How Employee Wellbeing Leads to a Sustainable Workplace and Bottom Line ft. Lori Saitz (Zen Rabbit)

Employee wellbeing. Much like the term “corporate sustainability”, this is a concept that we hear a lot, but maybe not all of us are sure how to get there. And this is a topic that directly overlaps with our work at The Resilience Report, as I have seen so many well intentioned professionals burn out when working on causes they truly care about. 

With this in mind, I wanted to find someone to speak to you, our listeners, about this very topic. And whether you are thinking about this for yourself or for your teams, that person is Lori Saitz. 

Lori is a nationally recognized stress eradication expert, award-winning author, speaker, broadcaster, trainer, writer, executive coach, and employee wellbeing consultant. As the founder and CEO of Zen Rabbit, a forward-thinking health and wellness company, she is dedicated to guiding business leaders toward creating and nurturing healthier, more productive work environments. With a comprehensive background in wellness strategies and employee engagement, her mission is to share easy-to-implement tools and techniques that not only improve the well-being of employee teams but also contribute to their bottom line through enhanced performance, improved morale, and increased employee retention and engagement. 

On this episode, we discuss the importance of employee well-being in businesses, focusing on the integration of mindfulness, gratitude, and self-care practices to enhance productivity, retention, and overall well-being. We also explore strategies to overcome compassion fatigue and maintain personal resilience in the context of sustainability work and the current polarized climate. Lastly, Lori emphasizes the significance of personal responsibility in building resilience and finding joy and success in life.

We have all heard the expression of filling up our own cup before we can pour into others. This episode provides some actionable wellbeing tips and tricks that we can all apply today on our journeys to do business better. 

With that, please help me welcome Lori to the show!

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[Host: Lauren Scott] So, a few weeks ago we had an episode of The Resilience Report where we explored careers at the intersection of sustainability and wellness. The reception we had to that podcast was so positive and strong that I'm confident you're really going to appreciate this next episode. Instead of just maybe a career path and different industries, we're actually going to be looking within our own businesses. So, whether you're an entrepreneur or business leader, this concept of employee well-being within our businesses.

Today, we have an expert in this area. She's the founder and CEO of Zen Rabbit. So, welcome, Lori, to the show. 

[Guest: Lori Saitz] Thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled to be here and to have this conversation today. 

I would love to start things off at a high level because when I was researching for that previous episode on wellness, which is, you know, I think probably a little bit distinct from well-being, I realized how broad of a definition it can be, and there's maybe sometimes variations in terms of what our perception of what it is. So, in being an expert in the associate or employee well-being space, how do you define well-being?

To me, well-being encompasses every aspect of a person's life. You know, it's well-being in physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—that whole person. And, you know, a lot of times people define success by their business success, and they may have lots of business success, but their personal life is a mess, or their health is a mess. And that, to me, is not success. So, well-being to me is success, but as it encompasses an entire person. Yeah, every element of you being well—that's well-being—and being joyful about it, let's put that on top of it. Okay. 

It's not always the case! Yeah, and what made you specifically want to apply that concept of well-being to the corporate world? Because, to your point, the corporate world has often been defined as success as being one thing. So, what made you want to explore those two concepts coming together?

I've been an entrepreneur since 2003, and my dad always had an entrepreneurial spirit, so I learned from a very young age. And as an entrepreneur, entrepreneurship is like the biggest personal development journey you can go on. However, people who live in corporate don't necessarily have access to—or exposure to, I should say—those resources. And yet they're working in extremely challenging times, and they're under tremendous stress, and they need access to these tools and techniques to even function. And so I just feel really strongly that if more people have access to this information, not only will their business improve, but the whole world. Like, I'm on this mission—I have this big mission—to teach the world to be calm and grounded, no matter what's going on around them. And so I feel like there's so much opportunity to go into corporate and share these tools and techniques and really change, like, everything on every level. That sounds like a really big goal. And it is, and I'm going to do my part.

Well, to your point, sometimes that environment in the corporate world can be very much driven by ROI, a very short-term focus on how can we get the greatest gains. How does a company even start to think about balancing this concept of that short-term gain with the overall well-being of their employee base?

When employees are not well on any level, they're not going to be functioning at their optimal. You know, if you want to look at employees as machines—which I wouldn't recommend—but let's just use this analogy: if they're not functioning properly, they're not well-oiled, they're not fueled properly, they're not going to do their job. And they might—the wheels might still be turning, but not very slowly or not efficiently. So, if you ultimately, like—this is a horrible analogy, but I'm going to use it anyway—if you want your people to, like, have their work output optimized, you want them to be well on every level.

