Contented New Year!?!

Contented New Year! Sounds odd, doesn’t it? You want to wish happiness to everyone close to you. If you are a bit more generous with words, you may even add, “Wishing you health, love, and prosperity in 2010.” Why these words? Because we know that happiness comes from health, inner peace, stability, and a fulfilled life.

Over the last 12 years, working in the wellness industry, I have come to realize that simple truths equally apply to both personal and business situations. One of these truths is that people want nothing more than to be happy. Since people spend nearly a third of their life at work, wouldn’t it be natural to assume that a lot can and should happen at the workplace that could contribute to a person’s happiness?

Workplace wellness programs started out as a tool to achieve lower health care costs through controlling health risk factors among an organization’s population. With experience, managers and wellness experts learned—-much like doctors did over long centuries—-that a quick fix to a symptom will not cure the disease.

Human beings and human organizations are complex and constantly changing. They are affected by internal and external events, so simply addressing physical risk factors without addressing psychosocial risk factors will only provide temporary relief, if that. Think about health risks as symptoms and well-being factors are the CAUSES. Why do you smoke? With whom? Triggered by what? It is as critically important to rigorously measure health risks, biometrics AND underlying casual biopsychosocial factors. This gives the whole picture of total wellbeing.

So what is a holistic wellness program? The key to shifting the wellness paradigm is understanding that there are at lease four distinct components to a person’s well-being: physical health, financial health, personal health and professional health.

In my experience, balance comes from addressing and working on the key elements of well-being all the time by making wellness a priority. A holistic approach embedded in the corporate culture can and does work for long-term return on investment. Naturally, the workplace won’t replace individual accountability for many aspects of life; it can actually encourage it with the right communication style, effective reward system, and a powerful social force that comes from having wellness champions on your teams.

A new year always brings with it a certain openness that allows people to explore new ideas, and I would encourage HR professionals, executive management, and leaders to devote a meeting in January to discussing happiness and how the workplace does or could contribute to it. You might find your team to become the most animated and engaged you’ve ever seen them in your conference room.