces. Now, whoops, on the left, imagine that is a bull. That is a rhino, I know, but imagine it's a bull, and imagine it's a fuzzy bull that's standing on two legs. Imagine it is Benny the Bull. Mascots are part of team culture, and so are foods. That's Chicago deep dish pizza on the right. Now, it's not just sports teams that have cultures. It's workplaces as well. Yes, we're getting back to the subject of today. Workplaces have cultures. Healthcare workplaces have specific cultures that might be different than the culture in a manufacturing plant or the restaurant industry. In healthcare, many of our employees wear uniforms. Most of us probably don't have red in our scrubs. That would probably be the wrong message to send to our patients, but nonetheless, we have uniforms. And in healthcare, we have healthy parts of our culture, and we have some unhealthy parts of our workplace culture. So the most, I think, obvious healthy part of our workplace culture is that we wash our hands before and after we see patients. That's part of who we are, and it helps diminish the spread of infections. An unhealthy part of a lot of healthcare organizations, I don't know about your practice, is that clinicians work through lunch. They are either continuing to see patients, and they grab something on the run, or they're writing their notes while they're eating lunch. We don't take a break, and everyone needs a break. We know that when we take a break, we come back more refreshed and better able to focus. Now, I don't know the GI culture like you know the GI culture, and I certainly don't know your practice culture like I know the workplace culture at Hopkins. I hope that you will, in the chat box, maybe you could share with everybody, tell us something about your workplace culture. Do you have a uniform that everyone's supposed to wear, like uniform scrubs, or can we wear whatever you want? Do you have a part of your culture like on Wednesdays where donuts are brought in? Is there something healthy about your workplace culture, and is there something unhealthy about your workplace culture? Tell us what practices define your gastroenterology community. And we got crickets. Okay, that's okay. I think you're going to start to feel this a little bit more as we keep going through this. Okay. Alright, so you have a worksheet, and I hope it's out by now. I hear from practitioners and mid-level leaders that the long hours and constantly getting pulled left and right, it's exhausting. I remember, I know it was exhausting for me. And, you know, we're all connected in that regard. We're going to take a moment, and there's a reflection on page three of your worksheet at the top. And I want you to write down two or three unhealthy things about your workplace. Now, if you're not comfortable putting in the chat box, because I've just kind of verbally asked you this. Ah, thank you, Erica. If you're not comfortable, just remember, there's always the option of sending the message to the hosts of the meeting so that you don't have to, you could be anonymous. Okay, Erica, you confirmed what most of us are probably living. And that's part of the culture. And, you know, there are some professions. I'm going to give you another 30 seconds. There are some professions where that's not the culture. I mean, all of us have heard about friends or family members. Oh, I went out to lunch today with a coworker, I took a client out. Yeah, listen, I have a chocolate addiction, and I have a real problem when there's a bowl of chocolate in the workplace. If I'm not seeing it or smelling it, I'm usually pretty good but the reality is I'm tempted. And my family, there's a history of diabetes. And so I don't take for granted that, that I'm, you know, always going to be okay so I really try. So, all right, so the hopefully you put these down because what you're going to find is that the answers you put in the worksheet, you may end up coming back to as we build out our exercises. We have another message in the chat from Edward. We have a culture that supports that is excellent. That is excellent because not every Edward, you enjoy something that not every practice has. And that's great to know. And then maybe your co workers are going to or your colleagues here today are going to be reaching out to you afterwards. They find they have some missing holes in their approach. And, you know, you talk about mission it's it's good to know it and it's good to live it. Sometimes organizations have a mission and vision but they forget about it and the heat of the moment. It doesn't get addressed. Okay, but there's still there's still more for each of us to have, as you'll see, during the day. Now, I am not the first person to make this connection between culture and health. Some of you have heard of the blue zones. Don't worry. I'm going to explain it right now. If you see these spots on the globe on the world map that have a star. Those are blue zones now blue zones are communities with a high number of centenarians people who live past the age of 100. And so we've got Okinawa, Japan, and place in Greece and Sardinia, Italy. The Koya. I'm not going to say is Nikoya Costa in Costa Rica and that's in right here right here in the US, Loma Linda, California. Now, I am certainly. Well, let me tell you what these places