Thriving, not just Surviving: The Key to Wellbeing at Work with Ryan Hopkins
Ryan Hopkins - Future of Wellbeing Leader, Author, and TEDx Speaker
Ryan Hopkins is on a mission to engage 1 billion people in the betterment of wellbeing. He is the Future of Wellbeing Leader at one of the Big 4, Linkedin Top Voice for Work Life Balance, TEDx Speaker, Host of the Audacious Goals Club and Author of - '52 Weeks of Wellbeing: a no nonsense guide to a fulfilling work life' - January 2024.
Ryan’s work has positively influenced the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. He shares his personal story of bulimia, depression, anxiety openly and has reached over 8 million on social media, recently being announced Global Emerging Wellbeing Leader of the Year.
Ryan comes at Well Being from a very unique perspective. Through his own lived experience with mental illness, Ryan supports organizations globally to shift how they work for the betterment of their employees wellbeing. We deep dive into the leading and lagging metrics of wellbeing, and what organizations can be doing better to support their people.
This episode comes with a trigger warning. We discuss sensitive topics such as mental illness, eating disorders and suicide. If you, or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please reach out, help is always available to you. Additionally, this episode comes with a language warning, coarse language was used during this conversation.
To learn more about Ryan here:
Connect with Ryan Hopkins on LinkedIn here.
For accessible access, view the podcast with closed captions below and access the full conversation transcript.
Episode Transcript:
Spk0 Alexis Zahner Spk1 Sally Clarke Spk2 Ryan Hopkins
[00:00:09] spk_0: Welcome back to, we are human leaders. I'm Alexis Zahner and together with my co-host Sally Clarke. Today, we're hosting a very lively and colorful conversation with future of well-being leader, Ryan Hopkins. Ryan comes at well-being from a very unique perspective through his own lived experience with mental illness. Ryan supports organizations globally to shift how they work for the betterment of their employees. Well-being. We deep dive into the leading in lagging metrics of well-being and what organizations can be doing better to support their people. Ryan Hopkins is on a mission to engage 1 billion people in the betterment of well-being. He is a future of well-being leader at one of the big four, a linkedin top voice for work-life Balance Ted X speaker, host of the Audacious Goals Club and author of the upcoming book, 52 weeks of well-being, a no nonsense guide to a fulfilling work life. Ryan has positively influenced the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. He shares his personal story of bulimia, depression, anxiety openly and has reached over 8 million people on social media recently being announced as a global emerging well-being leader of the year. Now, this episode does come with a trigger warning. We discuss sensitive topics such as mental illness, eating disorders and suicide. If you or someone you know, is struggling with mental health, please reach out help is always available to you. Additionally, this episode comes with a language warning as coarse language was used during this conversation. Let's dive in.
[00:01:57] spk_1: Thanks for joining us on. We are human leaders, Ryan. It's a delight to have you with us. We'd love to start by getting to know you a bit better and understanding your personal journey. That's brought you to the incredible work you're doing today.
[00:02:10] spk_2: Yeah. The first question start and gently. All right. Let's go. So nice to see what brought me here. It's a long meandering journey. As most people in this space, I had an accident when I was 19 playing rugby and I didn't walk for about a year. I was a trainee electrician. At that time, I had no qualifications or a levels when I was younger due to a few issues. The reason then when you don't have any, you become a tradesman if you're a young man from a town outside the city. So that's what I did. And with my leg break, I was unable to work. I lost my job, my apprenticeship, my funding, I was in debt. I was overweight, miserable. I made, I was in a wheelchair for about a year and made plans to take my life. At that time, I came through that I through from the love with a lot of love from my mum, the people who cared for me. Then I got a job in a bank and I started to walk and train and then I went a bit too far and developed bulimia. I had about an eight year journey slash battle with that. Couldn't tell anyone either. Didn't tell anyone about any of these things because it's not something uh rugby playing muscular if I say so myself man has. And it took a very long time to feel comfortable to start to share those things. I finally got to university. It's like, and I put a lot of pressure on myself. I was so anxious at one point, I couldn't leave my flat that thin like I was gonna piss myself basically and finally got a job at Deloitte's like the world's oldest graduate like Robert De Niro. You know, he's like walking into Google office. He's like, hey kids tiktok, am I right? Like dancing around like and started to finally share a piece of my story one bit at a time. And I coupled that with digital transformation and human centered design, big strategic work with large Corporates. And the two started to come together and I had to leave Deloitte the first time to go and lead elsewhere. Cos it was too early to com uh like have it as a market facing offering pre COVID went to a couple of cool places, big companies did some really cool things was made redundant two times in short succession. In a couple of years, I done a lot of writing and speaking then got the opportunity to come back and lead this business now. So helping governments and organizations around the world to develop strategies that actually work and all that work now positively influenced the lives of almost 400,000 people and reached close to 10 million now on socials, which is pretty cool.
[00:04:29] spk_0: It's very cool Ryan. And just so we understand a little bit more about your role with Deloitte. You're in the well-being space. Is that right? Can you tell us a little bit more about what that job looks like?
