What does a corporate well-being company do when its own employees need help battling burnout?
As a corporate wellness and coaching company for athletes and 20% of the Fortune 100, Exos has an established history of helping people improve their performance. But the recent influx of stress and burnout in the workforce has meant they had to ensure an internal balance between work and time to recharge for their more than 3,000
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By gathering data through methods like monthly employee pulse surveys and combining the feedback with the values and needs of the business, Exos rolled out its own recovery plan, which they then published online for any other company to use last spring. In addition to the implementation of a six-month four-day workweek pilot program, the plan includes access to a virtual professional coaching program for sustainable performance, an app that guides employees through midday breaks for mental and physical wellness, and a scheduling cutback on meetings and team-building workshops.
"[The four-day workweek] started with, 'Do we believe this will help the organization?' And the answer for us was yes." says Greg Hill, chief people officer at Exos. "This was not just an employee proposition, it was a business proposition. We spend a lot of time talking about what we believe in and what the science says; we believe that a heavy load with heavy recovery equals sustained and happy performance."
The first step in judging whether or not this would work was
"The four-day workweek is only part of the conversation; it is about how you work differently and how you live differently with recovery being a priority," Hill says. "Once we started with that, the stress came off of individuals and teams because they realized this wasn't the rollout of a four-day workweek, it was a rollout of recovery. We also found that our workforce valued having two-thirds less meetings on a video, our teams enjoyed how they interacted more often and had permission to do asynchronous work versus conference calls. Many of our teams take a Monday or a Wednesday off. The freedom in this [has been] very, very well received."
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The company uses both quantitative and qualitative data such as performance appraisals, manager surveys and trackable data points to show whether the new schedule is resulting in the same or higher productivity levels than were recorded before it began, Hill says. Insights from employees have also been gleaned from employee resource group feedback and group chats, where leaders can better understand how the new schedule is impacting specific populations such as single parents, he adds.
As companies look for ways to incorporate
"Evaluate legacy practices and say, 'Are these really what we need to do to run the business,'" he says. "The pandemic taught every organization to treat their employees as people first, employees second, and it's an important reminder for all of us not to lose the human-first mentality when we have short memories as organizations."