have in common. Before I go. Even though they're around the globe. What they have in common is that they eat lots of fruits and vegetables. They eat beans, they whole wheat. If they're going to eat fish or chicken, it's, it's much more fresh and not process their fish and chicken doesn't show up at the table in the form of a nugget. They eat healthy eating. They also integrate movement throughout their day. They don't have to have a gym membership, and the value relationships. Some of them have grown up in the same community and continue to live there. They have lifelong friends. They don't just call them friends they actually socialize with them regularly. They have plenty of family around them. Some of them even live in multi generational households. They don't put their elderly into nursing care or nursing homes, excuse me. They have these essential elements as part of their culture. Now culture is the shared behaviors beliefs and attitudes of a given group of people. So, Dan Buettner discovered this when he was doing research. Early 90s, or late 80s, and it was originally published a National Geographic. Now last fall, yeah just about a year ago I was invited and I spoke at a large human resource conference in Nashville, Tennessee, and I was thinking about what I was going to say when I went there and I decided I was going to share this same slide about the connection between culture and health. And I realized you know what we have a blue zone right here in the US that's Loma Linda that I just put a circle around, and I'm going to Nashville and if I share this slide. Some of them might be like oh that's great they live in Loma Linda how long do we live here in Nashville, so I did a little research, and I found the data for life expectancy by county not by city. Loma Linda is in San Bernardino, California, and the audience was happy to hear that the average age there 79 and Nashville is in Davidson County, Tennessee, and they were surprised to see that there was a six year difference. Two different counties, six year difference that begs the question I'm like okay I know what they eat Loma Linda what are they eating in Nashville, Tennessee. So I did a search, and I found that their favorite food is macaroni and cheese, and their second favorite food potato salad. Don't worry, they eat more vegetables than just potatoes they also eat fried green tomatoes. I think we can all agree, it's not just luck for the reason why the people in Loma Linda or San Bernardino County live six years longer than the people in Davidson County, Tennessee. As we learned from those living in the blue zones relationships are important to our health and well being. The first relationship that we'll look at is with our friends and co workers or our peers. Now our healthy habits are shaped early in our life and if you grew up in Nashville, and your friends a macaroni and cheese you to probably a macaroni and cheese. The same with other behaviors we all want to fit in. Now when I was a kid, my friends and I we played outside a lot and that helped me learn the value of exercise or movement, and being outdoors in nature. But unfortunately this is the way too many of our adolescents and young adults are playing today. They're not moving, and if they're socializing it's usually through a screen. At least we can say these kids are outdoors, many of the times our kids are doing this behind a closed bedroom door. Peers are important, and the workplace can intentionally provide opportunities for peers to support each other. Adults aren't much better. How many of us, I'm raising my hand, have sat in front of our computer and worked during lunch, it used to be that I would do my medical records during lunch. You know we're often not socializing during our lunch break or we're not getting outside. Now, if you can type in the chat box. You can guess what important component of well being is lacking most during most of our work days. I mean, if you want to guess, you don't have to guess but I don't know if you have an idea of what's most missing in your socialization. Yeah, I mean, I would say a socialization I mean I pandemic did us no favors for a lot of reasons. And we're going to spend a little time on social connectedness. Let's get back to our Chicago Bulls. Now, now Michael had supportive teammates, and even, you know, our teammates have an amazing impact for for Michael is that they passed him the ball. So think about it, if your teammates aren't passing you the ball it's gonna be pretty difficult to score baskets. If our teammates aren't getting outside to get some fresh air during the day. If our teammates aren't asking us hey would you take a 15 minute lunch break with with us. It's a little bit hard to get out of that pattern that we're in. Remember, Michael didn't win the championship his first championship until 1991 about six years after he joined the NBA so teammates really matter. We've got another polling question and maybe Eden or Michelle you're going to help me out here. How do you think you're doing with people in your office being friends? Now this is anonymous so I hope we'll have just as good a participation as we had previously. Got the ticking going. All right so well I'm encouraged that no one's thinking that their office doesn't have friends so that's