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Photo via http://www.globalwellnessinstitute.org

What is the future of workplace wellness? That was among the areas of focus at the recent Global Wellness Institute's 7th Roundtable, which “was designed to move discussions beyond company ROI to identify the ways workplace wellness approaches need to evolve to meet today’s changing workforce and to finally deliver on the promise of healthier, more productive employees.”

More than 25 participants from companies representing a range of sectors — including the Head of Preventative Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic and a leader of the Global Health Track at the Clinton Global Initiative. The meeting report “identified ten crucial, new realities that workplace wellness needs to address going forward.”

These included:

1. “Stop the Mud-Slinging on ROI and Focus on Total Return-on-Value: …The roundtable agreed that in the future companies will shift from a narrow focus on ROI, to a recognition of wider “return on value’: not just focusing on healthcare costs, but important gains in retention and productivity (93% of workplace wellness return in the first year is in productivity gains, not reduced costs).”
2. “Take Seriously That 24/7 Work Is ‘Killing Us'”
3. “Embrace Technology Opportunities: from Mobile to Telemedicine”
4. “Extend Wellness to an Increasingly Remote Workforce: With a galloping percentage of global employees working remotely or offshore, workplaces need to extend meaningful wellness initiatives to these employees who may need it most (suffering more loneliness and lack of peer support in both work and health).”
5. “Adapt Global Programs to Local Realities, Culture & Resources”
6. “Address the Sharpening Age Divide: Both Millennials and Extended-Worklife Baby Boomers: The roundtable concurred that millennials and their tech-focused brains will continue to redefine work, workplaces and wellness approaches. In a nutshell, they demand far more work flexibility and expect all kinds of health and wellness.”
7. “Mental Health Focus Must Ramp Up”
8. “You Can Mock Holacracy – But Top-Down Power Hierarchies Will Change”
9. “Design Healthy Workspaces & Put Greater Focus on Environmental Health”
10. “Think Beyond ‘Programs’ – and Get Serious About a Healthy Work Culture”

Indeed, this last point was made perfectly clear: “Companies hear incessantly that if they want to succeed in creating a healthier workforce they need to make it a company-wide mission and have it baked into the DNA of their organization’s leaders. The mantra: workplace wellness needs to be infused throughout a company’s culture, no matter how big or small the business, or what kind of management structure exists. Hundreds of articles have been written on the topic, but the roundtable agreed that because so very few companies have actually realized it, this truth – that wellness needs to be culture-wide, and not just a third-party-delivered, add-on “program” – cannot be broadcast often enough.”