The boundaries between work and personal lives have blurred over the past two years. And as people reenter the workplace under hybrid work arrangements, employers must ensure that their culture accounts for the new stresses and uncertainties of our era. A McKinsey article from the end of 2020 pointed to a coming mental health “revolution” where companies would be forced to confront the problems around employees and diminishing mental health. Beyond the toll these issues take on the employees themselves, organizations face associated challenges like reduced productivity, higher turnover, and increased health care costs. As a result, companies must increasingly put wellbeing at the forefront of their approach, creating workplace environments that facilitate contentment and connection, and increase investments and accessibility of mental health services.
Employers have a variety of options for putting their people first. Here are three ways leaders can create and cultivate a culture of wellbeing.
1. Make Wellbeing a Priority
Failing to address worker needs around their wellbeing may affect a company’s ability to retain their best employees. As a result, leaders should continue to put their employees at the forefront. By assessing the current workplace culture and seeking to understand employee needs, organizations can learn more about their people’s concerns, how comfortable they feel opening up to their managers, how much they know about the workplace services available to them, and what resources they actually use or find to be beneficial.
This allows leaders to gather data and gain a better understanding of what their employees need, what’s working well, and what needs another look. While information won’t solve every problem, taking an opportunity to open lines of communication and make an earnest attempt to build workplace community will go a long way toward creating a more employee-focused culture.
2. Boost Connection and Community
To mitigate stress in the workplace, leaders should support the development of workplace community and connection. To establish this sense of community, leaders must be a model for authentic care and consideration of their team’s needs. If employees feel they can share concerns, feelings, or problems openly and honestly with their managers, workplace community becomes more entrenched, particularly when people feel their managers are similarly transparent and accessible. Research shows that managers directly impact the sense of community in their workplace. Given the increased levels of stress workers are feeling at present, the actions of employers now will shape the trajectory of employee retention going forward.
Many workers are reevaluating their relationship with their jobs in the current climate. Despite inevitable challenges, leaders have an opportunity to reinvigorate employee engagement and facilitate community after a tumultuous period of pandemic-induced isolation.
3. Create Effective Support Systems
A major part of building community and pushing back against employee isolation is the development of effective support systems. By establishing clear expectations, encouraging taking time off, offering flexible work options, and recognizing the achievements of employees, organizations can be more active in preventing burnout and unnecessary stress in the workplace. Resource utilization can sometimes be an issue. It’s important for employees to understand their employer’s policies around things like mental health services, employee assistance programs, and medical leave. Through the clear communication of information and encouraging the use of available resources, managers can directly increase employee utilization of these services and benefits.
Although we’re living in an era of unpredictability, employers can offer a sense of stability by proving that they understand the needs of workers. Emphasizing employee wellbeing and ensuring that people feel valued at work will not only help organizations retain their best people, but also develop a culture that values support, openness, and effectiveness.

Entering the Tween Years of Smart Workspace
Digital Solutions & Strategy Lead
January of every year seems to bring out the crystal ball gazers of every tech industry. A new year – and some would argue (incorrectly, but maybe that’s just me and Seinfeld) a new decade – gives rise to reflection as the last year closes and the annual cycle begins anew.

Education From Afar: Perspectives on Virtual Learning
Communications Lead
Host’s goals of providing increased digital and virtual learning options have been on the agenda for some time. However, with a global pandemic shuttering offices throughout the world, our learning and development professionals have had to expedite these options to ensure that new hires receive the same level of expert training, even if the training isn’t performed in person.

Leading Virtual Teams
Global Hospitality
Leading virtual teams can become untenable if you expect the virtual world to correlate perfectly with a traditional office environment. According to a recent study by the Harvard Business Review, 82 percent of virtual teams fell short of their goals. With that said, everything that makes for a strong leader in an office is twice as important in the virtual landscape.

Bringing a New Member onto Your Remote Team
Director, Global Hospitality Operations
New employees join organizations every day, including during this unprecedented time where many are working remotely during the COVID outbreak. While it's a best practice to spend face-to-face time when onboarding, right now that's just not an option most of the time. Employee onboarding lays the foundation for the success of new hires at your company and provides a baseline to make connections going forward.

The Leader's Role in Fostering New Social Norms as Workplaces Reopen
By now, almost all organizations around the world are somewhere on their re-opening journey, whether starting to plan, bringing employees back to the workplace, or assessing “what’s next” for the future of their work environments. Companies and organizations are appropriately focused on a range of activities such as resetting the physical work environment to achieve social distancing, installing signage, adjusting building systems, securing sustainable quantities of supplies, and adapting service levels in areas such as cleaning and food service.
The Double Shift Juggling Parenting and Working During the Coronavirus
Director, Deployment and Operations
Working parents are facing a particularly challenging time, as the boundaries between work and home have completely broken down, resulting in the need for parents to juggle between parent mode to work mode and back again each day. The “double shift” is now the “double double shift.” Between putting three meals on the table, homeschooling, hosting Zoom meetings and conference calls, doing laundry, cleaning the house and trying to be present as both an employee and a parent, working parents are struggling and facing burnout.

Patrick Goes to Work
Global Hospitality Lead
When I’m focused on exciting new projects and things are going well, it’s always a surprise when they go awry unexpectedly. However, surprise doesn’t adequately cover our collective reaction to the rise of a global pandemic.

Customer Service Keeps Us Connected, Safe and Well – Let’s Celebrate It!
Global Hospitality Lead
I think it’s worth our time to reflect on what customer service has meant to us in the past, what it means right now as our social lives are stunted by pandemic concerns, and what it will look like once we finally navigate our way through this challenging era of our lives.

The Employee Experience Formula That Inspires Innovation
Host Labs Lead
It will likely come as no surprise that our evolving workspaces, enabled by technology, outfitted with the most coveted amenities and served by hospitality experts, are designed to make employees feel valued, signaling to them that the work they do is important and impactful. But what about when the workspace provided by an employer is removed (even temporarily) and placemaking becomes a virtual endeavor?

Delight in the Workplace: An Opportunity for Limitless Value
Host Labs Lead
As surprising as it may seem coming from a commercial real estate company, the Host team obsesses over enriching lives and creating delight for people who work in the buildings we manage. We consider the daily journey of our customers and map both their current and best experiences in the workplace.

Why Workplace Experience Platforms Need the Human Element

Thoughtful Reads: The Importance of In-Between Moments

The Value of Authenticity
Employee Experience

Thoughtful Reads: Guide to the Hybrid Workplace

What We've Learned: Host Conversations #1

What Is the Workplace Experience Anyway?
Employee Experience

5 Hospitality Skills That Prepare You for the Corporate World

Thoughtful Reads: Tech Tools for Hybrid Work

Small Things: Host Team Recipes #1
Hospitality

Employee Experience Can Make or Break Your Business
Employee Experience

Thoughtful Reads: The Sensitivity Revolution

Host Conversations: Customer Service Week

Three Key Drivers of Employee Wellbeing
Wellness

Thoughtful Reads: Worker Risks Are Paying Off