And I do think companies are waking up to the idea. And I don't think any leader comes in and thinks, "I want all of my employees to be miserable." But there are probably reasons as to why it hasn't been a focus. So what do you see as being kind of those major bottlenecks or constraints when it comes to getting to that next level of integrating employee well-being within your company?

One, I think it starts with that it's not optional. It's not a nice-to-have thing. Like, it has to be seen as integral to profitability. And it is—it really is. There is so much science and research behind the concepts that I am teaching people, into how it affects the bottom line, how it affects productivity, how it affects retention and engagement. Like, these are not just like, "Oh yeah, that's nice. It's nice that my employees feel well and feel like they're healthy," but it actually... So anybody who wants to affect the bottom line should be paying attention to these things.

And one area, for sure, where I've seen definitely be the issue that I would love your opinion on is a lot of people working in values-based organizations—so whether it's environmental or social—you tend to care so much about the topic and the cause that it's sometimes at the detriment of their own well-being. How do you recommend those folks—and I will include myself, honestly, in that camp—of trying to, what might be sometimes labeled as compassion fatigue, how do you overcome that?

Yeah, well, it comes back to that phrase that you've probably heard before that they use on the airlines, and that is, you know, "Put your own mask on first before trying to help other people"—the air mask thing—which, thank God, I've never had to use on an airplane. But that's what it really comes down to. You have to take care of yourself. You have to fill your own bucket first before you can hand out anything from that bucket to someone else. And it comes down to, again, learning these tools and techniques to build your own resilience, to build your own health, to take care of yourself so that not only can you give more of yourself, and do so in a way that you're not burning yourself out—because you're no good to anybody when you're burned out—but then also being able to teach these tools and techniques to the people that you're helping and help them on an even greater scale. 

Then you can have that ripple effect in your broader community as well. Absolutely. Well, with the same folks working deeply in sustainability, we are at a very interesting time where I think the topic of sustainability—or ESG more broadly—has become certainly polarized, but definitely politicized. And I know that can take a toll on individuals in terms of our well-being, regardless of what side you sit on. So how do you typically recommend navigating that, I guess, even from an employee perspective, but also from an employer perspective, knowing that it can be a really sensitive time for a lot of folks in the space?

Again, it comes back to: what are the tools and techniques? And so, you know, I keep referring to tools and techniques. I'll share one of them so that we can be more specific about what we're talking about. But the concept of a calming exercise, a grounding exercise—it could be called meditation. Some people push back on that term because they don't like it. But what we're really talking about—okay, let's say you learn how to do a grounding, calming exercise, and you implement that. You practice it every day. It doesn't have to be long. It could be three to five minutes. Give yourself the grace and the space to do it every five minutes—every day. I mean, I would love it every five minutes—that's a little excessive—but you get the idea! So that you can be in that grounded place so that when things are happening around you, and they will—like, stress and chaos and circumstances that you can't control, we can't change that—what we can change is how are you responding to it, instead of reacting from that reptilian brain of "Ah, everything's on fire!" Like, how do you stay calm and grounded so that you can make better decisions, so that you can be more logical, so that you can have better emotional intelligence, and so that you're not, like I said, just reacting to everything that's thrown in front of you?

And so, if you can practice, like, a grounding exercise every—and commit to doing it every day. So one of the things I'm going to invite your listeners to do is commit to whatever it is. You know, we're going to talk a little bit more, but commit to doing, like, a grounding exercise every day for seven days. Give yourself seven days, and see if it changes anything. And if it doesn't, then either you can commit to another seven days and see if that works, or you can stop doing it. It was just an experiment.

I would echo it just as you're saying this. From personal experience, I implemented something last year, and it was just—it was to the point where I had to set a timer on my watch of taking five minutes a day of reading a book in the middle of the day. And the physiological relaxation that I then experienced for at least an hour, maybe even a couple of hours after, I still can't quite believe how much of a change it can have. So I totally back you on that one.

Yeah, I'm glad you just brought up that it had that extended effect too. It's not just the five minutes that you're sitting there doing it—sitting, standing, walking, whatever—it's not just the five minutes you're doing the exercise. The effects are, one, they're cumulative over the days. So you'll feel it the first day, it'll be even more the second, even more the third. It's like when you work out, the calorie burn goes on for a few hours. Same thing here.

Well, I love this meditation example. Is this something that you would, for example, recommend—we typically have two different types of listeners. We have entrepreneurs, and we have business leaders. I love the fact that you were an entrepreneur for so long and were able to see that modeled as a child as well. How would you recommend an entrepreneur try and keep well-being in mind when they're also just trying to run a business?