[00:04:40] spk_2: Yeah, of course. So I'm the future of well-being leader. It's the world's sickest job title cos I created it. So what it actually means is I help companies and governments organizations develop strategies that actually work rather than bikes, bananas and one off events and all that nonsense. We're taking a data led approach to well being. We're saying, what is the issue, helping them to quantify it, fully understand it instead of just basing initiatives off of assumptions and survey data, which is often 67 months old, what's the objective data set? So how can we over learn and create some hypothesis and then work out what's working? What isn't, then look at the organization and see what are the needs, we're trying to address because we're just often making guesses and there's been research recently shown that most of our being initiatives actually exacerbate and worsen subjective well being inside an organization. So I wanna get away from that thinking that more is always more. Sometimes we just need a little bit less. I want to help develop that understanding and that's the sort of work that we're doing
[00:05:32] spk_0: so impactful Ryan and help us understand a little bit more. I think we have, you know, this understanding or, or people have a general idea why it might be that well-being is very important to people. But can you help us unpack that a little bit more? Why in an organizational sense, is it important for us to care for an individual's well-being? How does that benefit a team? How does that benefit a business?
[00:05:53] spk_2: So this year you would have just gone on the moral argument. It's the right thing to do COVID get brought it all to prominence while talking about it. It's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do. OK. We know it's the right thing to do, but a business has a gazillion priorities and if you're in the East fee and it, it isn't quantifiable, it isn't objective and it's not something that's got KPO as a goal, it's probably not gonna be a priority alongside the other things they're trying to do with 10 plus percent inflation in the city. Everything else wise, electricity costs, blah, blah, blah, could go on and on. So the research in this space has completely changed. It's not just the moral argument, there's also the financial argument. So Oxford did a huge piece of research with BT. They found that a one point increase in subjective happiness resulted in a 13% increase in sales for call center staff. Over two years. The arguments and the research is started to become abundantly clear and I'm trying my bloody utmost to share that as loud and as proud as I can to show that it's not just because it's the right thing to do. It's because it's the financially sensible thing for an organization to do. And if you don't do it soon, it's gonna be law anyway. So you're just gonna have
[00:06:52] spk_1: to, I think that's such a great insight, Brian. And can I just also personally share? I really appreciate you sharing your own journey, as you noted, you know, in this kind of space, it's often our own struggles that really bring us to really care at a deep level about making the change. I know going through my own experience with eating disorders and I burn out as a finance lawyer that's really driven me to want to embed well-being at work to make burnout a redundant term. And what I really hear you saying this is, you know, something that's really live for us as well around we now have not just this moral imperative, but there really is a financial imperative for companies. I feel like there's still sometimes pushback for an array of reasons. I'm just really curious to hear your thoughts. Why does do you think sometimes well being is still a hard sell? Even when we have all the data and the financial incentive to make those changes?
[00:07:39] spk_2: I was gonna focus on something that you just said. So we're both super passionate because we've been through some shit, right? Because we've been through it and we're still here, we're still fighting and we're like, I wanna help others and feel not go through what I've went through and I know that you're exactly the same. But if they are going through it, I want them to know that they're not alone and that you can come through the other sides and that we have, right? And now we do what we can to help others and they're so admirable and everyone in this space often feels the same. But then we're so strongly opinionated about the things that helped us. We assume that what worked for us as a solution will work for others. And we often go in with that strong opinion which completely neglects the geographic circumstance, the function within the business, the organization, the individual, every single person is completely different and we go in trying to fix people because we want to help. But I think we actually make things worse because another webinar of what helped me is just gonna be another hour on someone else's plate which is gonna push their day long and impact the fact that they can't spend time their family. I think it's not. Well, LSE did, it's not, I think LSE did a big piece of research and they, the headline was that it's not an organization's responsibility to improve happiness and you think? oh, that sounds quite negative. No, not at all. But it is their responsibility not to worsen it. And when we flip that switch, we move away from giving people things to do extras, solutions, apps, webinars, the nice shiny things that are great to sell them to put on a job description to actually thinking, how can we create a truly flexible future of work with a high sense of belonging with psychological safety where we have an inclusive culture where we have the maximum amount of agencies do the work the way that we want. That is the switch. I think we're trying to flip and it's difficult because how can you say you're doing less and celebrate that? Cos we always attribute success to more to doing stuff differently? Often we actually just need to roll some stuff back. And until we get the data understanding correct, we're not gonna understand what the issues are. We did a big piece of research and we asked the leaders in the UK, how many what percentage of you using organizational data like attrition, absenteeism, et cetera to measure the effectiveness of your efforts. And it was 1 to 2%. So it's not seen as something that's measured and you would never go to marketing. You say how many engagements you got this month? And they go sorry Ryan, we don't know, we're not actually measuring and until that changes, it will not be seen as something that needs to change and we'll be stuck in the world of doing a few events and providing a few solutions and eaps and helping people when they fall, which is the right thing to do. Don't get me wrong. But if you want to start to reduce the stresses, we need to change our approach.
