The Wellbeing Strategy for Any Stage of Company with Phil Wolf, Founder at Connects Health

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to the Foundation Series, your deep dive into startup compensation with industry leaders from across the startup world. Join me, Matt McFarlane, a people operations leader turned compensation specialist, as we uncover the strategies and practices driving success in tech startups around the world. Hear insights from heads of people, founders and experts as we explore how to build robust compensation frameworks that not only

Speaker B: fuel growth and retention, but do so

Speaker A: in the dynam startup environment that we all know and love. Let's get into it.

Speaker B: The rumors are true. Startup People Summit is back in 2026. I really can't wait to share what we've been working on because this year's event has taken everything from last year and one upped everything. Don't miss out. Sign up to the waitlist now via startup people summit.com and stay in the loop. By doing so, you'll also get access to exclusive ticket releases ahead of time, program and speaker updates, and everything coming to you first. There's a link in the show notes. In today's episode, we're meeting Phil Wolfe, a workplace wellbeing specialist with over 15 years of experience and over 25,000 consultations. Phil has transformed wellbeing strategies for hundreds of companies, embedding resilience and performance into everyday work. And today, we're going to share his insights on integrating wellbeing into your organization and give you the tips for not only beating this crazy burnout epidemic we're all in, but building a focus on wellbeing that actually drives results. All right, uh, see you in there. So, Phil, welcome to the Foundation Series. Really excited to have you here. I know we're going to dive into all things wellbeing, which is actually not a space I've spent a lot of time in myself. So I can't wait to share all of the faux pas that I've made in my career and how they've totally not worked, and then actually hear from someone who knows what they're talking about as to how we can make things better for everyone. So welcome to the show.

Speaker C: Thanks, mate. Thanks for having me. And I'm very interested to hear about the faux pas. Honestly, I want to hear, like, what's been. What are the worst experiences you've had? What are the best? Like, I love talking about that sort of stuff. So let's do it.

Speaker B: Well, there'll be many, many, uh, chances and opportunities to go through them. I thought what would be a really helpful space to start in, um, certainly from my perspective, I think, you know, from. From the listener as well, is what is the Lay of the land from a wellbeing perspective. Um, and I can certainly add what I'm seeing in the organizations that I'm working with and having conversations with. And then I'm keen to just get a sense from someone who's in there amongst it with companies that are dealing with, um, some of the challenges of the modern workforce. What are kind of the main, um, I guess catalysts for what's the opposite of wellbeing? Not, not well being. But it's like I'm seeing these kind of like, you know, we've obviously come out of. We've come out of COVID which I think presented its own challenge in the sense that you had a lot of people working from home, probably working too many hours, um, that sort of an issue. And now I'm, you know, and this is just. I guess what I'm seeing is this sort of like this weird, um, paradoxical thing of AI, where we're expected to be adding all of this efficiency back into, uh, our businesses and our teams and our days and our weeks. And I think I'm seeing a lot, and I'm feeling this myself, is that it's actually, um, creating more pressure to deliver more. And I think we're also, we're also seeing how work is changing, um, taboo. But I feel like I'm probably just scratching on the surface of the bigger sort of wellbeing challenge that exists in the workplace at the moment. So I'd love to start there and just get your thoughts.

Speaker C: Yeah, definitely, mate. And you've, you've hit the nail on the head there. Like, there's a lot of challenges and we will, we will go into some of them, but with our question, the biggest one is the constant mental load without sufficient management practices to deal with it. So that's. That always on mentality, the always available, always performing, always trying to be better, always trying to strive for more, and always trying to make yourself available because you're. You want to be high performer where everyone does. But as. As we go, that mental load just keeps growing and growing and growing and it never really stops. And if we don't have the management practices, the recovery practices, the uh, the compartmentalization practices to, to deal with that, then it's just constantly bleeding our, uh, energy from us, even when we're not at work. Because it used to be like, you turn up to work, you punch in your 6, 7, 8, 9, even 10 hours, and then you go home. And what you can actually achieve from home was extraordinarily limited. Very, very Limited. No one could reach you there unless they sent a page boy around and knocked on your window with one of those big sticks. But you weren't always on, so you weren't always thinking about. And there was a very clear separation between this is my office and this is my home, and when I'm at home, I'm at home, and nothing else. And now that has completely disintegrated because I carry my office in my pocket everywhere I go. And I'm a business owner, so I have to make myself available. So if I don't plan in times when I'm off or times when I'm recovering, then that can just bleed through into absolutely everything I'm doing. So that constant mental load, without question, is the biggest thing that we've come up against. And you and I were just talking off air. Uh, I. At least once a week, I still do consultations, um, with clients. And I'll see 10, 12, 15 people in a day, uh, in a. In a corporate setting, and they'll tell me exactly what's going on. And I've been doing that for, uh. Oh, God, at least 15 years I've been doing that. And it has evolved over time. But for now, the biggest challenge is that mental load. And that's what everyone is saying, and you touched on AI, that's just feeding into it because you hear so much about how AI is improving our efficiency and AI is now allowing you to do the work of 10 people. You turn around and go, shit, I'm still doing the work of one person. So I thought I was going pretty good. But now there's people who are leveraging AI to do the work of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 people. And I'm not one of them. That is just gonna add to that mental load, add to that stress and make me feel like I need to work harder. But, I mean, that's fallacy. Someone knows how to use AI and you don't, then it doesn't matter how hard you work, they can outperform you. So that buildup of stress, that buildup of mental load, that's the biggest thing that we're dealing with at the moment. There's a million other things, but without doubt, yeah, that's number one. That's what we've got to start to address.

