Chapter 7
The Activities and Cues: Self-Care to WE-Care
WE-Care in the Workplace
We remember seeing a viral tweet from entrepreneur Randi Zuckerberg that touches on why organizations need WE-care. “The entrepreneur’s dilemma: Maintaining friendships. Building a great company. Spending time with family. Staying fit. Getting sleep. Pick three.” This dilemma is all too common for nonprofit professionals as well. In this chapter, we focus on activities and cues that you can integrate into your workplace well-being initiatives to help address this dilemma. Activities are events that require participation designed to support organizational well-being for greater productivity and morale boosts. Cues are environmental reminders that make happy and healthy choices easier for employees to make.
Workplace activities are typically group undertakings in the form of programs that help your staff work together to acquire self-care habits and practices. Activities can be introduced into every aspect of your organization—from the C-suite to teams across all departments as well as at all-staff meetings and events. They can take place on-site at your organization’s workplace or off-site—for example, offering a gym discount at the local YMCA—but well-being activities are definitely not just about the discounts.
When identifying and designing activities for your organization, keep in mind the following guidelines:
- Identify the value proposition for employees.
- Understand individual employee motivations and barriers to participation, and design programs accordingly.
- Align activities with productivity outcomes.
- Link to measurable results and measure.
Cues can be visuals like signs in physical areas including hallways, walls, elevators, stairwells, offices, and common spaces or take digital form such as screen savers, e-mails, and documents or videos on an intranet. Cues can be words or images but can also be sounds and even music. For example, when it is time for everyone at The United Way in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to pause work and walk a mile together, a bell rings. Do Something in New York City holds “Toto Tuesdays” where they encourage staff to leave the office on time by playing Toto’s 1980s hit “Africa” until everyone goes home.
Activities and cues don’t have to break your nonprofit’s budget. Check with your health insurance company representative to see if it offers resources, incentives, and packaged programs to help you easily plan and implement well-being activities and cues for your WE-care as part of your health care benefits package. Community organizations like your local YMCA, chapter of the American Heart Association, hospital, and other groups may offer free or low-cost programs, activities, and materials you can use.
If your organization tries to launch random activities without support from senior leadership or feedback and participation from employees, participation will likely be disappointingly low. One associate director of a mental health agency told us how excited she was when one of her new employees instituted a Tuesday afternoon yoga and meditation class. When we checked back with her several months later to see how it was going, she told us, “We have not been doing yoga nor meditation at work. There wasn’t much buy-in from employees, and the busy-ness of the day has taken over our Tuesday afternoons.”
On reflection, she told us, “There was not enough motivation to sustain participation. We needed to have senior leadership and the organization make yoga or mindfulness a priority so that it was okay to participate and not just give it lip service.”
We’ve heard many similar stories about nonprofits rushing to implement a well-being activity or program but neglecting to get leadership on board or to consult with staff. According to Melanie Duppins, VP of human capital and teacher outreach at DonorsChoose, the most successful initiatives for her organization happen when the executive team holds conversations about what staff wants. Then leadership empowers staff to take the lead.
Well-intentioned but piecemeal programming won’t gain the same kind of traction as a well-organized series of programs based on a larger Happy, Healthy Strategy. See Chapter 9 for tips on developing your overarching strategy. Addressing the Wellness Triad of sleep, nutrition, and exercise is a great place to start to stretch and strengthen your organization’s happy and healthy muscles, even at the office.
Sleep Activities and Cues
Sleep in the workplace may seem like an oxymoron, and sleeping on the job can be a bad thing. But without enough sleep, employees are unable to focus or perform simple tasks and lack patience. People who are cranky from lack of sleep are not fun to be around. Studies show that daytime napping can elevate moods and even improve immune function.1 Napping during the day can improve cognitive functioning, leading to greater productivity at work.2 When concentration wanes in the late afternoon and early evening, experts suggest taking a 20-minute nap to prevent an energy dip.
In other parts of the world, midday naps are an important part of the culture and are viewed as crucial to the productivity of employees. Lester F. Coutinho, deputy director at the Gates Foundations, noted, “I grew up in Goa, India, where all the businesses and markets closed from 2:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M. for siesta. This is still practiced as a way of being susegado or easy going in a nonderogatory way.”
In the for-profit sector, a growing number of corporations such as Google, Apple, Zappos, AOL, Time Warner, Facebook, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble, and Nike offer employees napping rooms or “sleep pods,” small enclosed spaces that make office napping private and convenient.3 Some have even invested in “nap desks”4 or “napping chairs.”5 Arianna Huffington, author of Sleep Revolution, is a champion of getting enough sleep and even put employee nap rooms in the offices of the Huffington Post.