[00:09:59] spk_0: Mm and Ryan, you obviously talk about the, the practical quantifiable metric side of this and that being imperative to well being shifting, I guess from what we probably see now currently is quite a fluffy, nice to have to something that we know has both a, you know, it's a triple bottom line imperative. Really? What does that look like in practice though? Like how should we be or how could we be better measuring well being as an organization? So
[00:10:27] spk_2: there are some real easy, quick wins on this one sized organizations. You get people thinking, oh, well, I'm a medium sized company or a small company. This doesn't apply for me rubbish. It does, you can do this you can do it yourself so we can work out the voluntary attrition rate. People electing to choose the business if you then asked one question after they left and asked the rationale for why you'd be able to ascertain the reason. We found that 61% of people who left last year, their work in the UK are planning to next year is due to poor mental health stress, lack of balance other things, if you don't, if you haven't asked that question, you can apply that multiplier. So 61% of all your exits are partly attributable to poor mental health, not considering financial, physical, emotional, social, all the other areas of it. Just one element and then you work out your average average salary times that by 0.75 months. So divide by 12 times 0.75 the cost, the average costs are higher and retrained depending on industry, you will have a number inside your business and then add the increased cost of salary in the market which can be expected to be around 10% given inflation if not more in certain industries, then calculated a cost of exit due to well-being related issues which then lights a fire under the sea. Sweets are if you put that out and you say every single month, we're losing £470,000 in exits due to partially due to poor well-being, poor mental health even that is just one element. And when we take it seriously at that like that and we start to quantify and understand that will then generate the impetus from the C suite to actually do things a bit differently. Could we consider a right to disconnect? Have we got the right belonging here? What's up with the cult? So maybe we're tracking timing correctly. What about the job descriptions, the work design, the things that will actually have the impact. I
[00:12:04] spk_1: love this so much Ryan. I think you're really speaking to a lot of the things that you know, we can see in our work at human leaders as well as this kind of this is where the dial really shifts because as you mentioned, the fruit bowl, the yoga classes, the meditation apps. These are cute little like these are the end of the line when people are already burnt out. There's no point in implementing that organizationally. If you really want to drive a shift in well being, what changes people's well being is as you alluded to taking things off the table, creating more space, reducing the amount of time wasted, allowing them to really do the work that they want to do. So it's about job design and it's about having the courage I think to really look at all of these things that we've taken for granted, all of the things that are normalized in our organization in our day to day and really taking, you know, putting a set of fresh eyes on those because when you really shift that and you free up people's time, you know, in collaboration with them, with that being a sort of a design process together. I think that's when you can see some really, really impactful change in levels of
[00:13:00] spk_2: well-being, it's gold dust, but that's just like, well, that's your headline, right? You can also work out your absenteeism, your presenteeism cost, presenteeism is essentially the cost of mental health absence times a multiplier 0.45. There's been some massive thinking done behind that. You can work that out series piping up. Yeah, for mental health, it was always always listening in and then underneath that you use the secondary data set. So these are your primary to work out your big high level costs. This will create the the momentum and get the leadership brought in below that if you are an organization that uses laptops, digital workplace, say you have marks of fans, you can take out the work week, you can then overlay the work week on the voluntary attrition stats and then look across demographics, functions and geographies. And you can start to draw some hypothesis. When we see an increase in workweek of X, we see an increase in voluntary attrition of Y costing Z and you start to actually really develop some interesting thoughts into what we need from a workplace perspective, understanding the needs of the different demographics and geographies and functions because it works for one will not work for another. This then unlocks the ability to do different things. And we move to a place where we stop talking about well being well-being is an outcome of the work that we do rather than the focus itself. And we wanna continue doing it to raise the like, raise the awareness to remove the stigma. Don't get me wrong and I want every single day to continue and all this stuff to be continued to share. But to make the impact, we often don't mention the words. For example, if you have six meetings per day, how many have you got per day today? Alexis, how many have you had? We're actually
[00:14:24] spk_0: pretty good here, Ryan. So this is my third meeting for the day and that's probably my limit.
[00:14:29] spk_2: You know what? You're a bad example, Sally hubby, you got,
[00:14:33] spk_1: I've only got four. Yeah, I have to say human leaders is
[00:14:36] spk_2: you, you're doing so much better than me. I think I've got about 12. So, oh
[00:14:40] spk_0: my goodness. How do you manage? 12?
[00:14:42] spk_2: Well, so an example of something that would have a big impact, an outsized impact if you also said each meeting to finish 5, 10 minutes early and you've got six meetings per day. So let's take it down to half and let's take it to three. Alexis is right? And you cut each one by 5, 10 minutes. How much time are you saving per year. I cannot
[00:14:59] spk_0: do that. Mental maths but a lot,
[00:15:01] spk_2: it's 2.3 work weeks worth of
[00:15:04] spk_0: effort. Oh, wow. And that's a lot of time to give people back and
[00:15:07] spk_2: that's just on your three meetings per day. Yeah. And so I think the future of well being will be like quantifiable. It'll be changing the workplace to create the space that people need, creating work that where we feel a sense of purpose that gives us energy and then this will involve other parts of the business. So it's not just a hr issue. They're the ones that have inherited it because it's a people related thing. I think the future of well-being will include marketing, it other functions in the business because they're gonna have a bigger impact on your employee experience than most of the things that hr can actually do. And it's an evolution of the fact that you have one experience and we're interfacing for a laptop right now and we all experience stuff through here, but I haven't met a well-being function yet that has an it lead within it.