Speaker B: And I'm curious if you're seeing in some of these, in the myriad conversations that you're having, some of the things that I see crop up when it comes to AI. I mean, one is just. It feels like we're constantly drinking from the fire hose of like new tools, new uh, you know, new things that I think uh, are almost on a daily basis changing how we think about how we do work. So there's so one part of it is this like this flux, this kind of change from you know, 10, 20 years ago your role was, was a lot more static. You know, week to week, month to month it was fairly similar. Maybe year to year there'd be some adjustments but now the pace of change just seems drastically different. Um, but the other thing that I've seen come up is this kind of concept that, you know, AI for all of its blessings is something that I guess can take away a lot of the like relatively boring, repetitive kind administrative types of tasks and actually allow us to focus on the more higher order thinking. But you know, one of the constraints that comes with that is that you, you're not used to having an 8 hour, 10 hour, however long hour day spent at that, you know, for such a large volume of your day spent at that kind of like higher order thinking level. And I think people are seeing like they're getting, or feeling like they're getting less of a break in between really intense kind of focus and maybe not focus but you know, the workload that they're doing and delivering on. Is that it? Do you think that there's something else? Like where are you seeing it pop up with respect to AI or just the changing nature of work?

Speaker C: Yeah mate, that's a great insight because you can't be doing your absolute best and most creative work all day. You just can't do it. It requires too much of you. And we are definitely seeing that in the way that if you take away all the boring admin type tasks and you try and fill that time now with high value creative work, people are going to burn out faster because we're not designed to be able to deliver that sort of intense deep work all the time. Some of those administrative tasks, some of that boring administrative stuff I think is actually really important. It's that low value work that helps us to feel productive whilst not using our brains. Like I sometimes listen to, listen to music when I'm doing that sort of stuff and I kind of look forward to it at times because I'm not, I'm not not working, I'm still doing stuff that's propelling the business forward but my brain is getting a break. So there's not one answer for that but time boxing and figuring out what we can deliver and when, when's the best Time to do that within our own performance and energy patterns I think is a really, really strong step towards mitigating that. So figuring out when am I most effective? Um, when is the time when I'm at my most creative, when is the time I least created, when is my highest energy, slowest energy, when am I most social versus when I'm, I'm most insular and then planning our work around that. So, um, I spoke to our mutual friend Shelley about this last time. Um, I was on her podcast and working out what your performance pattern is and what your energy pattern does across the day and then inputting that, inputting your work schedule into that. It's been for me and for the people that we've used it for, which is a lot of people have reached out since then. It's transformative and you figure out how much you can actually do and how much of that high value, deep creative work you can do in a day without feeling so flat and without burning out, for lack of a better term. So I do think AI can be extraordinarily useful, but I would caution against uh, using AI to do all of the admin and then just filling that time or trying to fill that time with that deep, high energy, high intensity creative work. Because, yeah, there's only so much of that that we've got in a day. So, um, there's no one way to structure that, uh, that's not sustainable though.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a real challenge when I think there's a lot of pressure. And I mean you will have seen it absolutely dominate LinkedIn like I have over the past few days of stories of uh, Block and other companies doing huge layoffs with respect to the efficiency gain that comes from AI. The actual. And this is probably to be almost another catalyst for, you know, the wellbeing challenge that we're seeing at the moment among workforces is that everywhere you look it looks like companies are uh, you know, making downsizes, uh, to reflect the efficiency gained by AI. So it can be, I would imagine it can be very hard and I certainly find this with myself. It can be very hard to sit there and go, well, I have to be using AI and everything that I do and I have to be spending, you know, sustained prolonged periods of times at this kind of higher order level of thinking because otherwise I'm not going to be able to keep up or, you know, I might be the person who's, who's on the chopping block. And I would imagine it creates a huge pressure. Right. Like you think about Things like, um, fight or flight and you know, sympathetic nervous system kicking in. Like being in that sort of state for a long period of time I think just speaks to, you know, part of, if not a massive contributor to what is the current um, wellbeing issue within workforces and why. We're probably seeing a lot of, a lot of burnout, a lot of, a lot of things cropping um, up. But yeah, curious for uh, your thoughts on that, whether it resonates.

Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. And it's the things that affect our well being is not always the things that we do or don't do. It's the things that are going on around us and we might not even be fully cognizant of those things like the stress, that constant low grade anxiety that comes from Am m I doing enough? Am I next on the chopping block? Um, I would say the cost of living and financial pressures really come into that. Uh, the fact that we're bombarded with so much negative news from around the world where we never ever had that before and if you didn't pick up a newspaper you probably weren't gonna, weren't gonna hear about it anyway. But now you can't turn your head without hearing about this war or that war or is there a, uh, is there a global baby eating pedophile ring that we're not, that we're now just finding out about.

Speaker B: And it truly is tragic.

Speaker A: Isn't.

Speaker C: Really is. Yeah. And no one's, no one's really talking about uh, the good stories, the positive news stories from around the world because that doesn't get clicks. So there's just this low grade constant anxiety coming from multiple sources that we never ever, ever had to deal with. I mean even say five years ago we did, but not to this level. Ten years ago, certainly, uh, not 30 years ago. We were so blissfully unaware of what was going on that this didn't really exist to this extent. So I think that's, I think that's something for people to be aware of. It's not necessarily the things you're doing or not doing all the time. They certainly ah, have their place. But what are you absorbing from around you? How are you interpreting that and how are you, how is your subconscious feeding your uh, negative or positive thoughts of the world, of your community, of your family, of yourself and just being really intentional with the information that you, that you bring in? Because if you're not, if you're not intentional about how you consume information these days, you're in big trouble because you will just be bombarded from all sides by negative nonsense that you do not need to pay attention to or have an opinion about. So, um, something to be aware of.

Speaker B: Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's something that I'm certainly conscious of and every now and then I find myself feeling the pull down into. Yeah, just all of the negative news hype and spin I think especially when, you know, really big things like the countries invading one another or whatever, you know, that tends to be a big catalyst for me. Suddenly I'm like glued to, you know, my phone or whatever trying to get upd and things like that. What do you see outside of those, I guess extraordinary events which feel they happen all the time. But what do you, what do you see are like some of the personal practices that people can adopt to be intentional, like to, to really curate where they're getting that information from so that they do keep a balance on, you know, good versus bad news maybe or, or also stay up to date with some of the, you know, the, the prominent kind of relevant things, um, when it comes to their profession.