good. Small sample taken for granted and I'm happy for those people who are absolutely sure that their people in their office are friends that portends a really good future for you and there's room for improvement for some of us. So I want you to take out your worksheet again or turn to your worksheet again and remember leaders don't always know what's actually going on with our employees. Remember that slide near the beginning the data from Deloitte so it's good that we feel confident or many of us feel confident about the relationships in the workplace but it's possible we're not completely understanding so if we look at page three in the middle peer support give you some time to think about those questions there and you just took a polling. Yeah do you think other people in your office would say the same? You know is there anyone in your office who might disagree? Maybe not everyone feels the same connections. It's something to think about and I'm going to keep going. I think you can probably write down what you need to while I continue through a few more slides. So weight watchers figured this out a long time ago. They knew what the literature showed that when people lose weight together in groups of three or four they're much more likely to take off more weight and keep it off longer. That's why they created this system of having people show up to group meetings and tobacco addiction the same holds true. When people try to quit smoking they're much more likely to succeed almost twice as likely to succeed when they try to quit with someone else who they work with who's also addicted or someone else that they live at home. Now you pick the healthy behavior that's being sought when people try to learn a new healthy habit or get rid of an unhealthy habit it is much more likely achievable when they're doing this with somebody else who's facing the same challenge. This is a huge benefit of peer support. So there's a continuation of this peer support activity at the bottom of page three. What are we doing now to encourage employees to find? So I'm curious you can write these answers in but what are if anyone would be willing to share out loud or through the messaging system is anybody doing anything to intentionally create opportunities for co-workers co-workers to work together toward supporting each other's health and it doesn't have to be around like a habit as blatant as quitting smoking or as blatant as losing weight. It could be a healthy habit of just sitting down for five minutes during lunch. Be curious to know if anyone's thought of or has put in place a system where co-workers are helping each other. And as a reminder you can raise your hand we're happy to open your line if you would like to or just use that chat function. I'm going to pause for a few for maybe 15-20 seconds so you can be filling in some of those blank spaces in your. So we do have a hand raise. Okay. Rowla Jamal, your line should be open. Good morning everyone. In answer to your questions what we've done to for our staff in support we have cross-trained tremendously on all levels in our office so that if any of our staff member would come forward saying that they are overbeared with any of their responsibilities or they are backed up with work we would eliminate the stress factor as much as we can by supporting them with other staff members and we will open projects until they are up to where they should be so that we don't reach the point of burnout. Yeah that's great. It's great that you put a system in place for that very reason to decrease the stress level and keep people from going to the brink. I appreciate you sharing that. You know when I do these types of workshops it's really helpful when people share their ideas because not everybody has every answer and we really can learn from each other. We have a program that we offer at Hopkins it's called 10 Minute Well-Being Tips for Managers. So 10 minutes in the morning every Wednesday we do this 10 minute session where either I or my colleague will introduce a topic and then people can drop off if they want. Remarkably most of the managers stay on for another 10-20 minutes because then they start trying to work through some of the specific challenges they have that are related to the topic. So if that was Dr. Jamal if I'm saying your name correctly and if I heard correctly who was speaking Eden then I appreciate you contributing to our community learning. Thank you very much. And Dr. Martin has added some comments in the chat as well. I'll let people read that. Yeah that's great. Yeah so you know this whole thing about scheduling it's really it's you know for many people we recognize that it's really not great and some of the some of you have sat down with your colleagues and thought through this and have come up with some solutions but perhaps not all of you. So perhaps not all of you. So if you haven't taken that step you know even just finding the time to have that conversation that idea of taking a break with colleagues improve socialization helps rest our brain and having other people do it with you is just like a way of giving permission right. You know most of us we're like heart driven and we're go go go we want to make sure everyone knows that we're contributing and yet because of that perhaps we don't want to