[00:15:46] spk_0: And it's interesting, Ryan, I just want to rewind to one thing I heard you mention a little earlier because we spoke about this idea of calculating the metric of well-being or calculating how many folks are leaving our organization as a result of mental health and well being and the cost of that. But something that we see very often as well is the inability for organizations to measure the presenteeism which you mentioned. And I think this is a really important terminology to pause and explain because presenteeism is obviously people who are at work, who are sitting at their desk every day, to what extent are they actually engaged in the work that they're doing? And I think this is a critical metric for us to understand as well. And I think it sometimes can be more challenging to calculate that because we measure productivity in such a traditional sense. But again, we have employees that perhaps their job design is impacting the way they're working, their sense of belonging, their sense of connectedness to their work. And I'll raise my hand here. I spent years working as a marketing consultant showing up at my job every day and trying to work out the best way to kill eight hours because I hated my life. So I was getting paid a lot of money to do that. And really, I think had subtle things shifted in my job design and in the way I felt about my work and how connected I felt to my team, it would have radically changed the trajectory of my career and perhaps I would still be maybe in that field. So I think understanding that having human beings physically at work as well isn't always a good measure of their mental health and their well being and even their productivity because hours at a desk isn't a good measure of someone's productivity, creativity, all of these beautiful things that human beings can bring to the table. So I just wanted to pause and sort of reiterate on that because I think that's a really important concept for folks to understand as
[00:17:29] spk_2: well. So the attrition one is probably the easiest to quantify and productivity is almost impossible unless you grind out widgets. It's challenging. We find time and time again that what's the with regards to productivity and well being is historically spoken about the mysterious upside. I think I find it easier to quantify the downside and show the big burning pile of cash with regards to engagement at work. It's, it's, you know, it's the world record year with regards to engagement at work. So Gallop shared that 23% of global workers are engaged and that is a record,
[00:18:01] spk_0: 23% people around the world are actually engaged at work. So what is the other 87
[00:18:07] spk_2: doing? The vast majority? About 50 60%? I think it was uh they call it quiet quitting. Now it's been adopted by Gallop that term and the rest are actively disengaged and it takes three or four engaged people to counteract the en the negative energy of someone who's actively disengaged and trying to sabotage the business. And this cost is monstrous. So you neglect engagement and a sense of creativity, fun and purpose at your own demise. Right. It's something that we need to prioritized. There's so much more to work than work. And we, we focus on the, the widgets and the productivity we neglect. The long term productivity which I think is predicated and created by a sense of connection from belonging Oxford. The world's largest study of well-being ever done by. Indeed, they capture data points from levers, people assessing their business. About 20 odd million individuals now contributed to this study. They asked that what they think the biggest driver of well being is that people often say comp like I think comps gonna be top. They found that that was actually sixth and belonging was top. And when we focus on this and we create a workplace where I feel like I can bring myself my neuro diverse brain and the way I like to work and feel like I belong in the workplace, then I thrive and people around me thrive and have an outsized impact. If you neglect that and you focus on trying to squeeze everything out of people, you will get a transactional sense of work. And there's gonna be two counts of organizations as gen A I proliferate. So you're gonna see those that augment human potential and those that just automate tasks and try and just make sure like grinding up, which is more effectively. I know it's a very broad brush topic, but it's super interesting and I think it's gonna be really interesting to see the dichotomy, I think of organizations
[00:19:37] spk_0: and we've spent so much time trying to hit every square peg into a square hole, you know, and there, it's so many of us don't fit in that mold. And finally, it is reassuring that, you know, we have folks like you having these conversations and doing this important work, but I think it will very quickly become a competitive advantage for companies who are willing to focus in this space and the labor market is tightening every day. And so it's gone from being a nice thing to do. As you said, Ryan to pretty critical to business
[00:20:08] spk_2: survival. Do you want a cool case study? Oh, absolutely. I told you, I'm like the data guy, right? Like it just comes to brain, like love it. I read this stuff so much that I, I go there and someone was like, you're pretty good with data and I never thought I was, but I guess maybe that's just how it works. And I found my little niche being like the story data guy and it's fun. I try and have a laugh a bit. So BBC shared the report recently. It said that A I has come to take your job this big scary headline like they try and do to induce fear 300 million jobs in the developed world and you think, oh my goodness, like terrible. And for a lot of people it will be and organizations there will be redundancies. I've got no doubt. However, I choose to see, I'm Pollyanna in my approach and I want to create a better future of work and that's why I intend to influence. So they said that 44% of all tasks in the legal profession can be automated. And you think that's gonna be terrible for graduates, for people doing the more me task at a lower level, et cetera. And that's gonna lead to a lot of people losing their job. However, the average work week in the legal profession in London is about 60 hours. And if you were to apply a 44% reduction to 60 hours automating the task that could be done by Ja I as an assistant in the workplace, you then have a work week of about 35 hours for a solicitor in London. Finally, lawyers get
[00:21:21] spk_0: weekends legit
[00:21:23] spk_2: and you could be working, you could be assisted without having to burn out without having to work until 12 o'clock at these like big law firms that prove your worth like suit style. Do you know what I mean? They burn at midnight or with a whiskey in the office while looking over the case notes, it won't be required. You can have a family, you can have sports, you can have a life outside of work and be an extremely successful professional. Then you can even have a four day work week in a legal profession, which would never have been even in the realm of a dream for anyone in that world. And I choose to think that there are organizations that are gonna choose that future. And can you imagine the people they're gonna get in that business? They're gonna get the creme de la creme of the legal profession and there. But then there will be those that focus on. We can cut 44% of the task, we can get rid of 44% of the people and continue to squeeze people out of 60 hours. There's gonna be two camps, but I choose to try and influence the first one and help coerce the second one towards the