Speaker C: Yeah, I would say, I mean LinkedIn is probably still one of the best sources of up to date information. I mean it's uh, definitely gotten worse. There's a lot more drivel and there's a lot more AI slop on there, but it's still the best platform for that. And if, particularly if you curate the people that you follow, the people that you listen to are the people who are saying things that are relevant to you, who are the people that are saying things that are true and that makes sense to you. Um, and I would, I would say being very, very sparing with other social media platforms and how you engage with them and the intention that you go into, into that engagement with so doom scrolling is in my view and my experience one of the most low grade, um, harmful practices that we all engage in. If you going into social media with any sort of intention, you're just letting it happen, you're in for a bad time and there's nothing, there's one particular thing that's going to make you go, oh, that was really horrible. And this is, this is being harmful to me. It's just thousands of tiny, tiny little things that build up over time. So being intentional and sparing with the use of social media I would say is, is a big one. Um, curating who you follow, who you listen to and the things that you engage in and also being intentional about that. And as, oh, there's a, there's a really good news source. So I try and stay away from the news as much as I can. Apart from, uh, a program in the morning called the Squiz. Um, they're really good Australian news program. Takes about 10 minutes and they give you an unbiased view of what's happening in the world. Uh, you don't really get opinion with it. You just get, these are the big stories from the last 24 hours and then on a Saturday they'll recap that week, uh, and give you, give you the big stories. And that keeps me as up to date as I need to be. Um, and also I think being very conscious of and intentional of what you actually want to have an opinion on, because it is okay not to have an opinion on things and it's okay to bow out of a conversation if someone's asking you for an opinion that you don't really have or don't feel like, um, is your place. That's perfectly okay. We, we do think or we feel like we need to have an opinion on absolutely everything and we need to be up on every single current event, but that's not very true. So being intentional about the information that we receive and also the information that we're willing to engage in, uh, I think can be, can be helpful. It's what I've seen be helpful and it's what I've experienced be helpful.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I love all of those tips. I think I've definitely heard. I don't know if there's a term for, for these kind of, uh, news either sites or programs or whatever it might be. But where they do take, like, they're not sort of sensationalist. They're just like, here's the facts as they are. Um, they're not trying to kind of clickbait or create some kind of emotion, you know, emotive response. It's they really kind of just focus on, on that. There's another one. I can't remember the name. I'll think about it and put it in the show notes. But definitely familiar with the concepts of them. I think what you said around, like, how you curate your engagement with those, you know, different either social media channels or news platforms, et cetera. I couldn't agree more. And in fact, two, two tips for me when it comes to LinkedIn. Obviously I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. Um, one of them is I actually like, physically bookmark. I have a list of bookmarks of the people that I follow whose content I really like. And rather than actually letting the LinkedIn feed, curate what I see. I will go one by one and click there, like the shortcut to their um, like most recent posts or whatever. And that will be how I stay up to date with the kind of core group of people. I mean there's probably 20 or 30 people on there, but the core group of people that I really like learning from. That's a, uh, that's one way to do it. Um, and the other one that um, dealer people don't realize that you can do on LinkedIn is you can unfollow. You can still be connected to someone and unfollow someone. And that has been magical for exactly that. Just like, you know, maybe you've seen just like 4, 5, 6 too many posts where you just like, like, you know, it either doesn't resonate or whatever. I still want to maintain the connection, but I just don't want to see it anymore. You can unfollow them and it just helps curate that feed over time where you're not getting too much stuff set up to you that is a little bit droopily as you, as you rightly put. So hopefully that hopefully people have benefit, uh, from those few tips. All right, so we've kind of, we've talked about the state of, I guess the world and a lot of these kind of drivers that are causing, um, a bit of a threat to wellbeing when it comes to um, our people and workforces and things like that. I want to talk a little bit before we get to, I think, you know, where we're going to spend most of our time, which is like, what's, what does good look like? How can we help our companies here? Let's talk a little bit about the current kind of state of wellbeing programs that most of the companies that you're seeing. And here, you know, here's where I'm going to really shine in terms of sharing some of the mistakes that I've made or just useless programs that I've implemented. Um, but yeah, I'm keen to, keen to hear from you, like, what are the, what are the sort of like, what's the traditional stack? What's the traditional things that companies are doing that you think is increasingly at odds with this, like, this world that we're in, where we are inundated with like the threat from AI, the cost of living challenges, all these sorts of things. Um, and then we can, then we can get into doing what's right.

Speaker C: Yeah. So we're, we're currently in a bit of a transitional Period where what's been implemented in the past, a lot of that is still around, but also a lot of companies are moving towards what works in the future. I, um, mean, I've spoken at length about, um, my issues with the support structures, the way that they are, uh, in particular EAP or employee assistance programs. Um, not the support itself, but the system that underpins it. Basically that support has been seen in the past as, here's our EAP over here. If you've got any issues, there's the number, go and call it. And that has been seen as enough, um, which we obviously know that it's not our support. The way that it's being seen and the way that it should always be seen and the way that it's seen in high performing environments is it comes before the fact as well as after. So, uh, support isn't just here's a safety net. Support is the training, support is the equipment, support is the instruction. Support is have, um, having people there to tell you how not to fall or to catch you before you hit the safety net. Support is all of those things. And now we're in that period where companies are starting to recognize that and going from initiatives. So there was a period there where it was, uh, it was the absolute wild west for initiative. Like there was yoga classes everywhere and everyone had a fruit box and it was, here's a ping pong table and uh, we're going to go do this axe throwing and stuff like that. Now I'm not saying that that stuff is bad, that that stuff gets a really bad rap. It really does. Like, if you've got a ping pong table, people roll their eyes and go, oh, okay, here we go. That's, that's just lip service. It's not necessarily true. That stuff is good, but it can't form your entire strategy. You can't just have a yoga class or just have a ping pong table and dust your hands and go, all right, we're sweet. It has to be part of a larger strategy. And if you have those things and you do have a wellbeing strategy, then they're really, really good and helpful additions. It shows people that you care. It gives them something to do that's not work with their teammates, which is, as we know, really, really good for collaboration, for connection, for uh, for morale. So those things are not bad. Those things don't help if they're not part of a larger strategy. So what we're seeing now is a move away from initiatives and towards strategy. How do we embed well being into the ways that we work. How can we, how can we structure our systems so that they enhance well being and performance at the same time? Because those two really go hand in hand. It's not wellbeing's over here and performance is over here and the two butt up against each other and we have to choose between them. It's absolutely not it. How can we structure systems so that people perform well and it's good for them? And I think there's a question that we use to guide that and it's if everyone plays by the rules, so no one going outside the lines, no one going above and beyond, will they be number one safe, number two productive and number three prosperous? So first of all, our systems have to be designed so that people are physically and psychologically safe. That's number one. Number two, they have to be a benefit to the organization. They have to, I mean they're employed to do a job. They have to bring value to the organization, to their team, to their colleagues, to their customers, all of it. And number three prosperous, it has to bring value to them. So that's not necessarily just financially. That could be socially, it could be physically, it could be m. Mentally, it could be career ah, based. Whatever the case may be, that person should be better for having done that job, not worse. So that's our overarching, um, that's an overarching ideal. Is it number one safe? Is it number two productive? Is it number three prosperous for the person? And there's a million different ways that we can do that. But it speaks to the larger goal of integrating well being into work. And there's, yeah, that's a, that's a much larger question. Um, but that's the way you onboard ah, the support systems that you have in place, the way workload is distributed, the uh, way managers are trained, the way people interact with each other, um, are they accessible after hours or not? Um, are they, do they have true flexibility? Do they have autonomy? How is bullying, uh, dealt with? How are how interpersonal conflicts dealt with? So all of that forms the basis of your, of your wellbeing strategy is are we taking wellbeing into account when we're designing these systems? So that's, that's where we're at at the moment. That transition period between this is the old way where just call the number on the poster or shut up and here's an initiative so as well take it and shut up. And the new way of integrating wellbeing into the ways that we're working and then figuring out what we actually need to deliver for people in order to make that a reality. So it's actually, it's actually a really exciting time because that transition period is, it's, it's really interesting and it's a fascinating time to be in this industry, um, and where I can't wait to see how this pans out and we're not just sitting on the sidelines and going, oh, this is, this is going to be cool to watch. Like, we're actively involved in this. But yeah, it's, it's fun and it really, really is. And it's, it's really, it's really heartwarming to see that companies are, uh, taking this more seriously and thinking about it strategically, because that didn't used to happen. But now they're seeing it as a core business function, which, ah, it always was, but now they're starting to take it seriously, which it's cool. It's, um. I like it. Quick pause.