take a break because we don't want other people to think that we're not doing our share but when we do it with others it really can make it much more acceptable and something like this permission idea. All right I'm gonna move forward. So when we see kids most people smile right. I don't know if you're smiling right now but there's something about kids that make us smile and feel warm inside usually because they're smiling or laughing and who doesn't want to laugh you know when you walk into a room and two people are laughing don't you like often want to say or you do literally say what's so funny because you too want to laugh it helps bring the stress level down but isn't it amazing how quickly these cute kids can actually get under our skin. If not this image how about the image of when you're going to sit down uh in your chair and your seat on an airplane and you see that there's a kid behind you and you're like oh my god I hope this child does not start screaming and kick the uh chair uh while we're in flight. It's amazing how quickly our emotions can change based on the emotions of the people around us and it's not just children. In your workplace you probably uh as you think about this right now you probably know the people in your workplace who are probably a little bit more light on their feet more likely to be smiling and those who appear stressed out a lot and if you spend some time when you go back to work on Monday or maybe because you've been working with these people long enough you might also be able to feel that same feeling when you think about these people like if you can imagine the person in your office you'd say this is the happiest or the funniest or the least serious they make you feel a certain way and then the same with the person on the other end of the spectrum. Now we don't have to uh accept that this person will be this way and that person will be that way. We actually can be very intent intentional to try and change the emotions in the workplace. We actually can put in place strategies that make it more likely that people will be smiling make it more likely that people will be happy and make it less likely that people will not. Now it begins with us it begins with us maybe even just smiling. This weekend when you go into a store or a restaurant just smile at someone you don't know you can probably guess what's going to happen they're most likely going to smile back. The same thing happens when you see someone smiling you naturally want to smile as well. This is not just a coincidence this is the science. Humans mimic humans. We pick up on each other's emotions both positive emotions as well as negative emotions. We will pick up on other people's stress and we will pick up on other people's anger. In fact when we come across someone who's angry we tend to walk away quickly or we try to at least. Now if peer support is up here on our well-being strategy meter then loneliness is down here. I don't know if you can still see my my hand but loneliness is a real problem in the workplace. It's only been made worse by the pandemic depending on the research that you read. 25 to 50 percent of employees feels lonely at work at least once a week. That's a huge percentage. Now I'm not saying that it's in your practice or in your workplace and certainly that data that I just shared with you is across industries it's not specific to the gastrointestinal health care profession but just remember that we don't know everything that's going on with our employees and just because they're in a office full of other people doesn't necessarily mean that they don't feel lonely. People need to feel connected so even if they're around other people they need to be they need to feel as if they're seen, as if they're heard, as if their opinion counts, as if there's some type of emotional connection to each other. Now this is important not just because when we feel lonely it doesn't feel good but loneliness increases the risk of depression, obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes. It weakens our immune system and being lonely has some dire consequences. Three decades ago the headlines were smoking kills, two decades ago obesity kills, last decade sitting kills. The headline as you may know is currently loneliness kills. This is not just about the individual this is related to your practice. This data is from ADP and they did uh they had collected data from thousands of people and found that when employees don't feel connected they are going to look for another job. So if you look at the gold part of these bars those are the employees who feel connected, strongly connected. They're much less likely to be actively interviewing and there's much more likely to not even be thinking about leaving and the opposite is true for those who feel not connected. For those who don't feel connected they're much more likely to be interviewing and much less likely to commit to staying. So this should be part of your retention strategy. You might just be thinking who in our office is at risk? Remember we don't know what's going on with each of the people in our workplace and statistically speaking it's very likely that at least one person, probably more, goes has periods where they're not feeling connected. Any thoughts or comments on that? Is this a