Well, again, it goes back to—you can't run a business well if you are frazzled and short-tempered and feeling like you're pulled in 9,000 different directions. I mean, you're still going to be maybe feeling that way. I would recommend getting a team around you, but that's a different conversation. But giving yourself those five minutes at least—like, can you give yourself five minutes? Andrew Huberman is a researcher in mindfulness and a lot of brain chemistry stuff, and he has done some research that showed three minutes—as little as three minutes—has an effect on the brain chemistry, on focus. And so, come on! If you don't have three to five minutes to give yourself a little bit of space to practice this kind of exercise, then your business is just not going to survive. I mean, there's no way around it. Yes, there's work to be done, and at the same time, this is internal work that is even more important than the doing, doing, doing, doing.

So I'd imagine then the advice is quite similar then for the other camp who are maybe within a larger corporation, but more that business leader role?

Right. Because what you're getting out of this three to five minutes is you're rewiring your brain. Literally, you are rewiring your brain to make you more focused, to make you more productive, more creative, more innovative. These are the things that you need to be successful in business, whether you're running your own business or you're working for someone else, or you're leading a team. So you're rewiring your brain to be this, to be more efficient. You know, what's that saying? I think it's attributed to Abraham Lincoln, "If you give me six hours to chop down a tree, I'll spend the first four sharpening the axe." Something like that. And this is what you're doing. You're sharpening the axe. You can keep hacking away at that thing with a dull axe, and it's going to take you hours, or days, or years. And by implementing these kinds of practices, you're cutting down on the time. You know, one of the things I hear from a lot of clients is, "I don't meditate because I don't have time." And the thing is that it actually buys you time. It gives you time because when you're becoming better at focus, then something that might have taken you two hours might take you an hour and a half. And now you just bought yourself 30 minutes. But you also probably are going to do a better job than you would have otherwise because you have the ability to focus better.

That makes total sense. And I've definitely heard that rhetoric, and I'm sure I'm guilty of saying it too: "I don't have time to do it today. It's a crazy day." But if you just took the time, you would be that much more efficient during that time.

Well, I guess it comes back to what you were saying at the top—not only having that success, but then being joyful in that moment, so you're not just ticking the box, but you're enjoying the experience itself.

Right, right. I mean, this is your life. And you can't go back and change anything that's happened in the past, but you can change from now and find more joy in it. Like, if you're not living—if you're not happy with where you're working, what you're doing, your business, whatever it is—that's on you to figure out how to change that. And, yeah, that's where, you know, we could get into a whole topic of personal responsibility, but nobody's going to be able to do that for you. That has to be something you do for yourself.

Well, I would actually love to double-click into that a little bit, just in terms of—we often think of it as an employer's responsibility to create an environment where, you know, there can be well-being. And I do think that there is an important narrative too, on the flip side, that there is a personal accountability element as well, which is maybe not always the easiest message to digest, especially if you're the one feeling that stress. So could you speak to that a little bit more? Because I think we often brush over it just because it feels a little bit less comfortable to talk about.

Sure, yes. I completely agree that employers have a responsibility to create a safe, a productive environment for people. And at the same time, individuals have a responsibility to—I was going to say expose themselves to these tools and techniques—but to take that, like, once you've been—they've been put in front of you—to use them. Once you know about it. You know, there's that quote of, "Once you do the best you can with the tools you have, and once you have better tools, then you can do better." And so, once you have these tools, to take and use them is your responsibility. Again, you may not be able to change outside circumstances, but you can change how you respond to it. And these techniques that we're talking about are the things that give you the ability to respond differently.

And do you see a difference, whether it's in your clients or the research that you do, in terms of maybe generations and how they take the concept of well-being into account? Is, for example, Gen Z, is it completely different than Millennials and different than Baby Boomers? I would love to hear a little bit more about that.

Yeah, I don't have a whole lot of experience or research on the different generations, but we can look at—I mean, Boomers are the ones who have been, you know, that's like, "Work! This stuff is woo-woo, I don't need this." You know?

Although, funny enough, it was my mom who introduced me to meditation when I was 10 years old. So it was a thing for some people back then. But, yeah, I think—well, I'm Gen X, so a lot of Gen X is kind of maybe the transitional generation, where people have gotten to a point where they're like, "I just don't know what else to do." And so they're opening their minds and exploring, you know, how this could benefit them and businesses. And then I think Millennials are even more accepting of it. It's just kind of like a thing, like, it's not even a woo-woo thing anymore. And I hesitate to use that term because it's not. Like, again, there's so much science and research, but that science and research was not there 20, 25 years ago. That's where people were like, "Yeah, that's kind of nice." But now, there are all these studies backing up—and when I say studies, I'm talking about things like the University of Pennsylvania did a study on gratitude that said—and I'm just looking for it right here—that people who practice gratitude, for example, are 50% more productive than people who don't.

