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Hustle culture has long defined the American economy, with the general idea being that grinding hard and long enough will eventually lead to success. But a new generation of workers is out to undo that long-held belief and put a focus back on mental health and wellbeing, and it’s changing how leaders invest in their people and motivate them to do high-quality work.
“I think high performance and sustained high performance and that leading to business outcomes have never gone away,” said Jolen Anderson, chief people and community officer at BetterUp, a management development platform, during the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit on Tuesday. “However, we often lack the metrics to demonstrate what exactly is going to lead to outcomes, and as a result, that’s been replaced with this idea that face time, that just showing up, and spending more time in the office is going to lead to better outcomes when, in fact, it’s exactly the opposite.”
Put simply, people don’t need to work harder, they need to work smarter and it’s leading to a massive decline in performance across organizations. To overcome this, she said, leaders need to go back to what fuels performance: agency, optimism, motivation, and a focus on ensuring employees have the resources available to bring their best selves to work.
“When we focus on wellness and mental health and building resilience, there’s a direct tie to whether or not people are driving the right outcomes in the organization.”
Cesar Carvalho, CEO of Wellhub, a corporate wellness platform agreed, and took it a step further. Carvalho said bosses need to genuinely care about not just the work, but the person behind the work.
“We focus too much on individuals at work and at the workplace, and we forget about all the other hours that are not related to work. If you’re not sleeping well, if you’re not exercising, if you’re not eating well, it will have huge consequences on the way you perform at work. And we can’t forget that part.”
And while most large Fortune 500 companies have some kind of wellness programs, what matters more is whether or not workers are taking advantage of them. Carvalho said that too often, benefits like these are implemented only for the company to find out a year down the line that less than 5% of folks are actually taking advantage of them, which is a waste of money. To get participation, Anderson says it starts with offering flexible benefits tailored to real problems employees are facing outside of work, such as help paying off student loans, having a child, or planning for retirement.
“With today’s technology, there’s so much opportunity to design personal solutions, things that feel custom and give people agency around their experience.”
Brit Morse
brit.morse@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