Speaker B: You know when the CEO asks you about retention by manager or where your pay gaps are widening and the answer is sitting across four tools and a spreadsheet you haven't touched in weeks? Me too. Let me tell you about Shapes. It's not an hris, it's a people operating system. Not just that, but it's an AI that sits across all of your people data. And you just ask it in plain English. Whatever the exec team throws at you, it hands you a live answer backed by your own data. That's Shapes. And you can check it out the link in the show notes. Let's get back to it. It's, it's good to see. And I think you're, you're hitting on something that is probably a bit of a, uh, it's certainly a misconception I had for a long time around. Like when you said wellbeing. What is it? And it was, you know, for me, traditionally, it was this thing that I've now understood is kind of the term wellbeing. Stacking. Right. Which is where you just kind of like layering all these initiatives on people that are kind of there in the background that maybe, you know, are an eap, uh, that are a very reactive thing. Or, you know, we've done, I've done the discount thing, you know, discount programs or I've done, uh, gym memberships. And I think like, sure, that's part of the solution in some respects. I mean, not doing it blindly, necessarily. Um, but when you actually really start to go, no, like, wellbeing constitutes all of these sorts of things, um, you start to realize how holistic it is and really where it shows up in the workplace. And I guess I'm curious, like you know, you listed again a comprehensive kind of body of work or program. Where do you typically see other uh, you know, other things either from a, uh, like what stage your company is at or like how they could maybe self assess for whether it's right, you know, the right time for them to start thinking about something like this. So is there either noise or is there um, you know, some data in the business that's indicating that this is something that they now need to take more seriously? Or is it actually like. No, like we've hit a critical milestone, um, as a business where, I don't know, sometimes in startups for example, it can be when we start to introduce um, a level of management or leadership between the founder and the broad organization. That can often be a catalyst point. Maybe there's other trigger points throughout the growth or stages of companies. But what from your perspective tends to be the catalyst for like okay, we need to now seriously take uh, uh, a proper look at what our wellbeing strategy is and understand all of these different pieces and how we can impact on them.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a great question. And if we're, if we're reaching uh, a particular catalyst in terms of performance or issues, then the issue has already grown. That's the number one thing. And traditionally there was a sort of catalyst in terms of organization size. It's when you get a HR department and that HR department has, has some time after they've onboarded everyone and after we've gone through the high growth period, which almost means never. So what we're, what we're trying to encourage now is embedding this from the start because you can do this in a one person company, you can do it in a 10 person company, you can do it IN a 10,000 person company. Obviously your approach is going to change but the fundamentals stay the same. It's, we do it on uh, what we call the Wayfinder framework. So it's purpose, values, skills, systems and support. And that forms a framework for anyone to be able to impact wellbeing in any size organization, even one single person. And it's, are your people directed towards a purpose, guided by values, uh, with the skills to navigate the journey in systems that work and with the support they need when they need it. And that's, it's not, I mean it may sound conceptual but that gives us a solid list of actions that we need to complete. So first and foremost starting with purpose, like people have to know what they're doing and know why it matters. They don't know why it matters. You're going to have a much, much, much harder time motivating them and keeping them on track and keeping them wanting to do the work. In your organization, the next one is values. And it's, I mean we talk a lot about, everyone talks about aligning values, but it's so incredibly difficult to align values because your values come from your upbringing, from your community, from your family, from your traumas, from your skills, from your education, everything. And to, to expect everyone to have to be able to align those values. Coming from all of those different factors is impossible. But understanding values, so, uh, understanding mine, understanding yours, and how they can actually work together, that's the critical piece. And the, the part that I would argue is probably one of the biggest and one of the, one of the biggest areas of growth definitely is the skill aspect. Because well being, health and wellbeing and performance, they're skill based and they always have been, they always will be. And the people who are healthy and well and perform well in relation to their own circumstances are the ones who have a higher degree of skill and can implement those skills effectively. So as a, as an organization, if we're teaching those skills and if we're showing people that it's important that they learn those skills and we're providing the resources for them to upskill in those areas, just like we would professional development in any other area, then they're going to take that very seriously. And all of a sudden we've got people who can self regulate their nervous systems, who know how to inbuild recovery practices, who know how to eat for their own performance, who know what exercise they should be doing, who can protect their sleep, all of those things, and that's what creates high performance. And then we talked about systems before, making them safe, productive and prosperous. And then the support along the way, ensuring that not only can people access support when they're really struggling, but before the fact. So what are your support pathways? What are your support structures? Can people answer the question if I need help, I can what? And are there escalation pathways? Are uh, they expected to self regulate and then go to a colleague and then go to their manager and then go to you? And what if it's outside of your purview? Where do they go? So having that in place from the start, it honestly is not hard and it doesn't take long and it's not expensive. But following that framework, you can do that, you can set that up in a very, very short space of time. You'd be flabbergasted by how quickly you can do that and by paying attention to it along the journey. I mean, you're way, way, way ahead of the eight ball. So in a, uh, in a very long winded answer to your question, um, I would say if we're waiting for performance or problem catalysts, we've waited too long. That's not to say that it's too late. It's never ever too late. But embed those from the start and follow, I mean, I would argue that's the best framework. But follow a framework to embed it from the start. Because you're never too small, you're never too big, it's never too early, it's never too late.