surprise to anybody or is old news? Okay I'm going to go on. Social climate is another building block. So we talked about peer support, the P and plan. We're now going to talk about another well-being culture building block, social climate. Now this is a beautiful picture and if you've ever been in a setting like this you might be able to feel the fresh air. You might be able to smell the scent of pine. You might be able to feel that breeze that you recall or maybe you like the beach and if you are a beach person maybe you can quickly get that you know sense of the sound of the waves breaking, the taste of salt in the air, the heat. Social climate is that general feeling of how we have with a group of people. So previously we talked about peer supports, two people, but now we're talking about a team or a group of people or maybe even across the entire department. So some people equate this to employee morale. Remember the Chicago Bulls, it's not just one teammate passing it to another teammate, passing the ball back and forth. It's the entire team feeling connected so that they know how to move in unity and or synchrony and be able to succeed together. Now there are several parts or ingredients to this social climate. We don't have to guess, we don't have to just accept the morale or social climate that currently exists in our workplace or our teams. One of them is sense of community and one of our colleagues previously said that a group of faculty they take a lunch break together. That's great, that's a sense of community right there. For those of you who don't have that sense of community, you may have it or had it in other parts of your life. You may currently have it outside of work or maybe in a previous job. It's that sense of belonging and feeling included that you're not off to the side and that there's not a group of like people that you see, boy, I wish I was part of that group. They seem to be all having fun. It's a lot to take, there's a lot to creating a sense of community. It doesn't happen overnight. People who don't feel like they fit in, maybe some of it's them, maybe they're shy and maybe they need a little bit of prompting. Spending time together with coworkers when it's not all about work helps us to get to know each other as people. So are there opportunities that you've either taken in the past or what can you do going forward that can give you the opportunity to learn about each other, who we live with, what pets do we have, what are our hobbies outside of work? All of these pieces make us more human and help us feel more connected as a group. And this is important because we're trying to create trust. When we work with a group of people that is connected and there's a high level of trust, it actually lowers our stress level. We may not think of it that way, but we are less on guard. We're more knowing that our colleagues and our bosses will accept us for who we are. They will be more forgiving when we make a mistake. They'll be more forgiving when there's a sick kid and they know that I need to leave to go get them from school and I'm not just goofing off. This sense of community is important. I remember when I was growing up, my dad would take us to the company picnic. I don't know that that exists anymore. I mean, the idea of holiday parties took a real hit with the pandemic. The Chicago Bulls built a sense of community. They played like a team. They knew each other's responsibilities and they knew how they were gonna get their job done together and they went out to dinner together. They had team meals together. They didn't just go on to the court to practice and play the games. They did things outside of practice and games as well. The second ingredient in creating a good social climate is having that shared goal. How is it that we're all working together? A crew team, they know the goal and how to all work together. Now, I imagine that we might reflexively say, yeah, the goal is that we're all making sure patients get their care. But how are you helping the team feel like you're all rowing together? Is there data that's shared with the entire office to know how you're all doing? You know, in manufacturing plants, it's not uncommon to see a sign that says the number of days since the last accident and they'll put the number up there, 120 or something like that. It helps them all keep in mind that we're trying to avoid anyone getting hurt and this is how well we're doing. Do you share office data about the number of patients seen, the quality of care? When a patient sends a warm and fuzzy thank you, does that go up on a wall somewhere so that everyone can feel good about what you're doing together? Anybody wanna share in the chat box if your practice or business is doing anything to help your teams feel like you're all sharing the same goal? And again, you can always raise your hand and we can open your phone line or you can use the chat functionality. All right, you know, last piece of social climate, positivity. Now, sometime early in the pandemic, my wife and I, maybe three months in, finally got the nerve up and I went and picked up a takeout Chinese food. And I brought the food home. We wiped down the packages with our alcohol wipes and I peeled off my latex gloves and we sat down for dinner. And then after dinner, we