A Missed Opportunity with a Trillion Dollar Price Tag

Over the past two decades, I spent tens of thousands of hours on self-care and well over a million dollars in out-of-pocket wellness expenses—enabling me to cold-stop the growth of cancer and eliminate debilitating chronic pain without pharmaceuticals or surgery. To cultivate this wellness, I  ran my own company from home, revolving my workflow around my self-care regimen—an impossibility in the classic corporate environment.

Today, with job openings at 10 million, some corporations brainstorm how to strong-arm employees back to the office, and others capitulate to worker demands for remote work options. Regardless of which way they swing, I cannot help but notice that despite these “unprecedented times,” these corporations are operating on an old and tired business model.

What about the office environment has not been working for employees, and what about the home environment is working?

It is one of hierarchy and power-over, based on imposition rather than collaboration; and it serves neither employers nor employees, as it overlooks one glaring question: Why? Why is there such demand to work remotely? What about the office environment has not been working for employees, and what about the home environment is working? What is the takeaway here, and how can it be integrated into on-site work options?

Happy and healthy employees mean an energized and productive work force—unlike the 9-to-5 workforce costing employers $1.1 trillion annually pre-pandemic, in absenteeism and presenteeism. To date, 60% of Americans have been living with at least one chronic health issue, the leading cause of disability and death in America. Perhaps employees have discovered they feel better and, therefore, work better when they are at home—a change that should not only be encouraged, but also studied by executives, as well as adapted to on-site offices. 

In other words: The classic American work model itself may be sick.

Asking employees what undermines their health in the office, and collectively brainstorming optimal wellness practices on site based on those discoveries, can not only cultivate a powerful culture of wellness across the board, in turn leading to enhanced productivity, but also can elicit a sense of camaraderie, ownership and devotion among employees in response to feeling seen, heard and cared for. That in turn can lead to greater employee retention at a time that employees are scarce. 

It’s a win-win all around.

At home, an overweight employee with heart disease may have time to prepare and slowly digest a large salad for lunch, unlike at the office, where she has to grab fast food and chow it down. She may have lost weight and reduced her blood pressure medication at home, making remote work a life-and-death issue.

With the right mindset — one of willingness, creativity and flexibility — executives can mirror on-site these kinds of remote work benefits. One example is arranging for healthy meals to be delivered to the office and extending the lunch break, even subsidizing the meal delivery. 

The classic American work model was militaristic, rooted in force and fear. Employers barked orders and demanded compliance, using employees’ financial security as a bargaining chip. By stepping into a new work paradigm, however—one that involves listening to, caring about, and being responsive to employee wellness needs—executives will remove impediments and increase incentives for employees to return to work on-site, of their own volition. In doing so, executives will create a culture where employees are nourished and able to flourish, enabling the company to blossom as a collective whole, with increased productivity, decreased absenteeism and presenteeism, and increased revenue.

Moreover, in today’s “unprecedented times,” where companies need labor more than labor needs companies, corporations that care for and invest in employee wellbeing will attract leading talent—the very employees currently walking out the door of corporations that are trying to return to the way things were.

Loolwa Khazzoom (KHAZZOOMotivation.com) supports executives in cultivating a work environment and corporate culture that optimize employee wellness and company productivity. Her innovative wellness programs have been featured in top media including The New York Times and Fox News..