How to Think about Holistic Wellness at Work - Part 1: The Work | Whitney Shinkle

What does holistic wellness at work actually look like?

In Part 1 of this special three-part series, I sit down with Whitney Shinkle to explore one of the most overlooked aspects of well-being: our work.

Many of us spend a third of our lives working, yet we rarely stop to ask whether our work is aligned with our values, supports our well-being, or allows us to make the impact we're truly capable of making.

Drawing on more than 25 years of experience helping mission-driven organizations thrive, Whitney shares why healthy organizations begin with healthy people, how purpose and operational excellence can coexist, and why building sustainable workplaces is essential for both individuals and communities.

Whether you're a nonprofit leader, entrepreneur, executive, manager, or simply someone looking to create more meaning in your career, this conversation offers practical wisdom for rethinking the relationship between work, purpose, and holistic wellness.

This is Part 1 of a three-part series exploring holistic wellness through the lens of our work, our relationships, and ourselves.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What holistic wellness at work really means
• Why purpose alone isn't enough to build healthy organizations
• The relationship between leadership, culture, and well-being
• Preventing burnout while maximizing impact
• Building organizations where people can truly thrive
• Aligning your work with your values and mission
• Creating sustainable success in mission-driven organizations

About Whitney Shinkle

Whitney Shinkle is an expert builder, operator, and strategic advisor who has spent more than 25 years helping mission-driven organizations maximize their impact. Her work spans the humanitarian, economic development, and social impact sectors, partnering with organizations ranging from grassroots nonprofits to multinational corporations and multilateral institutions.

Whitney specializes in strategy, operations, and people operations, with a particular passion for helping small- and medium-sized nonprofits build the systems, culture, and leadership needed to create lasting change.

Connect with Whitney Shinkle

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitney-shinkle-161b764

Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss Parts 2 and 3 of this powerful series on holistic wellness and living a more integrated, purpose-filled life.

Rooted & Wild provides general information for educational and informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guest speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Henry Hawk. The content shared on this podcast is not intended to replace individualized medical, psychological, or therapeutic advice, nor should it be used to diagnose or treat any health condition. Listeners are encouraged to consult with qualified healthcare professionals regarding any medical or mental health concerns.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Rooted and Wild. Well, we all have to work somewhere. And is holistic wellness something we factor in when it comes to our work? Today, my guest is Whitney Schinkle, an expert builder operator helping mission-driven organizations optimize for impact. She has been innovating in various parts of the humanitarian, economic, development, and social impact sectors for 25 years, working with all manner of organizations from small grassroots nonprofits to multilateral organizations and multinational corporations. Her particular passion is building strategy, operations, and people operations capacity for small to medium-sized nonprofits. Our topic today is how to think about holistic wellness at work. And this is part one of a three-part series. Today's focus is the work, whereas the next episode is culture and the following one is administration. We hope you enjoy this. Whitney, welcome to Rooted in Wild.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Thanks, and I'm really excited to be here. I feel like uh this topic gets oversimplified a lot. So I'm excited to kind of dig into the various sides of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Well, absolutely. And I, you know, I think it's interesting because, you know, for anyone working a corporate job or working for someone else, and certainly people who own businesses, I remember in my own agency being like, oh yeah, we gotta think about health and wellness for our employees. And it's like important, but it also can sometimes be disregarded or not given the level of importance that's required. So I'm with your background and your area of expertise, I'm I'm very curious to hear your take on this.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yeah, thank you. Um, I definitely uh recognize that um, you know, challenge. I think for a lot of people, it's a thing that seems more like a nice to have. Um, and there's sort of a one school of thought that, well, employee wellness, um, that's at the idealistic end of the spectrum. Sure, it's the world we'd all like to live in. Um, but uh, you know, maybe it's not the thing we're gonna focus on first. Whereas I think it is also a very valid argument that at the far other end of the spectrum, which is, you know, naked corporate self-interest, um, it's actually still a really important priority because if you are an executive somewhere, your goal or one of your top goals has to be to like produce the team that is capable of consistently delivering top shelf performance and you know, surging and beating the competition and what, you know, however you think of what your your purpose is, you need that team of great people and you want them, you know, operating at their best. Um, you know, wellness is a really key, key part of that.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Yeah, it most certainly is. It most certainly is. Um, I guess let me start with asking why is this important to you? Because there's always a story behind this, right? Like something that you experienced that was done the wrong way, or and then you're trying to remedy it, make it right. Uh, why is this an important topic to you and what was your learned experience?