[00:22:10] spk_1: first. And speaking of someone who just spent, you know, a number of years of her life working 70 to 80 hour weeks in an English law firm. You know, I really think that there is a lot of potential for that to really shift culture. And it will take, I think a slightly courageous approach by leaders, it will take forward thinking, you know, leaders in that profession to really embrace that. But we are already starting to see a number of firms in the UK and in Canada that are shifting to a four day week. And I think being able to see, you know, I really, and perhaps I'm a bit of a, you know, Pollyanna thinker here as well, but I really see that a I can be used very strategically to free up time to free up uh really deeper capacities as human beings. And just thinking back to myself as that sort of, you know, young solicit it, being able to spend time on things that are actually more intellectually stimulating rather than just doing the drudgery and allowing, you know, A I to be taking up some of that sort of space so that people can be really using their brains earlier in their career. And not this mentality, we have to do the hard yards for the 1st 10 years. And then you get to actually use your brain and think the
[00:23:09] spk_2: difficulty is gonna be the leaders because they'll be like, oh, I've done it this way, you have to do it this way. I think the tech is gonna go ahead of the culture, isn't it? I think you
[00:23:16] spk_0: totally legacy thinking. Yeah,
[00:23:18] spk_1: absolutely. And I'm curious, do you think, I mean, what would you say to that Ryan? Do you think that there is, is there going to need to be sort of a generational change or are you already seeing companies that are sort of leaning into that, those possibilities and really sort of stretching and pushing the market almost in that direction already. It's gonna
[00:23:35] spk_2: be push and poor and it's gonna be some people who want to do it because they're saying they want to create the best pool of people to do the work and then they can charge a higher cost for the best talent in the market and they will choose quality. There will be those that choose in and there'll be a tail or a lag essentially in some organizations that are really dragging their heels and we see it with a return to the office. Like some organizations, they went remote and now they're completely five days or four and they've flipped that dial and this will happen the same in that space as well. The advancement will happen fast. The culture takes time to catch up and we need some good leaders. To example, I think it cuts generations. I was just an amazing leader this morning and she was Gen X and she had the best attitude of anyone I spoke to. I speak to people millennials. Gen Z. You don't, I don't think we can classify within generations. I read a study recently that Orangina drinkers have more in common than generations. So it's just this sweeping big group like we are as a 20 year group of people. Do you think I've got the same opinion as a young woman from South Sudan? Like it's, we, we are different people and I just think we need to incorporate the thoughts of the entire workforce into this and try our best to move forward. It's Yeah, hella challenge. Exciting times. Strap in for the ride. Let's go to sort of
[00:24:45] spk_1: maybe take another case study. Ryan. I'd love to sort of think about, you know, you mentioned earlier and this is really a standout for me, really sort of clear thinking around this, that well-being is an outcome. So, you know, when we go in, we're talking about well-being, actually, what we're doing is a whole bunch of other things that have very little to do with the actual term well-being. It's the outcome of well-being at the end and I'd love it if you can, if you can sort of share an experience where you've seen and organized, sort of go through that assessment, that's transformative process with better well-being is an outcome. Yeah.
[00:25:16] spk_2: So I I started to allude to it before about the digital space and someone I worked with before that the average work week was 49 hours marks fans first time log on last time, log off, not necessarily work done, but the work day span and they're long days. And I said to leadership, this is not necessarily where we want to be. We wanna focus on outcomes, the value we create for clients rather than the amount of time in the seat. There was pushback. This is what we do. We're an organization that has to work hard. I said I respect that. So we set up the people analytics function to understand a bit more detail across demographics, different groups that are working longer, et cetera and different functions. Then I drew those hypothesis of voluntary attrition and showed the right what happens when you start to push people a bit harder, they say, OK, start to do some things. So then we focus on leveling up the digital environment, creating space for people like creating ways of work and that actually work for leaders. So we taught 1200 managers how to do team charters with their team to ask all the people what they needed from a boundaries perspective, cos work life balance doesn't exist. It's life which work is one part of. And we need to develop boundaries first in the digital environment. Cos if you leave it to chance work wins. Every time there's two dogs fight and work and life work barks and bites a lot harder. So you've got to put in the place of the boundaries I put in place my life boundaries. What I first, I like to go for a walk in the middle of the day and I'm gonna do that after this call. My diary is booked out. If I had to push it, I have to push it because I, I, I've got a demanding job and that's cool. But I will make sure I take that time at another point in the day. So I'm flexibly nonnegotiable with my approach. So we're trying to develop all of this thinking and helping people to create their own digital boundaries because if you don't define your own, someone else is gonna do it and it's not gonna be where you want them and emails, essentially someone else's to do list that you're just actioning and they're just putting it straight into your head. You, you have to come into your front door and start shouting. Are you asking you things to do? But that's what we do in the digital environment. So we check our phone constant times per day. So we focused on this. We did a series of things over a year, right? It's discount policy. We did a 4.5 day work week trial in the Middle East when they, when they shifted their weekend to enable for, for a religious prayer and a bunch of other things. We found that over the year by focusing on these small improvements across the life cycle that we were able to reduce the work rate by five hours per