Chantaie Allick, left, and Natasha Singh formed their company Re-Work to help people redefine their relationship to work and to wellness in the workplace.Della Rollins
Natasha Singh burnt out in 2021.
She had worked in tech marketing for more than eight years, calling it a “roller coaster experience from startup to big corporate.” And while she says she learned a great deal during that time, “so many of those years were deep in burnout.”
Although there were wellness programs to support employees in place at her organizations, a lack of inclusive activities and significant work demands made participating a challenge for Ms. Singh. While her colleagues were finding time to take advantage of gym memberships or lunchtime activities, she felt she couldn’t.
“I would watch my peers and [they] were going to yoga at lunch. They were going to work out at 5 p.m. They were centring their wellness first and work second,” says Ms. Singh. “My peers were white people, and I was one of the only people of colour at the time in the organization. It was their level of privilege. The things they don’t have to worry about, that I do, are different.”
Ms. Singh notes that while wellness programs may be “well-intentioned,” those perks are often based on feedback loops.
“If your [organization’s] feedback loop is predominantly white and not offering for a diverse group of people, what do you expect? They’re just Band-Aids because they’re not getting to the root of my problem,” she says.
This led Ms. Singh and Chantaie Allick to co-found Re-Work in 2022, a community-led organization to help folks redefine their relationship to work and to wellness in workplaces.
“When Natasha and I worked in tech, those lunchtime yoga or Pilates courses were all taught by white women,” says Ms. Allick. “I personally want to learn from people more connected to the culture or my culture. It’s [about] who you’re choosing to bring into these spaces because almost always they are white, and they are reflective of that white majority.”
A collective approach to wellness
The concept of “wellness at work” likely brings to mind programs such as lunch and learns, employee assistance programs (EAP) and free gym memberships. But there is a movement, led by people like Ms. Singh and Ms. Allick, to change how workplaces understand employee well-being.
“Culturally, we normalize and valorize burnout and stress and overwork, and my experience of those corporate wellness initiatives and offerings [is that they are] there to make it easier for you to work harder,” says Ms. Allick. “We’re trying to shift culture and the way people think about work and [their] relationship to work.”
Toronto-based DEI consulting firm Feminuity recently developed a resource, “Decolonizing Wellness: A Guide for Workplaces to Successfully Cultivate Well-Being For All Team Members,” to help organizations reimagine wellness at work.
Dr. Sarah Saska, CEO at Feminuity, points out that the idea of wellness originated in many communities that experienced marginalization, specifically Black, queer and Indigenous communities. “[Wellness] was always about connecting culture, community, land, mind and body in ways that benefit the collective,” she says.
Today, however, “workplaces have extracted the notion of wellness in such a way that it’s about how can we help each individual be more productive for the sake of the workplace,” says Dr. Saska. “It’s now about, ‘Hey, how can I help you relax for 45 minutes on a massage table so you can come back and execute on your work plan, hopefully, a little bit more productively, so that you can get it done more efficiently.’”
She adds, “Where is the ‘team’ in that approach to wellness? It’s totally lost in translation.”
Employers need to look at the systems that surround the workplace and address what is stopping people from feeling psychologically safe at work, says Dr. Saska, such as unsustainable workloads, unclear expectations, ambiguity, oppressive systems, discrimination and more. “Those things that can’t be quickly solved through just your mindfulness app.”
Wellness vs. productivity
Chivon John, a wellness leader at a global tech company, says decolonizing wellness means identifying whether systems are working well together to support all employees. It’s not about individuals making time for a self-care practice; it’s about employers realizing there are different needs in the workplace and that some wellness initiatives cause more problems than they solve.
“Wellness is a state of being,” says Ms. John. “It goes down to how we feel within our team; how we feel in terms of the work we do. You’re not addressing the root cause if you are not looking at it from the collective perspective. It’s something that we collectively, at the organizational and industrial and employee level, commit to making part of the practices of what we do.”
Faith Tull is an author and senior HR executive who has worked for several large global organizations, creating employee wellness programs. She says that changing how we look at wellness is necessary and being intentional with language of wellness is important. But the very mention of decolonizing anything can make employers nervous.
The first step should be to “demystify what [decolonizing wellness] means, so that they can understand, because they do want to do well,” says Ms. Tull. “A lot of folks will say, ‘My intention is never to make people feel uncomfortable. I’m trying to be a good employer,’ but they need to understand, from the bare minimum first, before they address that bigger problem.”
For example, says Ms. Tull, many employers see productivity as key to success. When wellness initiatives take time away from the actual work – an all-hands, half-day mental health retreat, for example – it can cause conflict.
“That’s where we need to spend time educating. ‘If you invest in this, the results will be less absenteeism,’” she says. “When you start talking the language, they’re going to hear you.”
Disrupt the feedback loops
When organizations are reviewing their wellness initiatives, they need to look at those feedback loops and see if all people are included, says Ms. John.
She encourages employers to ask themselves these questions when creating wellness initiatives: “Have you diversified the types of programming and teaching? Do all the practitioners, for example, look a certain way? Who are the different voices that you’re bringing to the table? What are the organizations that you’re working with?”
When it comes to switching wellness from individual responsibility to focusing on the collective, Ms. Singh and Ms. Allick say it’s essential that organizations review how wellness affects all parts of the organization. Employers should allow and encourage people to set boundaries around their work and ensure that managers are implementing a culture of wellness rather than a culture of overwork.
“If your boss is sending you emails all through the weekend and every night, you’re going to assume that standard of work and you’re going to work accordingly. If your boss looks at you askance when you leave right at five to go live your life, that’s creating culture,” says Ms. Allick.
“The most important thing a leader can do, and this is a question we get often, is to model behaviour, because that changes culture.”
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