Speaker B: Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I think it's, you're right to reframe that in the sense that it's like, yeah, don't wait for uh, a catalyst, rather look at it for what's right for your company now. And you know, in the context of startups or growing businesses, it's like, how do we make sure we're making something that's right for us now versus in 12 months time or two or three years time where maybe we're a bigger or different or you know, more complex or whatever organization? I'd love to. I mean, this framework. Yeah, exactly. And I like this concept, the Wayfinder framework. I'm curious and I appreciate I'm putting you on the spot a little bit here, but like, what does this look like for maybe small or growing businesses that you've worked with in the past just to really like hone in on how this has actually shown up for them in terms of some of the practical things that they've done, um, through a process like this.

Speaker C: Yes. So the majority of it is something that you can actually do in house. All you really need is to understand the concepts of it and there's practical ways that you can actually get the team together and work on connecting them to purpose. Like that is not a, that's not a difficult thing to do. Neither is understanding each other's values. That's a, that's a couple of hours, um, sitting in a room together and then, well, there's no way to tell how long that takes ongoing. But it is not long, uh, to update those values and to understand those, um, the skill based stuff that's about finding, finding external Providers who are really good at that, who are really good at teaching those skills and who have the systems in place and the resources and the providers who can actually teach your people how to do that. Um, the system stuff, yeah, it's about understanding what, understanding how to embed wellbeing practices into the normal things that you're doing. Um, and there are, I mean there are templates for that, there are frameworks for that, there's, there's advice on that that is pretty easy to follow. And the support systems, what have you got internally and what have you got externally? So to, to answer the question, like we, that's exactly what we do. Um, we've created what we call the, the Wellbeing Enrichment program that encompasses all of that into a nice neat little package. Where we go, here is, here are the things. And it's not, it's not, here's the thing, give us the money, tick the box and you never have to worry about it again. That's, that's not what we do because obviously we need input, we need a, uh, back and forth. We need you to embed this and to give enough of a shit to take the time to do this. So whilst our system replaces EAP completely, it's not an eap, because an EAP is something that you can just pay for and it sits over there and you never have to worry about it again. So I know that what we do is not right for everyone because some people don't feel they have the time for that and they do just want a tick box. And if we're all honest with ourselves, sometimes a tick box is good enough for where you are right now. That's not what we do. We, uh, encompass that framework, we offer that support, we do that upskilling, uh, and we help companies to embed wellbeing into, into what they do. And I've got, I've got no qualms with saying that. And we cost ourselves a lot of business that way. But the people that we work with, they're the ones that we want to work with and they're the ones that,

Speaker B: they're the ones that take, well, bang, seriously hundred percent.