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Yeah, I mean, interestingly, I think it's something I kind of backed into over time, in part because over and over I have worked at places where the people really are the product. Um, you know, whether they were researchers or educators and mentors, um, you know, it really their intellectual output was the work. And you'd hear people, you know, you always hear companies say, oh, our people are our most important asset and law, right? But so rarely do I think not only, you know, there are some places that do it better than others, but very rarely I think have I seen it done comprehensively. Um, and so as I had the opportunity to work across public-private nonprofit sectors and like small organizations and bigger organizations, I had the opportunity to really see a lot of different approaches and kind of beg, borrow, and steal from all those different approaches. And, you know, I think we're we're at an interesting inflection point where, you know, and we can maybe talk a very short history lesson, but I think we've had sort of a 1.0 approach to wellness. We're maybe now at the 2.0 stage. And I'd like to see us be moving forward to like a 3.0 stage where we're really thinking more creatively about, you know, this mind shift from the product being the focus to the people who produce the product being the focus.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, that makes total sense. What have been uh what are your observations in terms of being the top issues related to holistic wellness at work? Like what are the main gaps, the missing links?

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Um, I mean, I'd say it's just a narrowness of thinking, really. So maybe the the 1.0 version was really very basic workplace safety. So if we kind of throw our minds back to um, you know, turn of the century factories and slaughterhouses and and you know, mining and things like that, people finally got companies to take responsibility just for, you know, preventing deaths, basically.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Basic workplace safely. You know, now we're kind of in a slightly broader thinking, not only around um physical well-being, but also like lots of conversations around mental and emotional health. Um, but I think a lot of the things we've turned to, and I'm not gonna demean or diminish them, you know, things like employee fitness programs and gym memberships as perks and things like that, those are great, but they're still kind of after-the-fact band-aid type of thinking about how do we remediate a problem we've helped to cause. Whereas I think the the big gap that we can start to address now is thinking about how we can actually look at the work itself and the organization of the company itself and um, you know, push forward to changing the way we approach the work so that it's not creating as many problems. Like I don't know that we will get uh completely away from that, but I think there's just, you know, much, much more opportunity for the company being a place that helps people thrive as opposed to the place that's just mitigating the worst outcomes. Um, and probably the clearest thinking about that is that we still mostly just think about the work. Um, and that's why I sort of we're talking about this in three different stages. The way I think of this is, you know, holistic wellness in the workplace has these three pillars. There's the work itself, there's the company culture as sort of the water we swim in, and then there's the administrative state, which is like how do you um how do you implement your intent in terms of seeing to your employee wellness?

SPEAKER_01 7:47

So, what does it look like and what is the model that businesses should adopt in terms of the work?

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Um, I mean, I think there's that is really gonna vary quite widely depending on the type of work. You know, like if you run a bowling alley versus you run a call center somewhere, it's gonna be very, very different. But I think the key that we can talk about is how should you think, either as an employee or as someone who has decision-making power at an organization, about those three pillars? Um, and I've actually been kind of playing with this sports team analogy. Um, because I think everybody kind of has a sense of a professional sports team as a corporate entity, even if they've never played sports, you know, they're not a fan of sports. Maybe their only reference is Ted Lasso. Um by the way, is it like a great show for this topic? Because throughout the series, they manage to touch on all three of the pillars in in terms of the player's wellness. But so the analogy is is a little simplified, but it kind of gives a graphic representation of the practicalities, which is you've got a professional sports team. What is the purpose of that corporate entity? Well, it's to win games and win championships, right? So then if you turn and you think about wellness, well, the first thing everybody thinks about is the work of playing the game. We know that that can be injurious, right? So, how many people are on your injured list? And how does that number, however many injured players, how does that affect your ability to win games? But now, you know, we have a much more expansive conversation around player health. It's not just what are the different um, you know, recovery tactics, but you hear them talk about nutrition, you hear them talk about off-season training and preparation. And more and more we're hearing them talk about like mental and emotional wellness. So uh, you know, elite athletes talk all the time about how important visualization is to the way they play the game. And then, you know, we hear about um support or supplemental services that they have access to, whether that's, you know, media training, financial literacy training, counseling and therapy. And to me, this is really important because it says we're taking an expanded understanding of what the job of being a professional athlete is. It's not just, you know, scoring a touchdown or or, you know, winning a point. It's you're your professional representative. And so we are taking steps to equip the players for all of the types of situations they might run into in their professional capacity and recognizing that you know, having a really bad, contentious media interview, that's gonna be that could be distracting. That's gonna impact your play on the court. If you get traded and you have these financial ups and downs, that's really stressful. And if you're not equipped to handle it well, that's gonna take away from your play on the on the field or the court or whatever. And as an enterprise, your job is to get that team in the best headspace, physical space, everything to, you know, to win the games. But then, like even that expanded conceptualization is still just thinking about the work. So then we can zoom out and think about well, what is the team culture and who's responsible for that? Then you start getting into coaches and support staff and thinking about does the culture of the organization and the team does that, you know, drive healthy behaviors or does it drive unhealthy behaviors? So, you know, if you're on a team where everyone's treated with respect, regardless of whether you're first string or second string or the ball boy, you know, are you um on a team where mistakes are not welcome, but we're, you know, we got you. We're part of a team. Like let's figure out how we don't do that again. Um, or are you on a team where, you know, some people's bad behavior is tolerated and other people's is not? And um, if you make mistakes, that you immediately get sent to the bench. You know, that type of culture can lead to resentment and anxiety and stress, and it's just a huge mental tax. So that's like a loss of productivity, a loss of creativity, and it creates like chronic stress and anxiety. And we know more and more that chronic stress and anxiety is really physically bad for people. They're gonna get sick more easily, you might get injured more easily. So I actually have started thinking about that, the cultural piece, almost in a medical sense, that like bad, chronic, bad interactions are like they introduce heat and friction and that causes inflammation. And when you have inflammation, you have to impose these additional resources to address the inflammation rather than just you know using those resources to focus on the primary goal, which is winning games, winning championships. And so if you have a positive culture that prioritizes well-being, you can minimize that inflammation, you can avoid that inflammation to begin with. And that's just like healthier for everyone. So that gets us to that second circle. And then you can even zoom out again and look at the administration, and that gets us into like team owners, team managers. Your administration is really the nuts and bolts of how you enact whatever your intentions are. And I think just keeping with the sports analogy, like the clearest example of that is you say your players are your most valuable asset and you're protecting your players, right? But let's look at the NFL. We have all this information in the last couple of years about how bad these concussive, repeated concussive experiences are. You know, stats. Their stats are good. They can go on the free market and like get on some other team that's gonna take better care of them. So I think both for the personal and the team, you know, collective well-being, having all of those pieces in place, they start to play off one another. Um, and that's kind of, I don't know, just one example of how I think it's a pretty graphic representation of how people can think about each of those three arenas.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Okay. So, what are some things that, in your opinion, are non-negotiables when it comes to an entity that these things need to be in place?