In contrast, in the nonprofit sector, nap rooms or sleep pods are extremely rare. Some nonprofit professionals we interviewed use power naps to restore their energy, even if it is not an activity sanctioned by their organizations. Says one nonprofit professional, “I used to nap on the floor under a desk at my nonprofit, but I always felt like I was sneaking.”
Evonne Heyning, a tech and media strategy consultant producing with ExO (Exponential Organizations), recalls, “At my first nonprofit job, I would take a walk during my lunch break or just lie on a blanket out on the lawn of our office compound. It wasn’t an official policy.” Says Jen Bokoff, director of knowledge services at Foundation Center, “There’s a couch in my office, and I regularly close my eyes on it. But napping is not a formal part of our organizational policy.”
Meka S. Sales, health care program officer at The Duke Endowment, serves on an employee committee that oversees the endowment’s well-being in the workplace initiatives. As part of the voluntary program, employees wear trackers that monitor not only fitness activity but also sleep. The organization holds monthly challenges including a sleep challenge. Participants said they gained a lot of awareness of their sleep habits and could improve them. Says Sales, “Trackers have become a cultural norm, and there is a lot of water cooler conversation around people exchanging how much sleep they get.”
Sleep is critical to doing good work. Having conversations about sleep at work, accommodating rest time and even midday naps, and building sleep challenges into other health-related challenges are just some of the ways of elevating the value of sleep at your organization. Your organization will reap the rewards of a well-rested staff!
Nutrition Activities and Cues
Good nutrition is also critical for working effectively and starts with knowing what to eat and what to avoid. At home, you may be successful at avoiding sugary snacks because you didn’t put them into your shopping cart at the store so they are not readily available in your kitchen. But at work, if there are chocolate covered doughnuts in the conference room at a staff meeting, you might be more tempted to indulge, especially if the CEO is stuffing his or her face with the sugary treat.
Cindy Leonard, a trainer at the Bayer Center, says, “Our nonprofit conducts a lot of events and workshops. The leftovers, naturally, are put in the fridge for staff to consume. Some leftovers, like carrots and humus, are healthy, but the potato chips and cookies are not snacks I want to eat. It challenges my discipline of trying to eat in a healthy way.”
Having a plan for making healthy foods and beverages available at the office is an effective well-being activity, and placing them prominently in the break room can act as a cue to help everyone make better nutritional choices.
Carole Caplan, formerly with Fair Food Network, a nonprofit that focuses on a more sustainable and just food system, says their staff lived, or rather ate, the organization’s mission every day.
“The lack of a microwave and daily use of the stove brought the aroma of what our work was all about directly into the workplace. We exchanged ideas and recipes, and we celebrated successes with homemade pickles and locally brewed beer.”
Providing healthy foods at meetings doesn’t take any more effort than providing unhealthy food. Amy Sample Ward, executive director of NTEN, says their office is near a weekly farmer’s market so it’s convenient to pick up a bag of fresh fruit for weekly staff meetings. Also, Ward is vigilant about serving gluten-free options including at NTEN-sponsored events and board meetings.
The Kaiser Permanente Healthy Meetings Guide offers 15 tips for light meals and snacks that are simple and low cost. They recommend putting the food on a side table so it’s harder to reach for second helpings. The American Heart Association’s (AHA) Healthy Workplace Food and Beverage Toolkit provides nutritional guidance for food in the workplace and practical action tips that are also low cost to implement.
With long work hours, grabbing food from vending machines is all too common at nonprofits. Because vending machines are visible and convenient, the AHA recommends in its tool kit to improve the nutritional quality of vending machine selections. Provide healthy vending machine snacks as a sign that your organization cares about the health of your employees. The individual and organizational benefits are worth it!
Here’s an activity: Why not celebrate “National Eating Healthy Day,” the first Wednesday in November, to raise awareness at your organization about the importance of good nutrition and good eating decisions? The American Heart Association sponsors the event and also provides a free tool kit specifically about this event. Even if participation is optional in these types of organization-wide activities, some benefits will inevitably rub off on nonparticipants through the power of positive influence.
For a more regular activity, consider combining healthy eating with communal meals like Pathways to Education Canada, an organization that helps low-income youth transition to college.
“As an experiment, we decided to pick up a crockpot from the Canadian Craigslist, and that was the beginning of Crockpot Mondays,” explains Jason Shim, associate director, digital strategy and alumni relations at Pathways. “All meals must be vegan and gluten-free, and the food must be consumed with others in the staff kitchen—no grabbing and going. Crockpot Mondays is part of the fabric of Pathways because people mention it to job candidates as a perk of working at our organization. Crockpot Mondays has allowed our 50-member staff to share their culinary talents, as well as connect with one another over meals that have been meticulously prepared.” NTEN’s Ward says, “I noticed that staff often eat at their desks because we do a lot of webinars or remote meetings. So we decided to have a weekly communal healthy brown bag lunch on Thursdays. We have remote staff, so we bring them in via a Google Hangout, and they join us at the table.”