Speaker C: And I don't want to work with people who aren't ready for it or who just want a tick box because they're going to be incredibly difficult to work with or we're not going to get the results that we want on that sort of thing. So, yeah, I'm happy to leave money on the table to work with the people that, that want this yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker B: And it makes sense that, you know, companies that aren't genuinely invested in a wellbeing or the kinds of high performance outcomes that you've talked about may not find a lot of value in a, in a framework like the one that you've, that you've outlined. I'm curious, is there like a, is there like a flagship example of um, and you know, without naming names or anything but like, of a company that you've done this sort, you know, you've helped implement something like this before where, you know, between I guess the initiation and the outcomes and the kind of impact that a framework that this can have, you know, what does that look like for you? And kind of like the most prominent example.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a good question. Um, the company that helped us really develop all of this and we, it's through a lot of trial and error and it's through um, different initiatives that we've run with them over almost the entire life of our business have kind of been our, uh, our very willing guinea pig. We have been with them or they've been with us for over seven years now. Um, they've gone through a lot of restructures. We've gone through Covid. We've gone through very different difficult economic, um, circumstances and never once has it ever come up that we needed to downgrade or we needed to maybe pause this or they were going to get rid of this. It's always been that they've understood that this is a critical business function. And as a result of that, um, obviously, yeah, we can't, we can't really share the name and we can't share, um, exact, uh, exact metrics. But every single metric that we have measured with them has improved significantly. We uh, yeah, I don't want to get too specific, but the insurance premiums in the time that we were with them went from low, ish, uh, six figures to mid, sorry, lowish, seven figures to mid, six figures, uh, per year. Um, which is why it's never been a conversation.

Speaker B: This is like workers comp insurance. Is that right?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, just workers comp insurance. So that's not to say anything for retention, that's not to say anything for performance or absenteeism or any of those other metrics. Literally on the one metric of insurance premiums, it's about a 12 to 14, um, ROI. Uh, another one, we just got done doing their um, six monthly report and what we saw was their burnout metrics, uh, across a certain cohort in the business got worse over that time, over the six months, in all except one group, which was the group who had engaged in one on one health consultations. So working with, um, our uh, health practitioners on exactly the things we were talking about before, those skills that, uh, sleep, exercise, um, nutrition, injury management, performance, prioritization, energy, all of that, that group got significantly better. So the conditions for this group of people got way worse and the people who engaged in the process got way better. So it's, it's stuff like that. Like, I was so excited when I saw that. And it shouldn't be a, uh, massive surprise because if you engage in a system that works, then you get the outcomes that you state you're looking for. But it's still, I still love it so much like seeing those sort of results.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's incredible to have that kind of impact. Right. Like, it's why you get up in the morning. I'm assuming, like the thing that motivates you is to, is to have this kind of impact on companies.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly, yeah. And something that you've seen and you've put so much blood, sweat and tears into and so much of yourself into, and so it's research and work. To see it work is, um. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. I mean, yeah, you would know. Any business owner knows how special that is. So, uh, yeah, that's pretty cool.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's impressive to see. And I think the thing that I like, you know, talking about this sort of, this, this approach and in, uh, some of the challenges and the ways in which, you know, you've seen these sorts of impacts is that so, and this, this has certainly been a belief that I've had in various different companies that I've worked at, is that it's like, you know, you can't be too bespoke about these sorts of things when actually in reality, like, that's, that's where you're going to be able to have the most impact and, and these sorts of solutions are now at your fingertips. It's not a case of like, you know, I mean, yes, like you said, these companies kind of still exist where it's like the tick box. It's like we've got the eap, we've made, you know, discounted your memberships available. We've done, you know, done these things that I've done. I've, I've helped implement in the past. And you kind of go, cool, we've ticked off wellbeing people. You know, that solution has been met. Um, but it's incredible to know that actually you can have this much more holistic approach. Um, and then it goes to the depths of things like, you know, ways of work and you know. Yeah, how people are uh, aware of, um, you know, how they're fueling their bodies and all these sorts of things and mixing and matching the UM program and its initiatives in a way that's going to really help get the most from, you know, give the most to get the most from your people as well.