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Oh, that's an interesting question. Um I mean, I think really establishing a close understanding, like having ways to get information, whether that's feedback or data tracking, around what the actual impacts are on people is really important because you can't make good decisions without understanding what kind of you know environment you're playing in. So I think that's super important. Um, and then when it comes to the work itself, you know, which we we can sort of talk about and get into the weeds on, there's the physical, the mental, and the emotional aspects of it. And because that's those are the things that most people experience individually, having some way of really addressing sort of the baseline, if you think about like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you really want to address the essential pieces first so that people build that baseline of confidence that this is a thing you take seriously. So, you know, really identifying is this a place where the work itself, you know, does it create trauma? Does it create physical um, you know, does it have physical ramifications for people? And um demonstrating that you have those baseline uh preventions and information gathering techniques is probably the first thing that gives people a sense that, oh, this is a thing you take seriously. And I can see how this company is um attempting to put my best interests.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Um, what are some examples of companies that you see that or you've witnessed yourself that have done it well?

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Oh, I mean, there's a lot of places that are um doing components of it well. Um, I would certainly say, like, you know, the the last place that where I had a lengthy tenure uh was a research organization focused on global health. And they were of just a very thoughtful organization. And so I think over time, particularly as we sort of scaled and expanded, this was a thing we thought about a lot. Um, and so they had a lot of the components in place, both in terms of thinking about how the work, which was sometimes isolating, very sedentary, you know, what were the impacts of that on the researchers themselves, but then also thinking about like the mental and emotional aspects, being intentional about the culture they wanted to build, and then providing um, you know, runway for the executive team in their various, you know, areas of responsibility to make suggestions around what was going to make the work easier or more effective or healthier for their people. So I think you know, that that was one organization that was thinking about it. I don't necessarily want to like drop names. No, it's okay, of organizations who are great or or not great at this, but um, but I think it's more of just that mental shift of thinking more creatively, like not necessarily it's all about the bells and whistles, but just thinking about the different ways you can tweak your culture to be more about um supporting the people rather than supporting the the product.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Yeah, making it people focused. In my previous career, I was I owned an international marketing agency, you know, and I worked with hundreds of different industries. And if we were dealing with a construction company, for example, uh, you know, they have all these crew members, and you know, there's physical danger, but there's also the the wear and tear and toil on the body. Uh, you know, they're outdoors all year long in all the elements, right? And dealing with heavy machinery. And so, you know, I and then there are ones where we're working with clients who are at their desk all day long.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

The physical and emotional needs are very different depending on completely.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