person per week. Sing the business 14 million hours without any effect on productivity. This for me creates the space for individuals to choose what they need for a well-being perspective, creating the space for individuals to survive, not fixing happiness or improving it, but not worsening it and making it a place where individuals can prioritize what they need each day to be their best self. As Rupaul says, if you can't love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love somebody else? I very much agree with it. Yeah. Can I get any men? He Yeah. You know what I'm saying? The of the air for me that's the direction of travel, getting the analytics function correct, fully understanding an issue, addressing prescient needs, creating space time, flexibility and increasing agency. This and then exemplifying the behaviors you wanna see throughout the year. And every single tip that I did, I had a competition, I'd leave a £25 Amazon voucher. People would do anything for 25 quid. And I said, I hate to think what they do for 100 but I've got to participate in these competitions, collect the stories and I share this internally and externally. So I said do on linkedin as well. Increased linkedin followers by 40% over a year, doubled internal engagement and reduced the work week by five hours per person just with organic stories and content. So it's data led, it's anecdote driven, it's leadership led and it's proactive and you consider the environments and the context of the workplace. So one size fits all often fits none. And it's about just creating the space and giving a suite of things that people can use as and when they need. But yeah, this is my opinion. I might not be right, but I think it had a big impact, Ryan,
[00:28:47] spk_0: something that was really interesting that you mentioned there sort of in passing is that you gave five hours a day back to people to spend on their well being, how they choose. Now, I have a little bit of, I don't know, there's something that I'd like to dive in with you here. It's not an issue. But for instance, in my young career, if I found a way to save time on doing certain tasks, I would have filled those time that time with more tasks that I deemed to be productive. So I think there is an element of working with and supporting people to feel safe to prioritize their well being as well. And I'd love to just know from more of a behavioral sense how leaders can actually support that. What behaviors do we actually need to see from leaders that tell human beings it's actually safe to prioritize my well being this five hours doesn't need to be reinvested into more projects. Good
[00:29:40] spk_2: challenge. I love it. So we rolled out unlimited paid vacation. We're the 1st, 1st big global companies do that everywhere. And people always say I tell people about it and as soon as I say it on stage, people are like, gotcha. They wait there, they've got one question in their heads and you wait till question time and that they're looking at me like this, they've got their stan in me and they'll be like they put their hand up in a unlimited vacation doesn't work, does it? Mm mm I was like, yeah, but neither does anything if you don't have a concerted change effort, culture, strategy for breakfast. You know what I'm saying? And you have to really focus on like what are the cultural differences inside the organization, the US. Absolutely bloody loved it. L like straight away they were like hell yes, I don't have eight days leave anymore. I could take 25 straight from 0 to 100 do it took more work because there's a higher power differential and people will then we not feel as comfortable taking the lead. So we really focused in with Indian leaders and we're saying we need people to see you lead. By example, we actually created framework for people to have conversations to make it into the process. And then we were monitoring, we were having a look at the data and the annual leave taken from work then because we leaned in with certain functions and we said you need to push people a bit harder. So it's about taking a proactive and really considered change effort approach and building it into the process as well. Cos culture is one thing but you leave it to chance, the junior colleagues won't feel as safe to do it. And it's about monitoring the rights and then pushing in with the leaders who exemplify and make the change. So like not only is it just we're gonna create the space, let people do what they want, dog eat dog, like go crazy. That's not what I'm saying. I'm like we need to see the examples and bake it into our existing ways of working, teaching managers how to do it, monitoring the data looking at the feedback consistently and iterating and improving. It won't be right straight away and there will be countries that don't adopt these certain things or functions or markets or managers that are just not very good, that don't give their team space and that's gonna happen across the business. But 96% of man managers want to improve the well being of their team. We are. So I don't know what the other 4% are doing, but let's not worry about them. But seven out of 10 of that same population, so they cannot focus on improving the well being and performance of their team because they're tied up in knots with bureaucracy process and nonsense. Managers get a lot of flak. I wouldn't wanna be a manager in this day and age. I don't necessarily think it's because they don't want to help. I think it's because they don't have the time. And if we can ease that burden and create the space, set, the example, like deliver the process, that's gonna make the change. I think there's a world of difference, but it has to be really considered so yes, unlimited paid vacation will not work. If you don't really think about how to put it into the business. If you monitor it, if you measure it, if you treasure it, measure it, if you focus on different functions and the nuances within the business and you take a real concerted sensible approach and keep iterating and updating it will. And
[00:32:13] spk_1: I think this is where, you know, you're really reflecting beautiful insight around this being almost a sort of like an experimental process. Like, can we hold space to identify some ways that we can see to make the change and then treat this not with necessarily levity? No, but, but so like can we make this something that's flexible? It's not, these are the new set of rules, everyone just adhere to this. It's can we make a shift and can we identify the behaviors that we need to have? Where are things going wrong? Why are they going wrong and without a shame and blame sort of approach to that? But being able to see and as you mentioned, you know, this is going to be very different across cultures and perhaps across different, you know, geographical locations. But having that kind of curiosity, I think around it would really benefit that approach as being something that's, it's almost like a living organism. This is something that we're doing. It's not just a rule we make and everyone just automatically does it. It's really about shifting culture which lets you know, culture itself, the definition of the word. It's a living breathing thing.