Speaker C: Exactly. And it can and should be bespoke. And it is not actually hard to make it bespoke. You just need the systems that you can adapt to your company. Like that's not, it's, it doesn't take much more work than having something that's completely generic, to be quite honest. So why wouldn't you take the bespoke one over the generic one and the bespoke stuff? I don't actually even think it costs more. I don't know what everyone else charges. I know what some of them charge and it's frigging ridiculous. It's doing a bespoke approach doesn't really cost anymore.

Speaker B: The outcomes and the impacts that you mentioned before when it comes to things like insurance premiums and yeah, the fact that you're holding onto people for longer and that you're no doubt getting more from them in terms of output and performance and things like that without necessarily creating, uh, working more hours and so on. But um, yeah, when you put outcomes like that in front of people, it really does just emphasize how being thoughtful and diligent about an approach like this and the comprehensiveness of it, um, can be great for a business and for its people.

Speaker C: Oh, most definitely. Oh, when you, when you stack all that up, it's an absolute no brainer. But literally in the upfront dollar cost, it's not much more to make it bespoke than to make it generic.

Speaker B: Well, mate, we've covered a lot, so we obviously talked about just I guess the impetus, you know, the environment at the moment, but the driver behind, um, why wellbeing's probably been never, never been more important than ever, um, to really take seriously, but also certainly from my perspective, dispelled a few myths around what wellbeing actually constitutes and just how comprehensive that it shows up within the organization. Um, and we've talked about things like the Wayfinder framework and just how easy it is for people to get started in actually building some of these solutions for themselves. Are, uh, there any last tips?

Speaker C: I don't know.

Speaker B: Any other things you want to leave Any other bits of wisdom you want to impart on uh, the audience before we wrap things up?

Speaker C: I would say yeah, if there was to be one thing. So if there's one thing that organizations can do and where they should put their resources, it would be in upskilling their manager capabilities in this area. So making sure their managers are uh, aware of and proficient in performance patterns, in energy, in um, effective recovery practices. So upskilling your managers in wellbeing and performance I think is the most important thing that organizations can do. It's not hard approach it just like your, your regular professional development. And that is going to have an enormous flow on effect because not only will managers know how to uh, how to improve their own performance and recovery, but they'll understand how to integrate that into, into their teams as well. So without question, that's the most important thing to put your resources into. Everything else comes a close second. But yeah, if you've only got time for one thing, make it that, uh,

Speaker B: my last, last one then is whether it's something you've published or there's another resource you would point people towards. What would it be to help, to help actually educate themselves and their leaders on these sorts of things.

Speaker C: Oh, is there one piece. Oh, uh, God, you really put me on the spot there, uh, is there one piece that we've published that would cover all of that? Probably not. Uh, but I would suggest. Oh, okay. If people sign up to the Tuesday newsletter, our general newsletter that has all of this information and that breaks down in very practical terms, what can I do as uh, uh, as part of the HR team, as part of, as a business leader, as someone who is in charge of wellbeing and performance, um, that breaks down in step by step terms what you can actually do and how to, how to implement this. Um, I do that on LinkedIn every week as well. Um, we've got, yeah, we have a lot of information on there. But if there's one thing, one source of information, make it the Tuesday newsletter, which I'm sure we can put in the show notes or something like that.

Speaker B: We absolutely can. I am subscribed. I'll make sure the link's there. Obviously you've mentioned if people are looking for you, LinkedIn is where you're, you're probably almost as prevalent as I am, if not more so. So a great place to find you, uh, any other resources or sites or anything else you uh, recommend to people. Before we close things off, our website,

Speaker C: connecthealth.com it outlines all of these, uh, programs that we talked about if the things aren't on there because we're redesigning the entire website and sometimes that gets left off or forgotten. Um, reach out to me directly if there's anything you want to know. If you want to, um, you want to work out your own energy and performance pattern, I'm happy to send through all that stuff. Um, yeah, reach out. Let's have a chat. Even if you just want to see how this could work for you or discuss it a little bit more, always more than happy to talk to people. So, yeah, reach out, but LinkedIn's probably the one. Beautiful.

Speaker B: It's a very generous offer.

Speaker C: All right.

Speaker B: Amazing. Well, Phil, thank you for jumping on. This is, uh. Yeah, it's been super insightful, so I appreciate your time.

Speaker C: No worries. Cheers, mate.

Speaker A: Thanks for joining us on another edition of the foundation series.

Speaker B: Make sure to head over to our

Speaker A: website to subscribe to the foundation series for monthly editions featuring future interviews on startup compensation. In each edition, we'll explore the different strategies, trends and challenges faced by startups around the world. If you have a burning topic you'd like me to cover or a standout guest that you want to hear from, drop me an email so I can dive deeper into the compensation topics that matter most to to you. Join me next time as we continue to uncover the strategies and practices driving success in global tech startups around the world. Thanks for listening.