each got a fortune, we opened it up and I handed my wife this fortune and we both had a good laugh because you see, if you ever meet my wife, you will learn that she is the fun one of the two of us. I said, Beth, I'm fun, you just have to bring it out inside of me. And now I have this fortune taped to my monitor on my screen because it reminds me that the people I work with, they would rather have the fun Dr. Rich than the serious Dr. Rich. So what are we doing to be more positive? What are we doing to be more fun? If you ever wanted to add anything in the chat box for positivity, I'm happy for you to do that as well. Erica, thank you. Oh, that's great. Daily huddles to celebrate. That's two things, you're building, that's three things. You're building a community by bringing everyone together into a huddle. You're sharing your stories. You're sharing your experiences. You're sharing your experiences with others. You're sharing something that went well. So that's both having shared goals and you're celebrating, which is positive. That's great. Thank you for sharing with us. All right. Social climate on your worksheet. That is on page four. Yeah, page four at the top. There are three spaces for you to be taking notes about what you might do to create a more positive environment, what you might do to create a sense of sharing the goals and what you might do to improve that sense of community. Now, I'm just gonna talk a little bit while you're writing in your answers because I both want you to have time to write your answers in. I'm not gonna move off of this slide yet, but just gonna reflect, just so in case you're stuck, right? Because you don't have any ideas. Positivity. Look at the color of the paint in your office. If it's kind of like drab, maybe some color might lighten the mood. Think about the pediatrician offices. They'll have rainbows painted on the wall or cartoon characters. I'm not asking you to paint cartoon characters, but we know the research shows that the color of the walls can make a difference. What about the pictures on your walls? Do you have pictures of sunshine or are they clouds? I'm being pretty extreme here to give you a sense. If you've had a team event or a company event and you've got pictures of people having a good time, blow them up, put them in a frame, put them on the wall. People like to see people smiling. And when it conjures up a previous fun time, it'll bring back that warm feeling. I'm gonna move on to the next slide because I wanna make sure we stay on time here, but brainstorm and hopefully you'll come up with some ideas. Showing my age here, if you ever watched the TV show Cheers in the 90s, you might recall the TV character, Norm Peterson. Now, Norm is a regular patron of the bar. The bar's name is Cheers. And when Norm walks into the bar, everyone yells out, Norm. Now, he's appropriately named. Norm is another building block and norms are the expected behaviors of a group of people. And so the expectation in Cheers is that when Norm walks in, everyone yells out, Norm. If it's your first time in Cheers and Norm walks in and everyone does that, you're kind of like, whoa, what just happened? But if it's the third time you're in Cheers, when Norm walks in, I bet you are also yelling, Norm. Now, this is the norm in much of the country on Sunday afternoons, people are watching football. Now, we found out, it became quite apparent in 2020 that norms don't just run across the country, they're also regional, right? In 2020, in some parts of our country, wearing a mask when out in public was the norm and in other parts of our country, that was not the norm. In 2021, the discussion was about which parts of our country are getting vaccinated and which parts weren't. Depending on the size of your organization, you too may have norms in some offices that don't exist in other offices. So it may not be across your entire organization. Norms, again, are the expected behaviors of a group. So in your case, a group of employees. Now, this might be the norm in your practice where employees are staying late and this represents being the last car in the parking lot. The expectation is that people are working long hours. It's kind of like the unspoken word, this is just the way it is. And you can imagine, and if this was the case for you or still is the case, that may not be the best practice for our health and wellbeing. It may not be the best advertisement when we're trying to recruit for a new employee. Now, this is a norm that I introduced earlier. For some workplaces, we're not taking lunch breaks and we're not socializing, we're not moving, we're not getting a breath of fresh air. So if we went to the gym and lifted weights for eight hours I don't think anyone can do that. So why do we expect our brains to work for eight hours? We need a break because not just to rest physically, when we take a break, we can come back more focused, we're less likely to make a patient care error, we're more likely to be in a better mood. And as we discussed earlier, our moods, our emotions are contagious. So what are we doing in order to create breaks as a norm? Now, you can type that in the chat box if you wanna share with our colleagues if you've done anything in the past, but I'm gonna go to the next slide. Every time that you enter