[00:33:07] spk_2: Another organization we work with, we developed something called a backlog of needs. So we had feedback that we captured every month, we summarized that into 10 needs statements, put KPIS or measurement against it where we are currently, we shared that openly increasing the transparency and sense that we are listening and we said openly and treated them like adults. These three things here, we fundamentally cannot change. I'm sorry, I know this is an issue, but we're just gonna draw a line under it. Now, this is not something we can do in the context of the market. We can't increase salaries. For example, what we can do though is address these things here and we're trying a pilot in these areas and we're gonna report back on the progress and share the data and the qualitative data which overlays that because data about stories is just data. Stories about data is also just as use as the need to come together. So we did this and it really increased the transfer. I haven't seen the trust and we shared this openly on all hands and the one of the leadership share that we hear you, this is what we said. This is where we're at, this is where we're moved to. This is what we're doing. And I think even that little step are not working in the black box, cos we wanna get it perfect, but we're not going to and it's just increasing that upwards and downwards dialogue and almost making it as easy as possible to feed up as it is to come down. And then people are like, all right, maybe this won't change. And if that's the case then this isn't the job for me, but at least I know outright. And then I'm not gonna sit here twining my thumbs being one of the masses sitting there. Not like you did in your last company. If someone said explicitly that we're not gonna change it here, you'd be like, maybe this place isn't for me. And
[00:34:24] spk_0: I would actually be fascinated to know Ryan if you could even just measure the incremental change from the idea of being heard. Like that idea of the two way dialogue that you mentioned in of itself, I think would start to improve the perspective of well-being or yeah,
[00:34:39] spk_2: it wasn't a controlled trial. But overall, in the time that we worked with that organization, we increased subjective well being by 72% from its
[00:34:46] spk_0: baseline. And can you tell us what were some of the needs that came out of it? Are you able to share like what were people feeling like they needed at work?
[00:34:53] spk_2: It's the same thing in it. Like workload is an issue unable to switch off? I think it would be almost exactly the same for most organizations with a bit of nuance like they were, this was at the time of COVID. Obviously, people had real health concerns and that was an absolute privacy and that was where we focused most of our efforts because we don't, I know it's not quite right if you think a Maslow's hierarchy, right? If you don't have this physical needs coverage. You're not gonna be able to consider what you need with regards to self fulfillment and you can't think about volunteering and stuff unless you have those bits that you need covered. So we took that approach, the vast majority was on physical health. It was on evolving to hybrids, temporal flexibility, a lack of sense of connection while working from home, the kind of things that you would expect. And we did a bunch of things and initiatives and piloted iterated shared and we got leadership to leave from the front of every single one. So I said to the whole team, you need to be doing this otherwise there's no point and then got people to champion those efforts within the business as well. And yeah, he was quite successful and that was with zero budget that under the pen at a company as well. Yeah, and
[00:35:52] spk_1: I think you've, you know, identified a lot of those, there will be some of the needs that we have that were expressed around work, whether it's, you know, workload or sort of glitches in job design almost or the use of digital, you know, technology, how we use that and how we can improve it. That will be sort of general. But you know, I am mindful that you need to go for a walk shortly. So I don't wanna take up your whole afternoon. You do have a book coming out and I'm so excited to get my hands on. 52 weeks of well being. Can you share a little bit with us about the motivation behind that and maybe a little bit of a sneak preview, a little sneak peek on what we can expect from your
[00:36:23] spk_2: book. This is weird. It's the first time I've spoken about it like this. So it feels weird to think of myself how exciting as an author. It's kind of like an uncomfortable feeling and I feel like a bit. It's cool. It's like pride and anxiety like riddled together. Yeah. So I mentioned years ago that every time I left my flat, I felt like I needed to go to the toilet and I started sharing my story and other things on socials. About four years ago, I said to be a leader in this space, you've got to stand up and start talking like one and I had an audience of about two. I thought I'm gonna get started and I did a did a selfie from the bathroom and I thought of this toilet break well being, make it fun and silly. Like it's about little actions that happen regularly if you go toilet eight times every day. Apparently, I know it sounds like a lot. But count tomorrow, let me know team on these lists and linked in. If you go eight times tomorrow, I wanna know how many times you go to the toilet tomorrow. Yeah, that's it. It, that sounds a little bit kinky and weird, but that's not how I meant it. But if you did 10 press ups every time you went to the toilet, I think it should do 32,700 press ups this year. It's about the little things consistently that make this huge difference. Well being is not achieved by Big Bang by one event. One other thing, it's something that you turn up for every single day and we create space for, as we're saying, the disco environment is those little things that make a world of difference. Mum said now when she's working from home, she does a squat every time she opens the fridge and gets the milk out. So she's banging squats out like there's nobody's business, right? So like it's these little things and I thought, oh you could do little series like a video one minute, little things you can do. You flush and you flourish was the idea you see a born a marketer and I started with these silly videos and I thought I'm gonna ruin my career. And now I've got a full like ring light set up in my bathroom. I said at my TED talk, it's like I've got an onlyfans channel happening in there and I have to warn people when they come round, there's not some funky business going on. I'm selling like premium content. It's just for linkedin. I'll be like this is a future of, well, being BB and it's fun and it's to increase the conversation and remove some of the seriousness around the top and just have a laugh. And I banged