Eating together, and the social interaction of shared meals, provides many boosts to individual well-being. Collaborating on meals and breaking bread also builds and strengthens relationships, a boon to any organization. When those meals are healthy, everyone wins.
Exercise Activities and Cues
Exercise programs are probably one of the most common initiatives or employee benefits implemented to promote workplace well-being. Fitness activities can take a number of forms depending on everything from your office location to your organization’s budget to staff size to employee interest. We encourage you to get creative and not just do fitness as usual. Christine Egger, a nonprofit consultant, says, “I think the trick is to integrate fitness and exercise into your workday.” We agree!
Many nonprofits offer gym discounts, on-site fitness classes, or organized sports activities. This is the low-hanging fruit of fitness perks. The AHA incorporates many exercise activities at work. Employees are encouraged to take part in coaching sessions, fitness challenges, and organized and individual exercise or physical activity at work. AHA also offers onsite fitness classes in their exercise facilities and subsidized off-site gym memberships.6
Crisis Response Network in Tempe, Arizona, transformed an old training room into an on-site workout room after employees said they would use it to let off steam from their stressful work. The organization’s health insurance carrier, Cigna, covered the cost of the equipment for the on-site gym under the organization’s plan. According to Justin Chase, president, and Alexandra Zavala, VP of business operations and community integration, their organization’s Employee Engagement Committee polled employees about what specific exercise equipment to purchase. The makeshift on-site gym is not only popular with staff who use it regularly, but the organization sees a significant decrease in health insurance claims.
Allyson Kapin, cofounder of Rad Campaign, which builds nonprofit websites, brings in a personal trainer to lead group workouts at the office twice a week. Says Kapin, “The staff loves it. It’s a nice break from sitting or standing at the computer, keeps them more fit, and it’s actually a lot of fun. Even though the workout is quite challenging, we joke around a lot and bond over the experience of doing lots of burpees. We can also get competitive with our plank time, and it’s not unheard of for us to have a plank-off.”
Not all nonprofit worksites are suitable for offering on-site fitness. Also, not all employees want to exercise at work; some prefer to work out in a gym or at home. The CDC offers a tool kit to help organizations identify, negotiate, and contract with fitness club providers for discounts and benefits. Many nonprofits organize group sports activities and challenges for staff that not only encourage exercise but also create a fitness-conscious community at work, building camaraderie. Staff members at GuideStar’s Williamsburg, Virginia, office, for example, do laps around the walking paths in their office area together as a group.
Luz Gomez, director of research at the Knight Foundation, says staff started posting ideas on what wellness meant to them on the office’s Slack channel (a mobile team communications app). Recalls Gomez, “I asked if anyone was interested in putting together a beginner’s tennis class, and to my surprise, I got five people ready to do it. We had a great time. I don’t know any of my coworkers that well, so it’s nice to get to know them in a different setting.”
Fitness challenges in the workplace are popular and easy to implement. Sharon Parkinson, senior analyst of prospect development and research at Vassar College, says, “During the fall, there’s a campus-wide walking challenge for staff to form walking groups and log steps. The competition is fun, and we increase our steps every week.”
Shanon Doolittle, a nonprofit consultant who worked as a staff member for a nonprofit health care organization with fitness initiatives, recalls, “For every fitness challenge we completed, we earned points. And at the end, if we had enough points, we received a discount that reduced our health care premiums during open enrollment. Each of our annual staff barbeques included a fitness activity, too, whether it was kickball, a hula-hoop contest, or volleyball. We were always intentional about adding a physical activity—other than eating.”
At AHA headquarters in Dallas, in addition to the activities mentioned earlier, they have onsite walking paths. The AHA offers many useful resources and tips for organizations to integrate fitness into the workplace. One place to start is downloading the AHA’s online Workplace Walking Program Kit that helps you create walking routes around the office and rewards for employees who get out of their chairs and become more active at work.
Some organizations have found that signs are simple, low cost, and effective fitness cues. The American Heart Association uses flyers and posters with advice like “Park Far, Get Ahead,” to encourage employees to park their cars farther from the office and walk more. Get creative with signs to remind employees to add a little exercise into their workday. Peter Campbell, chief information officer at Legal Services Corporation, says his HR department put up signs at the elevators encouraging employees to use the stairs. According to the CDC’s online resource, “StairWELL to Better Health,”7 using the stairs instead of going to the gym or taking a fitness class requires little additional time, no clothing change, and no additional costs. The signs Campbell’s organization used are free downloads from the CDC’s site.