Wow.

Yeah. There was—um, Glassdoor did a... Grateful people sleep better. You know, you always hear about people having sleep issues. And there have been studies done about sleep deprivation. It's worse than, like, working or driving with sleep deprivation is worse than if you were drunk, you know, as far as being dangerous.

But Glassdoor did a study that gratitude improves retention. Fifty-three percent of employees claim they're willing to stay longer in a company if their boss appreciates them. And gratitude, again, enhances productivity. Oh, it was the University of Pennsylvania that had the study that people who practice gratitude are 50% more productive than those who don't. So, these kinds of things—and there's the same kind of studies on meditation. It's really incredible. You know, if I was going to go back and do my life over, I'd become a brain researcher, a brain scientist. I am so fascinated by how all of this stuff affects the brain.

Well, to your point, I think anecdotally, maybe we've known this over the past decades, that there are benefits. But to now see the science coming out that backs these concepts is fantastic to see.

Right, right. Because when you're working, especially in a lot of larger businesses, they're like—they want that research. They want the proof, the quote-unquote "proof" that this stuff works.

You're absolutely right. And I do think it started to come on the radar a little bit more, even for large corporations in 2020 with everything that happened then. Have you seen any major shifts when it comes to well-being? Whether it's something that maybe companies started implementing for employee well-being in 2020 and have cascaded over and continued over, or that have transformed since then?

I think a lot of, like you said, a lot of the focus was, "Oh, now we need to do something," like, in 2020. But I think now it's just continued—that getting people – well people are coming back into the office, and so there may be more focus on it now because people are physically in the same spaces, so people can see that other people maybe aren't doing well emotionally. You know, you can't hide behind your screen and not have your camera on kind of thing. And I think that's also just become—it's becoming more acceptable to talk about it. To talk about needing a break because you feel burned out, or you're super stressed today, or whatever. And, you know, we're recording this shortly after the Olympics have just finished, and a lot of the athletes are talking about it. And so, again, it's bringing this whole concept of mental well-being especially to the forefront and making it acceptable to talk about.

I think it's so important too, as we're thinking about the listeners who tend to work in sustainability and environmentally focused companies. I think we're mindful of it, but implementing some of these practices—I love that gratitude study. I think that is really interesting as an employer and as an employee. And so, you get to see all of these different use cases with your clients. Which, I imagine, your clients are typically more the company itself, or is it the employee within the company?

It could be both, or it could be either.

Yeah. And are you working on any projects right now in that context that you're really excited about, wakes you up and gets you kind of fired up and ready to go?

I just am always fired up to talk about this topic and get in and teach people, like, how to manage their mind. Really, that's what we're talking about. And when you can manage your mind, you can manage your productivity, you can manage your relationships better, your health is better—like, everything. You just get more control. And I think that that is a piece that has been missing for a lot of people, is that they don't feel like they have control. And that drives a lot of stress. Entrepreneurs put their stress on themselves. Employees sometimes put stress on themselves, but it may be coming from above them or from all different directions. But a lot of that stress comes from not being able to control, you know, the deadlines that are given to you or the workload that's given to you. It's that lack of control. So if we can give people some semblance of taking—not semblance—just actually taking back control in some places, that makes the other part that they maybe can't control, like deadlines, more manageable.

I think that's so key too because the reality is that so much has changed since 2020, but I don't think anyone thinks that change is going to slow down. It's just going to keep on coming faster and faster, so that's inevitable. And it's our perception, or how we digest those changes and react to those changes.

Yeah. I can't remember where I saw this, it was a while ago, but like the amount of input and information that is coming at us on an hourly basis is exponentially more than our grandparents and great-grandparents had in their entire lifetime. Like, our brains are just not—we are not wired for this. And people think that they can do all the things, and like, "I'm different." You have not evolved past where we were a hundred years ago. Like, we still need to manage that. And we push ourselves, and that's when we get into trouble. Like, thinking, "I got it, I can handle it, I don't need to slow down." But we really do.

Well, absolutely. And I think we all somewhat lie to ourselves. I don't know if it's a survival thing, to think that we are different. So, in realizing we're not—and I'm sure it's far more complex than this and would require kind of more of a lengthy process—but you mentioned a couple of tips and tricks that our listeners can apply today. Are there other suggestions that you would recommend that maybe, just like a few, that they could start applying to already start feeling a little bit calmer, regardless of the change around them?

Yeah, absolutely. Two things. One is a really simple breathing exercise. So, assumably, everybody who's listening is breathing, right?

