ROW Your Business to Health #author Elizabeth Blackley

Healthy people; healthy outcomes.

While employment is essential for survival today, it rarely holds the highest honour in our priorities, and the traditional notion of work-life balance oversimplifies a much more complex reality. We need to move beyond the industrial-era model that shaped our current systems and begin designing work cultures based on what we know supports, and what hinders, human performance.

This book invites readers to reconsider how the experience of work is formed - from the rhythms influencing daily life to the environments that affect behaviour, energy, and clarity. Grounded in behavioural science and systems thinking, it explores the impact of building workplaces around the conditions in which people genuinely thrive.

A Return on Wellness (ROW) occurs when investment in people strengthens clarity, energy, and psychological safety; these are the drivers of resilience and consistent performance. Organisations that cultivate these conditions gain steadier results, stronger engagement, and cultures able to meet complexity with confidence.

For those reimagining the future of work, this is an offering of practical and human insights that align culture, environment, and performance. When applied deliberately, the business can leverage their ROW and sow sustainable results.

Let's build businesses where people and performance thrive together.

To connect with Eliabeth ....
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-blackley/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

It's good afternoon, Elizabeth Blackley. Welcome to Yellow Shelf. Thank you, Joel. How are you? I'm so good. We were just complimenting our matching pink, different shades of energy that we bring to this interview today. Yes. Elizabeth, congratulations. Tell us about your book. It's called ROW, Your Business to Health.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Roe, Your Business to Health, Joe. You're right. And it does stand for Return on Wellness. I really appreciate this. This, you know, it's not a book telling people to drink more water and go for a walk. Although that's a great place to start for better balance. Roe began by being curious about the long-term impact of decisions made by a workforce that reports being 50% burnt out. That's what the global stats are. And I started to think we have so much precision around reporting inside organizations. And it's important. And I think the gap is about how people are doing and whether they're all right and whether the decisions they're making when they're at work are going to be useful down the road.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yeah. And Elizabeth, when I was looking at your book, I was thinking about obviously my own corporate career and what that looks like. But I was thinking, you know, this book's for anyone who, you know, has a family member or a partner working in like it's this is this is this gives you some real insight into challenges and supporting wellness.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Agreed. And the focus though is to understand from an organizational perspective that I think there might be a misperception around well-being and wellness programs being uh not worth the investment. And I think it that may be tied to the fact that those programs are often uh reactive and after the fact, after we see a visible challenge that is related to how people are functioning. And this book just looks at the science that supports a human ecosystem. What do we need as these bodies that we're in to produce our best, and then map that to the workplace? And there's there's clear places where we can focus and make that shift. So it's it's exciting that the conversation has sort of exploded in the last couple months. I mean, it was not the case when I started writing this. Yeah. Um yeah, so it's it's very exciting that other people want to talk about it and the attention is on there. And I think at least in Australia, some of that comes from the legislation around psychosocial risk in the workplace. And so if compliance is our doorway, then that's fantastic. Yeah. That the recommendations in the legislation align so closely with what works for us is beautiful. Dovetail. I like it a lot.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Yeah. And Elizabeth, do you want to tell us a little bit about you and you know what inspired you to write? Um and anything we need to know, your accent. Tell us about you as an author.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Noticed that, did you? Um, well, almost what, 18 years in Australia has not made an impact on the accent. Um so what can I tell you? I after, well, I'll tell you a little bit more about kind of what compelled me to write this down. And and in the writing, I do want to mention that it is a highly skimmable, uh, super easy to consume short attention span theater audience lover book. So uh it's it's nice like that. And then the reason that I started writing it down is I I have a 20-year career in consulting and organizational change. And so I've been in a lot of different environments in the US and Australia, and I worked in with companies uh globally and everywhere, different environments, different industries, there's patterns. And we've been really focused on individual resilience, which I think we do take ownership of our own health for sure. And now we're in collaboration. I think it's the time to collaborate with the organization to make sure the environment that we go into when we go to work doesn't wreck that resilience that we're building, yeah, and helps us maintain it.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Yeah. Does that so yeah, no, that uh and you know, look, I I've I I live and breathe this in the corporate world as far as having an understanding of yeah, that the patterns and the cycles, regardless of the sector.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Well, you don't get that level of consistency across different environments if it's an individual issue. Yeah, you know, so and and and I my inclination is to want to solve problems. And so I wanted to give something usable for decision makers, and it's not heavy, as I mentioned. It's you know, you can on a short flight there and back, yeah, and you've got it, but it's also good to refer back to. Yes, and there's ideas, and with the conversation, the timing that we've already touched on, it's so great. You know, we I I want to hear from people, it's not to tell people necessarily must do this, it's let's have a conversation. What's working, what isn't working in what you read, give the feedback because it's a great time to focus on what we're gonna do with those people that that need better environment to produce best that they can.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

And Elizabeth, is this your first book? Is that have you written before?

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Well, I've I've always enjoyed writing, and I this is the first book that I've had published, so it's very exciting time. And opening the first one with your with your name on it is always interesting. Have you done it too?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

No, not at all, but I love asking that question because I think it is. It's someone described it, well, you know, almost like having a baby. It's so exciting and it's so, you know, there's so much love and commitment put to it, you know, and it's it's wonderful to see it out there.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

It is, and and all the time you're right, it's it's it's not so much like a baby. I do have two children, so it's a little more different than that. This took a lot more effort, frankly, um than you know, producing the two children. Uh, so this is this is a labor of of a desire to make a difference. And I'm I was disappointed with all the commonplace excess of this state that we refer to as burnout, and oh, that's just a natural byproduct of going to work. And I really think we can do better. You know, we've got all these tools that we've developed to help streamline ourselves and with that space, it's good to focus on what can support us.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Yeah. Well, Elizabeth, well done. Making a difference, you are with this book. Do you want to tell us a little bit? Um, for those curious watching anywhere in the world, how do we connect with you and connect with the book? So I know you're on Instagram, but do you want to point us in the direction? I'll put that in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Oh, I would love if you just put a bunch of stuff. I'll I'll send you what you can put in the show notes. Um yes. So the book you can find anywhere that you like to buy books, and it's also in local Melbourne libraries, which is very exciting. Yeah. And I'm sure I'll have a picture of myself holding it in the Melbourne Library on Instagram. Yeah. So that that's fun. Um, also, I think this is a great platform, uh, LinkedIn for this book, because we can have the conversation there. And I regularly post about things that I'm noticing and and tips perhaps, or I really like to have the conversation there. So if people wanted to engage, that would be lovely. And oh, I have a YouTube podcast, uh, Eli B talkin, and you can find us there. And that's really the base where the conversations began that produced this book eventually, having conversations with people who were looking for something different.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Well, Elizabeth, what I'll do is I'll put the show um links in the show notes to make it easy for anyone to connect with you. Um, enjoy the book, the book being out there, the very exciting times, but um well needed. Well needed.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Agreed. And thank you so much for letting me shout about it a little bit. I appreciate it. And oh you're gonna put it in the show notes, but I should mention that you can check out my company's website at neoconnections.com.au.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Awesome. Well, I'll put that in the show notes. Elizabeth, let's stay in touch. Uh, all the best. Thank you so much. Thanks. Bye.