“Our HR team is always encouraging us to be physically active, to the point where many of us hate getting caught taking the elevator,” says Campbell.
One reason employees might not use the stairs could be because they perceive them as unattractive or unsafe. CDC’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity conducted a study beginning in 1998 to see if making physical changes to a stairwell in the Atlanta-based Koger Center Rhodes Building, combined with music and motivational signs, would motivate employees to use the stairs. They saw an increase in employees using the enhanced stairwells for exercise.
Some nonprofits provide encouragement to staff to incorporate walking commutes or even biking, if possible. Kenny Kane, cofounder of Stupid Cancer, a nonprofit that addresses cancer in young adults, says his organization covers the cost of a CitiBike membership (a bike sharing service) for their six employees, a perk from their human resources vendor, Justworks. NTEN’s Ward says that her office provides bike racks for those who bicycle to work like she does every day.
Simply implementing programs is not enough. Adding cues like signs and other reminders helps to trigger better behavior. Small and manageable investments like a crockpot in the break room or bike racks in the entryway show staff that your organization believes in and supports WE-care.
The Physical Office
We mentioned using parts of the physical office space, such as stairs and hallways, to promote well-being, but there’s a lot more your organization can do to improve its environment. A physical office space is made up of everything from the art that hangs on the walls and the office floor plan to features such as standing desks, communal spaces, and a quiet room or lounge area where staff can take a break. When nonprofits invest in creating physical spaces that make employees want to show up for work, staff will be more engaged, productive, happy, and healthy. There are numerous reports, indices, and studies, such as Gensler’s Workplace Index, that explore the relationship between the physical space and business performance metrics and the things employees value.
The Gensler study suggests employees need four different types of work areas to be productive to: focus, collaborate, learn, and socialize. A happy, healthy workplace is not about a fixed floor plan with designer furniture but about providing employees multiple modes of working, either alone or in groups. Experts in office design8 say the new emphasis on employee well-being and engagement means cubicles are disappearing and being replaced by nonassigned seating, flexible and multipurpose spaces, and communal tables and workspaces. All of the latest designs try to link well-being, physical office environments, and productivity.
Take a moment to look at your nonprofit’s office workspace. How does it make you feel? Do you get excited and energized or do you feel as if you are walking into a toxic wasteland? Your organization’s physical office space may reflect the scarcity mentality that pervades nonprofit culture and may be perpetuating it as well.
While nonprofits may not have the budget to purchase stylish and expensive office furnishings and artwork, improving the physical office can be done inexpensively. Women’s Alliance for Knowledge Exchange (WAKE), a small nonprofit that leverages technology to amplify the work of women leading change, rents a tiny office at the Tides Center in San Francisco. Its furniture is ergonomic and well designed, but it was purchased secondhand at a very low cost. The team displays beautiful photographs and artwork in the office, all provided as gifts from key partners and collaborators.
Says WAKE cofounders Trish Tierney and Heather Ramsey, “It didn’t cost much to transform this office into an inspiring place to come into work every day. The key for us was to get practical pieces but also to include fun elements that bring us joy, like our curtain panels and pillows made by a friend with fabric we picked out together in Rwanda.”
DonorsChoose, a nonprofit that raises money for school programs, was recognized as having one of the world’s best-designed offices at World Festival of Interiors. When we saw the photos of their gorgeous space, we wondered how a nonprofit could ever afford the decor. Explains DonorsChoose’s Melanie Duppins, “We secured beautiful pro-bono design work from Eight, Inc., and tens of thousands of dollars worth of donated furniture and materials, although our new office has been one of the largest structural investments we’ve made in our team and organization to date.”
The DonorsChoose board supported this investment because:
- It provided a clean, functional, and well-designed office that would allow staff to collaborate better.
- It could help the organization attract and retain top talent.
- The staff had outgrown its previous workspace and intended to move to accommodate an anticipated increase in headcount.
- The COO was willing to execute the project and ensure it happened without a hitch.
According to Duppins, the investment has paid off. “In last year’s employee survey, one of our top drivers of employee retention was the quality of relationships that existed between team members and across the organization. We believe the open layout of our office fuels these relationships and helps us preserve a culture of humility, teamwork, and transparency.”
The most valuable space in the DonorsChoose office is what staff members call “the playground,” a flexible space that contains lots of cozy seating and standing areas where staff can work when they need a break from their desks.
Says Duppins, “This not only helps staff climb out of the afternoon slump, it allows for impromptu problem solving and brainstorming sessions—and time to eat your lunch away from your desk. Both full-time and part-time staff love this space; it’s part of the reason why, although many staff have the ability to work from home more often, most come in to the office to work every day.”