those episodes out for three years. They turned into the TED talk. My TED talk was called engaging a billion people from the toilet cos that's my goal. And they, each chapter I, I said day zero, episode zero, this is gonna be a book, toilet break, well-being, toilet break, well-being didn't become the book, but 52 weeks did and each of the chapters has been, some of them have been lengthened out to make the 52 weeks. The whole premise being no nonsense as I was saying about solutions and advice. We explore a topic. This is a challenge that we're seeing in the context of the workplace and personal life and what are some things that you could do to consider what you need as an individual to move forward in this area. So I tried my best to refrain from providing any advice in the well being book. It could be the first one ever. So it's called 52 weeks of Well being a no nonsense guide. It's meant to be a bit of fun, different things from around the world. One being digital detox is one eating our desco is stepping away. Another one being cosmic gives significance therapy, taking a walk non negotiables. That's what they're completely random. I have one on like neurodiversity and Well being another one on financial, well being I collaborated with some people to write the chapters and I start, I got to sign the deal in February and I wrote every weekend until the end of July, Saturday and Sunday. Head down. Sometimes I'm a big hypocrite in this well-being space. But I think when you have purposeful work, you can work harder and when you get the chance you step away and I'm taking as much time off this summer as I humanly can. And I was, I was saying before the podcast and going to the rugby World Cup on Thursday, and I'm gonna spend my entire time either watching a game by a pool in the sea and that's for about 11 days. So, yeah, the book is done and it's coming out in January and I'm really, really excited to show it to everyone. Yeah,
[00:39:47] spk_0: we can't wait to read it. I sounds like it'll be a different approach to well being, which is refreshing as well because I think the self help space is, you know, really saturated with advice. And I think something in my experience of mental health and well being and this is just personally anecdotally. I think humor goes a long way in helping us kind of break down the barriers and being able to have these conversations as well. And humor somehow connects us to one another a little easier and kind of what makes us similar as Well, so super excited. We might have to get you back on the podcast for another conversation in January. When the book's
[00:40:22] spk_2: out, we could do, we could do like a chapter reading or something. You could, like, you could pick one
[00:40:26] spk_0: book reading. Love it from the toilet.
[00:40:29] spk_2: Have you done one of those before? I can jump in the toilet if you want me to. No problem. I've got it all set up in there. So it's all I'm always ready to get on the toilet.
[00:40:36] spk_0: I mean, this today, it's probably been the wildest podcast episode we've had, but I think that'll escalate things even further. So we'll,
[00:40:42] spk_2: I'll tell you about that. I'm ready. We'll get it in the calendar now, Ryan, well, I'm the first person in the world obviously to do a TED talk from a toilet. So I did mine on stage in short. I had to carry the toilet across Shoreditch in East London and I was, and I had to put it together that morning. The toilet is still in the theater and they're to plumb it in and put a plaque above it and say this is Ryan from Ryan Hopkins Ted though. So good. That's
[00:41:03] spk_0: brilliant. Now, Ryan, for leaders who are listening to this, you know, that want to ensure well-being is something that is at the core of their organization, both, you know, systematically and in terms of that cultural behavioral change. Where would you advise someone is the logical first place to start to really start embedding this at
[00:41:22] spk_2: work as an individual, from an individual perspective, I think I would say you don't have to be in crisis or flourishing to talk about well-being. It's just being a human and a whole range of emotions in the middle. I'm tired today. I'm tired. I told you I started work at half six this morning and I call with Malaysia and Indonesia. I don't do that often and that's cool. And I'll share that and I'm gonna step away later. And I told my team and I said, don't message me after half four. I will not be around for me. That's the biggest thing you can do. You don't have to have been through some sort of thing. You don't have to have gone through burnout or experienced or flourish. And I've done this insane challenge to talk about these things. It's just talking about all the time. Just be human, chat about the stuff outside of work. Bring some of that in. That's what the magic is. You're employed because you're a person that people want to spend time with. Everyone you work with is a smart person of so called, right? You differentiate with just being fun, having a laugh, bringing some of the human elements through. And I think that's the biggest thing that most people could do. I used to worry so much in my first time at Deloitte that I wasn't professional enough. I'm a former electrician bouncer. I traveled the world and didn't go to private school. But I think that's why I love what I do and it's special when I can be a bit cly, and that's because of that stuff. So, don't worry so much about being perfect at work. Having it all together. Share some of the bits in between, even if you're feeling a bit naff, and that'll make a lot of difference.
[00:42:36] spk_1: And I love that Ryan. I think it's often it's those moments when we're actually most candid and vulnerable that we actually feel that almost visceral sense of connection most strongly with other people. And that's really beautiful advice that we'll be taking away and I'm sure our listeners will too. Thank you so much. This has been so much fun chatting to you really
[00:42:52] spk_2: great time. Absolutely. My pleasure looking forward to the next one next year,
[00:43:02] spk_0: Ryan Hopkins, brand new book, 52 weeks of well-being, a no nonsense guide to a fulfilling work. Life will be released in January of 2024. Find more information about Ryan, his work and his incredible new book in our show notes. And if well-being is something that your organization is ready to take seriously, we encourage you to reach out to us for support in driving change, find information on human leaders at www dot We are human leaders dot com. Lastly, this conversation touched on very serious and sensitive topics such as mental illness, suicide and eating disorders. If you or someone you know, need support with their mental health, reach out to a trusted professional help is always only one phone call away. Please take care of yourself and thanks for being with us in this conversation.