Workplace Wellness

Today at the first meeting of the company safety and wellness committee, we discussed purchasing AEDs (defibrillators) and holding CPR and first aid classes but did not get to the part of the agenda labeled “Physical and Intellectual Wellness Programs,” which included cool ideas such as lectures and workshops on stress management, meditation, and yoga in addition to the shitty fucking idea of a company weight loss competition.

As the meeting dispersed, a coworker friend suggested programs to the facilitator that might reward employees for wellness achievements over time, such as smoking cessation, which created a segue for me to tell the facilitator I’d be emailing her with similar ideas so I wouldn’t spend an extra hour talking her ear off on the spot.

Hi [person in charge],

I enjoyed our discussions today and am excited to participate in these safety and wellness initiatives going forward. I especially want to offer input on the suggested wellness programs on the agenda that we didn't get to cover today.

The concern with weight loss programs/competitions is that they lend themselves toward under-eating and overexercising in order to win rather than focusing on actual health habits. They are also problematic in that they can be triggering and outright dangerous for people who have or are in remission from eating disorders, which is honestly a much wider-spread issue than anyone wants to talk about. Further, they set up competitions that reward a select number of people but exclude many who cannot participate in the first place due to health concerns and limitations, low initial weight, and differing personal health priorities.

However, there are many types of wellness challenges that can eliminate all the above issues. I’ll do some research on specific program setups, but for example: allowing participants to choose a healthy behavior to pursue from among a handful of options is more inclusive* for anyone who is interested. Behaviors that are shown to improve health outcomes, unlike intentional weight loss efforts, include eating more vegetables, smoking cessation, getting enough sleep on a regular basis, and adding or increasing enjoyable physical activity (e.g., setting up step-counting/tracking goals, beginning a 5k training program, moving from a sedentary lifestyle to exercising X times per week, from an active lifestyle to increasingly challenging goals or adding strength training).

Thanks for your time and interest in these issues, and I look forward to further discussion and planning.

Warm regards,

Me

The reply I received:

Fabulous input!  Really important to give thought to such issues.  Thank you for looking into this for us!  Love it and really appreciate your support and participation!

Since I was on a positive roll, I sent in another idea:

Last summer we collected a petition/list of names of at least 50 employees who were very interested in using the business complex’s new fitness center on a regular basis (several times a week) in exchange for company assistance with the membership fee. Though the $120 yearly fee is very inexpensive when one thinks of it as $10/month, there is no month-to-month payment option, and it’s difficult for many of us to find or justify spending a lump sum like that on non-essential recreation. We submitted the petition to [HR] but never heard anything after.

In truth, there are myriad studies linking employee wellness to better gains for the company due to fewer sick days and increased focus and productivity as a direct result of engaging in regular fitness. With so many interested [OurCompany] employees and with  [OurCompany] comprising such a significant portion of the business complex, [OurCompany] is also uniquely positioned to negotiate a lower membership rate for us as a bloc.

This might be something worth following up on or reopening.

Thanks!

I’m keeping my fingers crossed. That fitness center is GORGEOUS and has a full lockerroom with showers I’d love to access after my mid-afternoon runs, as well as a squat rack, kettlebell set, and other weightlifting equipment that my city rec center lacks.

*I know these ideas alone fail to address all barriers, but I’ll expand on that in another post.

Good things at work

So far in my work, I've typically had free reign rein to make content and copy edits as I saw fit on lessons written by contractors that I'd never speak to. But since another editor quit, I am working with more of our in-house writers, some for the first time on long reading passages which are not the type of content I've edited here before. So I worried whether my editing was too heavy handed or whether the curriculum team would want more feedback on content, which is not my strong suit since I don't have much teaching experience.

I took time to confer with the writer because I had a few questions about her intended meaning in some places where dialogue trailed off and on her use of ellipses versus dashes in those places and then made copious notes and edits, to a degree which would likely wound any young writer's ego, crossed my fingers, and sent it off.

A few days later, I ran into her in the break room and asked how her weekend went, and she took the opportunity to give thanks and gush about how great my corrections and comments were, how much she loved my suggestions, how much she was able to learn in the process on this one ~2700-word passage, and how much her supervisor (?*) loved my edits.

I was surprised, excited, and deeply humbled by her words, and it has made my day when I've lately been feeling down on my job and hating the commute and was really pissed off about being rear-ended on my way home last Friday. We were already slightly understaffed when half our editors quit in November, and I have been disappointed and stressed out over the increased workload ever since. But I set up a workable schedule today for all the projects in my queue so far through the end of the month and am feeling reinvigorated by this recent feedback.

I should have a review coming up at the end of the month, and with two fewer editors to pay and a serious need to keep us remaining two around, this will hopefully translate into beneficial offerings from the company then. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much because I got a nice raise last year, but I need the money and probably even deserve it now. Someday I'll get to fulfill my dream of working freelance projects entirely from home for less than full time, but for now, everything is going to be OK.

*I don't know what to call a "managing writer" or what the other woman's official title is, but she oversees the work of this other writer and leads their team on certain projects.