James Siegal, CEO of KaBOOM!, an organization that helps communities design and build playgrounds, says the KaBOOM! office space is designed to bring a sense of play into the workplace.
“Our meeting rooms all feature dry-erase walls for brainstorming and holding highly interactive meetings,” says Siegal. “We have a communal kitchen area—known as the KaFE—that is bustling throughout the day as staff come in and out with coffee, tea, breakfast, and lunch, and others hold scheduled or impromptu meetings at the counter space or around the café tables.”
Playground components throughout their space include a tire swing in the lobby and a park bench by their front door. Other playground items are used as additional seating at individual workstations. The office has an open floor plan with most cubical walls at half-height so collaboration can take place throughout the day.
“There’s a lot of natural light throughout the space, and during warmer seasons many meetings are moved outside,” says Siegal. “We even have folding lawn chairs available so staff can comfortably have meetings outside on the plaza.” Siegal adds that the sense of community at KaBOOM! is strong among staff and across the entire organization, supported in part by the environment, the culture, and team-building activities.
The Changing Workstation
We’ve talked about using standing desks and treadmill desks to stop sitting all day. Alternative desks are really valuable for productivity and mental acuity, not to mention the health benefits.
“When I returned to regular staff life, after one day of sitting, my brain felt like mud. And my butt hurt,” says Gina Schmeling from Hazon, a Jewish environmental organization working to build a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community. “I ordered a Varidesk and used it for many months in the open, shared space in our offices. It was often immediately noticeable to visitors and people arriving to work if I had it up. When people were curious, I showed them how it worked, and told them how much I enjoyed it.” Whenever she travels, she invites fellow staff members to log in at her computer and try it.
Your nonprofit doesn’t need to break the bank to get specialized desks for all employees. Many nonprofits can afford to set up one or two standing desks for communal use. There are many inexpensive standing desk hacks using everything from cartons to music stands. There are also affordable desk toppers that mimic full standing desks. As we mentioned in Chapter 5, get an ergonomic assessment of the standing desks at your office to avoid injury and invest in soft padded mats.
Some nonprofits take workstations to a more active level by adding treadmill desks into the workplace. Desks that prompt movement can be particularly helpful at nonprofits where employees are dealing with crisis situations and susceptible to secondary trauma. In Georgia, many of the 911 call-takers in Gwinnett County tested out treadmills at their standing desks while handling calls. The program was overseen by a fitness coach with Gwinnett County’s Wellness Program as part of a six-month study to document the health and stress reduction benefits.9
Before you install treadmill desks at your organization, encourage your staff to consult their doctors as they would before undertaking any exercise program. Check our website, www.happyhealthynonprofit.org, for more resources around movement at work.
Human Interactions
In Chapter 6, we mentioned a study that found the way employees treat each other affects stress levels. We also talked about techniques individuals can use to manage their relationships in the workplace. There are also ways your organization can foster a positive work environment. This could start with implementing more stringent hiring practices, such as “the no asshole rule,”10 to screen out potentially toxic employees. Better yet, establish compassion and kindness rituals, or even just encourage everyone to be human, to promote employee well-being.
Dennis McMillan, former executive director for the Foraker Group in Anchorage, Alaska, says, “It is hard to obtain everyone’s peak performance without human connection. One option is to assure that everyone in positions of influence has personal contact with every employee, every day. How hard is it for those leaders to walk around and say hello? I guarantee it will take less time to do that than to address the issues that arise when an isolated employee burns out. Walking around, saying hello, being human, is the cheapest advice we can provide to prevent burnout.”
At the Cara Program, a Chicago-based nonprofit that helps adults affected by homelessness and poverty get and keep quality jobs, stakeholders engage in a daily morning ritual that evolved organically over the organization’s 25-year history. Every morning, clients, staff, and guests gather in a circle in the organization’s meeting room and answer a question of the day, such as, “Who or what gives you great joy and why?” or “What has happened in your life that has motivated you to change?” Participants share inspiring stories of personal growth and change. The morning ritual is not a visual show for donors but a chance for all to reflect on what makes everyone human. Staff and visitors alike say the experience is energizing.
“Let’s face it—the work that we do is difficult,” says Executive Director Maria Kim. “It’s thorny and resides deep in the beauty and the mess of the human condition, and for people to thrive in this work, it requires proximity to the mission. An ability to know—in a moment, and without airs—that the work matters to real people at real inflection points in their lives. When we do this, we feel the power of the work. And on the toughest of days, that makes us feel really, really good.”
Cara incorporates many other rituals to create community at work including organizing communal meals as well as taking field trips once a quarter where they tackle a topic or let off steam. They’ve even held a karaoke event.