And I think, you know, so that's a great example. Like the construction work, there's no way we're gonna take all the physical manual hardship out of that industry, right? I mean, sure, we may get robots at some point that do a lot of that, but there's still going to be a lot of individual physical demand. And I think, you know, there's some places, particularly like the bigger, you know, corporate entities that can have the finances to invest in, you know, equipment and you know, other types of sort of high dollar amount solutions, but there are also very um low financial impact solutions. Like, for example, if one of the impacts of that really physical work is fatigue, how do you think about building in more rest or smarter rest? So, you know, I worked at a place once that was one of the few places I've seen that employed a 980 schedule, which just meant that you worked your 80 hours over nine days instead of 10. So you worked, uh, what is it, like nine, nine-hour days and one eight-hour day. And then you had a three-day weekend every other week. Does that extra day really help people recover? Or can they use that time for personal stuff that otherwise they're trying to do before work and after work and just making them more tired? Or um, you know, let me caveat my next statement by saying, I've not studied this, but I can certainly imagine if fatigue is a problem, that you see more injuries at the end of a shift when people are just tired or they've been on their feet all day, you know, they're distracted. Um, can you backload the brakes so that people have more interruptions at the end of the day when they're more likely to you know have just have an accident because they're not paying as much attention and that like it puts a little interruption into their afternoon and so they you know get a break there. And sometimes then you have to if you want to change that cultural norm or that that schedule norm, then you have to get into the administration. You need to write guidance around it or you need to you know have people who are really championing that. And the same thing with the sedentary work, you know, like we know more and more now that being in a desk all day is actually terrible for you. And people have done a lot of things around you know you have a pop-up that reminds you to get up or you you know do have other sort of technical nudges or the desks that can elevate so you can stand up the better workstations which I'm sitting at right now. So I certainly won't put poo-poo those, but that is still work that's keeping you at your desk. So how can we change that up? Well like every single one of us has a computer in our pockets right now in our phone, right? So if you have one on one meetings, can you take a walk? Like unless you need to actively do something on your computer take your phone, record the meeting when you get back, throw it into whatever software you prefer, it'll give you a transcript and it'll give you your action items. Like there's if you have five one-on-one meetings a week and you can do four of them that outside that's like two to four hours a week that you're walking around that you weren't walking around before.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

And I've done that because my I'm you know I'm a coach and in health and also personal branding. And so I am in a lot of meetings I average about eight a day right so with the ones who know me well enough and we have that comfort level I will literally spend the time walking outdoors. I will walk sometimes three hours a day yeah walking outdoors with my clients and it works really well. It's amazing and you know with Zoom and how it's connected to the AI and the transcript already it's just like easy peasy. Everybody gets the report no one you know I think really in a sense COVID you know shifted a lot of that for people because they had to work from home and but I think corporations are still struggling to kind of figure out like what do people need because I think people started waking up to like oh actually I don't like it the way it was before and they're wanting a change and a shift. As we wrap up this episode because there is two more coming up um what are some things that someone should you know we talked a lot about this from maybe the standpoint of owning a company or being in a management position but what about those who are seeking to to reform their workplace they're an employee somewhere and they don't like their conditions. What how should they speak up in a way that might make a difference?

SPEAKER_00 24:48

I mean obviously this is going to depend on the culture of your workplace a little bit but which we're addressing in our next episode. That's right. But you know start small like find a thing that you are very convinced can work for you um and then just try doing it and then try selling it to your manager and you know selling it to your team. Hey, you know what if our team had like no meeting breaks twice a day. So from you know 11 to 1115 and 3 to 315 every day everyone is expected to be away from their desk because we know that group activities are more likely to stick than just one person who's like I'm gonna try to not have meetings you know at this time that's always going to be the first thing that gets lost when someone asks you for a favor or someone tells you that a deadline is there. So find you know some simple thing maybe it's you know asking if some sort of unused part of the staff break room might be like a little exercise area. Maybe it's only as big as one yoga mat. But if that is there and some you know announcement has been made that this is there, we encourage you to use that, you know, I don't know some kind of perk for the team that does the most wall push-ups, you know, during the next quarter, whatever it is like these little things advocate you know, test it out for yourself, advocate with the closest person to you who's a decision maker and see if you can't build that into a new tradition and sort of frame it that way. Like tie it to whatever stated priorities or cultural values the organization has to show that look I've done the thinking to you know tie this to what the company says it is trying to deliver for us.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

No it's good. There is really no one size shoe fit all if you're the business owner I want to bring us back to the statement that Whitney made from the beginning which was are you thinking about people first you know are we humanizing our work environments and are we humanizing our staff in the sense that and I and I oftentimes go this is how I operate by that golden rule do unto others as you would want them to treat you. So if you're the business owner how would you like to be treated if you were working at your company exactly might be a great way to gauge so we're gonna keep on going Whitney thank you so much for joining us and uh in the next episode we're gonna talk all about corporate culture in relation to holistic wellness and for those who are listening we look forward to having you with us next time