I hope so!

I hope so too! But we have a tendency to breathe very shallowly, especially when we're stressed. And so, I invite listeners to stop for, you know, again, three minutes—90 seconds even—and take a really deep breath in, all the way down to your abdomen. Like, feel your abdomen expanding, and then letting it go. And focusing on that breath, thinking about nothing else other than, "I'm just going to breathe in really deep, and hold it, and let it go. Breathe in really deep," and just do that for a minute, two minutes. That's going to change your physiology, it's going to change everything. You're oxygenating your brain and your body and your blood and all of that. So that's a super easy thing to do. You could do it in your car, you could do it when you're sitting in a meeting. If you're anticipating a stressful meeting, do it before you go in there. Super easy.

One. Two, is I've got this exercise I call the "But I'm grateful for" exercise.

It's designed to help people become more, we'll say, naturally grateful. So, Lauren, did anything happen in the past week or so that you just—that you had to complain about?

Do I get to name names on this, no?

That's up to you.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's always those stressors and unexpected things that pop up at the office, for sure.

Okay, well, do you want to share, like, not names, but an actual situation?

Sure. Well, for example, a project that was due on a set date, and then got pulled forward, and then created an unnecessary rush that could have just been avoided had we known the deadline.

Okay. Okay, cool. So that would easily be something that you could complain about. Like, "I can't believe the client did this," or, "that my boss is making me do this thing," like, whatever. Okay, but I'm grateful that… what?

When it would have happened, the initially scheduled deadline now is freed up to be able to focus on other projects. So it's going to be more of a crunch right now, but I know that afterward, there'll be a little bit more space to do my own thing.

Yeah, so it's always that "but I'm grateful for" thing. It doesn't even have to be related to the thing. It could be like, "This deadline got moved, but I'm grateful that I had a really awesome cup of coffee this morning," like, whatever. Doesn't matter what we're doing, is we're taking—and have you ever heard that using the word "but" is not the best connector?

Yes, you try to avoid negative words.

Yeah, right, right. Because if I had said, "Lauren, that was an awesome event you put together last night, but, you know, what..." Next time I just negated that whole compliment part, and all you're focused on is that, "What's coming next? Like, what did I do wrong?" We are intentionally using it in this case: "But I'm grateful for," because we want to negate the complaint part and focus on, "What are you grateful for?" And put your focus there.

It just kind of disrupts the brain wavelength.

Exactly. And the more you can catch yourself complaining—and we will because we're human—complaining or criticizing, and the more you do this exercise, "But I'm grateful for," the more you will start to notice that you will more immediately go to gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. It doesn't matter what the situation is. I mean, it could be really almost any situation, even the ones that look like there's no way there's gratitude here, like this situation is just—it's a train wreck and there's no gratitude. If anybody has an issue like that, give me a call, I will help you find the gratitude, because it's always there.

Just a little deeper.

Yeah. Yeah.

I love those two quick tips, as well as the meditation that you were talking about at the top. And take that time just to create a little bit of space for yourself. There's clearly much more that we, as employers and employees, can do. If our listeners want to learn more about your work, where would you recommend they check out?

Yeah, so I'm active on LinkedIn. So, find me on LinkedIn, tell me you heard me on the show, and let's connect. My website is zenrabbit.com. That's the name of my company—Zen Rabbit. And I have a course that you can access there. It's a digital course called "Staying Calm in Chaos." So yeah, that's where I hang out. Those are the two places.

I really hope that everyone checks this out because the reality is this impacts all of us and can only make us that much more joyful in all areas of our life and help us kind of redefine what we think of in terms of success. So, one last question, which we always like to end every episode with, which is: What do you think it will take for businesses and leaders to be resilient going forward?

It will take what we've been talking about this whole time. It will take personal responsibility for doing whatever you got to do in terms of building your resilience. And I say resilience because typically, I think it's applied to managing challenging work situations, but I'm talking about resilience in every aspect. Going back to the first, how do you define well-being? Every aspect—resilience of your immune system, resilience for emotional balance—resilience in every aspect. And you're the only one who has the ability to affect that. And so, that's what it's going to take, is that—learning those tools and whatever techniques—the ones we've talked about, there are plenty more out there. But finding what works for you, that's really the key. There's not one thing that fits all, but what works for you, and figuring out what that is.

Thank you so much. I'm going to practice the next time I get an email that frustrates me. I'm going to practice the "But I'm grateful for."

Awesome. See how that shapes things. 

So, thank you so much, Lori. It's been a real pleasure getting to chat with you today.

The pleasure is mine. Thanks so much, Lauren.