“What we lacked in pitch, we certainly made up for in laughs,” recalls Kim. “We also have a culture of affirmation—where we publically and periodically single out each other’s contributions through a verbal high five.” Cara’s activities and cues encourage collegiality.
Melanie Duppins of DonorsChoose says the number one reason why their employees have long tenures working for the organization is because of their people-first culture.
“Our job in human resources is to connect [staff] with each other with simple activities. We use the ‘YouEarnedIt’ platform (http://youearnedit.com/) that allows staff to give each other shout-outs and accumulate points. They can redeem those points for a cash donation to one of the DonorsChoose classrooms,” Melanie explains. The activity of giving gratitude is strongly aligned with the organization’s mission.
Henry Timms, executive director of 92nd Street Y and cofounder of #GivingTuesday, says Rabbi Peter Rubinstein, 92Y’s director of Jewish community, leads a weekly Kiddush every Friday. The rabbi’s role is to oversee Jewish life at 92Y and work with staff to further the Jewish values that are the core of the organization’s work. The weekly staff gathering is an opportunity to step back and connect with colleagues. Timms, who is not Jewish, says, “It provides such a simple but meaningful moment and has attracted not just Jewish colleagues but those of a range of faiths. Many look forward to it all week, just to take a chance to stop and be together. It reminded me of how powerful these kinds of rituals can be.”
Timms says a group of staff started another weekly Friday event focused on fitness—not at the same time—where staff members take turns leading workouts open to everyone at the organization. They do everything from parkour and circuits to a run around Central Park. Timms reports there is a great turnout for both gatherings, and the activities add something important to the environment at 92Y, and, ultimately, to the staff’s work.
Taryn Degnan, former communications staff for Common Sense Media, said staff there did something in their office they called “SURPRAISE!”
“One day, you’d walk into work, and 50 to 75 colleagues had written your praises all over Post-it notes that were stuck to your desk and computer,” Degnan recalls. “It was an awesome way to have your spirits lifted and feel good about your place in the office—especially coming from many [people] you never talk to.”
Traci Townsend-Gieg, a nonprofit consultant, practiced a gratitude ritual of making thank-you cards when she worked as a regional director of a health care nonprofit.
Says Townsend-Gieg, “We were on the front lines providing patient care and had so many people backing us up. So we’d do sparkly art therapy and make and sign the cards and then ship them out in the interoffice mail. It made us all feel good.”
At many health care organizations, both patients and health care workers can experience stress. To address this risk, the North Hawaii Community Hospital11 (NHCH), a 35-bed acute care hospital, created a ritual called Code Lavender, a call for support and prayer that can be initiated by patients or employees for themselves, colleagues, friends, family members, or even to be held at upcoming events.
To initiate a Code Lavender, the individual submits the date, time, and reason for the request to the hospital’s holistic care services department. The recipient of the Code Lavender call must give permission for it to take place. An announcement is made, and everyone gathers in the hospital’s chapel. At the chapel, the request’s purpose is explained, a prayer is offered, and the recipient is presented with a prayer blanket sewn by community members and blessed by local churches. Refreshments are served and other care services such as aromatherapy and oshibori—a Japanese hot towel therapy—are made available.
Code Lavender reinforces the hospital’s vision, mission, and spirit-centered culture of care while boosting staff morale, reducing stress and fatigue, and strengthening bonds between staff members. Think about ways your organization can implement activities and rituals, such as SURPRAISE! and Code Lavender, to support your staff.
Mindfulness at Work
As we noted in previous chapters, scientific research increasingly suggests that mindfulness not only helps employees reduce stress at work but also fosters a greater sense of well-being and increases productivity on the job. Secular mindfulness programs in the workplace are gaining popularity in the for-profit sector and could be valuable for nonprofits. Some of these programs are based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s research-tested Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program.12 Others, referred to as “McMindfulness” by critics, aim to minimize the time involved in doing these activities using apps and online tools and shortening the practices down to 10 minutes or less a day, making them easier for people to adopt.
“Our experience has been that people are really taking to [mindfulness] as long as the leaders embody it and make it accessible instead of stuffy,” says Michael Fenchel, president and COO for Breathe for Change, a nonprofit that trains educators to take care of themselves, their students, and their school communities through yoga, mindfulness, and community building.
Trish Tierney, cofounder of WAKE and former executive director of the Institute for International Education in San Francisco, recalls when one of her staff members shared a meditation practice with everyone during a staff meeting:
As the leader, I suggested we set aside the conference room every Thursday at 11:00 A.M. and have her lead us in meditation. It was open to all. Sometimes, just a couple people showed up. Other times, it was a full room. It was not a formal organizational policy, but just something we, as an office, embraced and benefited from greatly.