something in the chat box, it could potentially be helping one of your colleagues who's on this program with us today. And Dr. Safira, we have a raised hand again from Dr. Jamal, if she would like to open her line. Hi, so you're talking about the beautiful norm and this is a word that has become so popular after COVID. During COVID times, we had to have our employees because of the fear and the scared of being close to each other. We allowed them to start taking their lunch by their computers, on their desk if they wish or leave in the fresh air. But then when COVID started subsiding and things were coming back to normal, we have noticed that this habit was continuing and people did not wanna leave their chairs and they would rather have their breaks and do their things on their chair in the same place. So we came up with a policy that you are not allowed to eat by your station. You are not allowed if you are on your break or on your lunch to stay in the room. And we had enforced that by telling employees and giving them the liberty to come and to say that this person is still eating in the room or drinking in the room. So we dragged them out of that environment and we brought them back to the norm where they should be sitting in the same area, talking, doing whatever they want to do away from that computer. So- That's great. Yeah, that's the thing that we did. Yeah, and I appreciate you sharing that. In a nice way. Yes. So we're gonna come back to policy, Dr. Jamal and John. We are gonna get to the point where we're sharing ideas methodically about how to shape these norms. So this is just, hey, Kristen, we're not doing an exercise here, right? No, we're not. Okay, thank you. So I don't know yet. We're gonna keep moving on, but I will tell you that for many healthcare workplaces, barring Dr. Jamal's practice, taking a lunch break is very uncommon. And this is actually an issue for a lot of employees, whether they're telling you or not. Again, they may not be comfortable telling their manager. We know from the literature that this is an issue for many employees. Work-life balance is a huge need and a desire for a lot of employees. I'll show you some data in a minute. When I visit different parts of our institution, I said this earlier, and I ask employees what they need to support their well-being. Work-life is a big issue, and I would not be surprised if it's an issue in your workplace as well. We're gonna do another polling question, if we can get that up. Okay, so two-thirds said work-life and better personal well-being. I kind of primed the pump by saying it's really important, so maybe I shouldn't be so leading. But let's see what the data shows from the literature. This data is from Gallup. Employees were asked what they're looking for when they're looking for another job. And the second most popular answer is better work-life balance and personal well-being. And it's not far behind income and benefits. In fact, that gap has shrunk. They are much more close now than they were a few years ago. So rather than get to the point where your employees are looking for a job where it better supports their well-being and work-life balance, let's make sure they're getting it now so that we're not facing a vacancy. And if we're recruiting employees, let's start to think about what are we doing in our recruitment process that's helping potential candidates recognize how we support the health and well-being and the work-life balance of those people who work in our organization and what can we do for you when you become our new employee? And we'll have an opportunity to reflect on that question. There is a norms section on the bottom of page four. And what norms are we currently in place that support work? So why don't we point out some of the good things that are happening in your workplace and ones that you would like to build? I've mentioned a couple that are big, work-life balance, taking breaks, but I don't want to tell you you have to have those. You might have other things on your mind. And maybe, Eden, can I get a time check for... Sure, we are at 1020. So we were going essential time. We were thinking about breaking in about five minutes. Okay, very good. Okay, um, does anyone want to share a norm that does support work-life balance that you're currently doing in your... Melanie, the average age of people surveyed. I don't know the answer to that, honestly. I actually don't. I know that it was thousands of employees, and I don't think they restricted the age, if that helps. Oh, interesting. You're able to pull off the four-day workweek. Okay. Thank you for offering, Mark. Does anyone want to share one of the work-life balance norms that they're trying to achieve? Kendra, that's currently you offer some employees the ability to have a remote day. Oh, that's great, Melanie. I mean, that's a real morale lifter, I'm sure. Okay. We're going to take a 15-minute break. When we return, we're going to continue on this journey to try to figure out how we're going to shape norms that we want to see and behaviors in our community.

employee well-being

employee retention

employee recruitment

well-being culture

peer support

leadership engagement

work-life balance

stress management

social connectedness

positive work environment

trust in the workplace