Idealist, a nonprofit organization founded by Ami Dar that connects nonprofits around the world with people who want to work or volunteer for them, offers a comprehensive wellness program and employee benefits that promote well-being. Idealist has a staff member in New York City, Caroline Contillo, who is trained as a mindfulness instructor and leads a mindfulness break at the office on a weekly basis. They use an empty conference room, arrange chairs into a circle, and guide people through the techniques. There is time for questions and comments at the end. The whole practice takes about 30 minutes.
“There are a number of reasons a regular mindfulness break can be beneficial, but one that doesn’t often get mentioned is the cultivation of community,” explains Contillo. “People get a sense of working on something together, even if that means just sitting in silence. Giving people the opportunity to step away from their daily routine to sit face-to-face with some colleagues in a ‘circle of care’ can really make the rest of the day seem doable.”
Like fitness challenges, organizations can also do meditation challenges.
“We have a group of 8 to 10 of us who meditate regularly each afternoon for about 15 minutes at a time,” explains Vassar College’s Sharon Parkinson. “I send out [e-mails about] the Oprah/Chopra Center 21-day meditation challenges whenever those occur, and people can register for the challenge to meditate at home.”
Yoga is another mindfulness practice—and physical activity—that can be brought into the workplace as an organized program. Megan Keane, membership director at NTEN, is a trained yoga instructor who has helped scores of nonprofits design and implement yoga in the workplace initiatives. She recommends that organizations identify some staff champions, especially people who are good at rallying their peers and who can build community.
“Yoga can be intimidating for anyone unfamiliar with the practice, or in a work setting, so encouragement at the beginning is key. It’s also important to have a yoga teacher who is aligned with your organization’s culture and values,” says Keane.
Keane shares some tips for success for a yoga program in the workplace:
- Have a dedicated space. The space doesn’t have to be fancy, and it could be as simple as pushing chairs aside in a conference room or an open space in the office with consistent availability. Providing basic yoga mats that are kept in good condition sends a message that this is a valuable offering to staff.
- Choose an appropriate time. Midday is often a good time for yoga in the workplace because it gives people a mindful break in the middle of their day and allows people to eat lunch afterwards.
- Be supportive. Getting accommodation and encouragement from management goes a long way toward sustaining a workplace yoga class.
Keane also shared that Third Sector New England has a yoga program that they’ve successfully had in place for several years. As a result, staff started incorporating more wellness breaks into their days and look out for one another by reminding each other to breathe or take stretch breaks. Yoga in their workplace helped them make a cultural shift toward self-care, even affecting staff who didn’t attend the yoga classes.
Says Keane, “Staff came to value the class, and they covered each other’s work so they could trade off attending class.”
Some nonprofits offer informal yoga classes at their events or conferences. The Newark Museum created “Yoga Tuesdays” as an after-work program in the galleries, an activity proposed by staff. The event is now open to college and university students who live in the area. The program went from an informal activity to a budgeted program due to its popularity. NTEN began offering yoga and other activity sessions, such as walking and biking, at their annual conference to foster community building, networking, and mindfulness. The sessions were very well received.
Relaxation Activities
Offering meditation or yoga sessions can be relaxing for some but may not work for everyone. Another way to incorporate relaxation into the workplace is to set up a quiet room. According to Justin Chase and Alexandra Zavala at Crisis Response Network, if you simply build it, employees won’t necessarily come.
“When I started, our organization had a quiet room, but it was a small room with stiff vinyl chairs, white walls, and artwork depicting close-ups of sharp cactus thorns. None of our employees used it, except to take a personal phone call during a break,” Chase recalls.
The organization’s Employee Engagement Committee got feedback from staff in terms of what they needed, and Chase allocated a very modest budget to transform the room. The committee ditched the chairs and brought in a comfortable couch, incandescent lamp, peaceful artwork, a sound machine that played nature sounds, painted the walls earth tones, and put blinds up on the windows.
“We wanted to create a sanctuary vibe to make it like walking into a spa,” says Chase, and it worked. Staff could actually relax and decompress from their emotionally stressful work.
As we discussed in Chapter 4, there are many practices individuals can do for themselves during a stressful work day that organizations can also implement to spread chronic self-care. Massages come to mind.
“When I worked as the executive director of the local AIDS service organization, we had a generous donor whose contribution was a monthly massage for each of our four staff members,” says Joy Rubey, lecturer in nonprofit management at California State University at Monterey Bay. “She [the donor] made a deal with two local massage practitioners: she paid them for 50 percent of their normal fee, and they donated the rest in kind. And it was wonderful!”
Rubey said that, at first, the massages felt like an extravagance, but they quickly became a core element of the staff’s self-care program. Given the organization’s limited budget, it wouldn’t have been able to afford massages without the donation.
Idealist offers free monthly chair massages to staff through a partnership with a service that brings in professional massage therapists. Says Kara Montermoso, human resources manager, “These sessions are a welcome respite from desk life, provide a short but impactful mental break, and can be a good reminder that destressing and listening to one’s body are important. This is an easy win both from the morale and administration side of things.”
We know at this point, you might be rolling your eyes at the idea of yoga and massages at the office. But these kinds of soft perks can attract and retain top talent. The people you want working at your organization, those who can give you better results, are the people who want workplaces with happier and healthier cultures. We’ll talk more about the return on investment of massages and other well-being initiatives in the workplace in Chapter 9.
Creativity Activities
We’ve mentioned how studies prove creativity—through painting, drawing, dancing, playing music, theater, or singing—can reduce or relieve stress. Randi Zuckerberg, in a LinkedIn post on being creative, said, “The ability to think on your toes, see things differently, notice something interesting where others see nothing, problem solve in new ways—these are all things that make a terrific employee, a great leader, and a successful entrepreneur.”13 This goes for nonprofit professionals and leaders as well.
Susie Bowie, executive director of the Manatee Community Foundation, says the organization she was with previously—Community Foundation of Sarasota County—put up a whiteboard in its break room. John Annis, senior vice president of community investment at the organization, started writing the beginning of a story on it, and staff members were encouraged to add another three to four words to it. This simple activity continued and not only built something funny or interesting for everyone to enjoy but also encouraged collaboration in a creative activity. The cues were the whiteboard and dry erase markers.
International Development Exchange (IDEX) started an artist-in-residence program to enable staff to explore vulnerability in their social justice philanthropy. A residency with accomplished interdisciplinary artists in theatrical jazz, Sharon Bridgforth and Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, offered an opportunity to explore creative processes that value mindfulness, self-awareness, improvisation, curiosity, courage, and team collaboration.
“I’ve been working with IDEX for 10 years, and IDEX’s organizational culture and values align with my own,” says Katherine Zavala, IDEX’s regional director for Latin America. “And one important value is self-care—mind, body, and soul—so that I can show up authentically and be present in my work. The artists’ residency was just the most the recent self-care activity for staff.”
Kristine Maltrud, CEO/founder of ArtSpark, an organization that provides training for artists to develop and sustain themselves as a small business, uses many creative activities to prepare staff for teaching work. Says Maltrud, “I encourage my teachers to engage in creative or mindfulness activities within six hours of teaching a class. The activities may include going on a walk in nature and being mindful of the sights and sounds and smells, singing in the shower loudly, or doing yoga. I also have them do an exercise called ‘clearing the space,’ which comes from the dance world.”
Creativity is a muscle that needs to be exercised like anything else. You can use organized activities or cues to encourage creativity in the workplace. Dare we say, “Get creative”?
Home Life Support
Home life support includes services and programs that can help employees achieve work-life harmony such as concierge services, financial counseling, mental health counseling, employee assistance programs (EAPs), and work-life balance coaching. These programs are fairly common employee benefits, and all of them can contribute to well-being. We heard from a lot of nonprofit professionals that financial planning is particularly helpful. Often people who work at nonprofits receive low pay and experience personal financial pressures that cause imbalance.
“The lack of retirement planning, pension options, and financial literacy in nonprofits causes people a lot of stress. So people give up self-care to work more and more, some working into their 60s and 70s because saving for retirement wasn’t offered,” says Chari Smith, a nonprofit consultant.
Goodwill Manasota offers an array of financial education programs and services for employees with the goal of minimizing employee stress and helping employees create a strong financial plan and meet goals. Some of the programs are typical work benefits like a retirement savings and health savings accounts to cover unanticipated medical expenses. They also offer a “Goodwill Home Buyers Club,” a program that prepares Goodwill team members for homeownership through education, workshops, and credit counseling. Through this club, team members can find assistance in achieving mortgage preapproval to purchase new or renovated homes, and budget coaching helps ensure successful homeownership.
Goodwill Manasota14 also provides programs that support well-being for their team members under the umbrella of “GoodWellness.” Employees are encouraged to work with a “Good Partner Coach” on work-life balance strategies. Their “GoodwillWorks” program is an employment, personal development, and training program to help employees grow personally, be successful at their careers, and achieve life goals.
Pay attention as an organization to all stakeholders. Acknowledge your employees’ multifaceted lives beyond work and how that affects them at the office. The activities you offer at work to support the personal lives of your staff can pay off in the long run with less stressed and more satisfied employees.
We’ve just covered activities and cues that address Spheres 1, 2, and 3—Self, Others, and Environment. Now let’s explore activities that transform Sphere 4, the way your organization works, and Sphere 5, how everyone uses technology.