How to Think about Holistic Wellness at Work - Part 3: Administration | Whitney Shinkle

Administration might not sound like wellness—but what if the systems behind our work have everything to do with how well we actually feel at work?

In Part 3 of my three-part conversation with Whitney Shinkle, we explore the often-overlooked connection between administration and holistic workplace wellness.

Policies. Processes. Roles. Communication. Decision-making. Expectations. Resources. These structures may operate quietly in the background, but they profoundly influence how people experience their work every day.

When administrative systems are unclear, inefficient, or disconnected from the people they're meant to support, the result can be frustration, unnecessary stress, burnout, and dysfunction. But when they're thoughtfully designed, those same systems can create clarity, stability, trust, and the space people need to do meaningful work.

Drawing on more than 25 years of experience across humanitarian, economic development, nonprofit, and social impact organizations, Whitney brings a human-centered perspective to something we don't often associate with wellness: how organizations actually function.

This conversation challenges the idea that workplace wellness is primarily an individual responsibility. Sometimes the problem isn't that people need to become more resilient—the organization itself needs better systems.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why administration belongs in the conversation about holistic wellness
• How organizational systems affect stress and well-being
• The hidden cost of unclear roles and expectations
• Why good processes can actually give people greater freedom
• Creating structures that support rather than exhaust employees
• The relationship between administration, culture, and organizational health
• Why burnout isn't always an individual problem
• Building organizations that are both effective and humane
• How thoughtful operations allow mission-driven organizations to create greater impact

About Whitney Shinkle

Whitney Shinkle is an expert builder-operator who has spent more than 25 years helping mission-driven organizations optimize for impact.

Her career has spanned the humanitarian, economic development, and social impact sectors, working with organizations ranging from grassroots nonprofits to multilateral organizations and multinational corporations.

Whitney has a particular passion for helping small- and medium-sized nonprofits strengthen their strategy, operations, and people operations, creating the infrastructure organizations need to fulfill their missions without losing sight of the human beings doing the work.

Connect with Whitney Shinkle

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

This episode concludes our three-part series, How to Think About Holistic Wellness at Work, exploring work, culture, and administration—and how each contributes to creating organizations where both people and purpose can thrive.

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_00 0:00

Welcome to Rooted and Wild Squadrich. Welcome to part three of How to Think About Holistic Wellness at Work. And today we're going to be focusing on administration, which is really central to how Holistic Wellness at Work could even come into play. Whitney Schinkel is returning with us today. She's 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. Today's emphasis is administration, holistic wellness at work. Whitney, thank you, and welcome back to Rooted in the Wild.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Thanks, David. Yeah, we get into the um administrative state, which to me is kind of the most exciting because this is really where the rubber meets the road.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

It really is. And I think that we all know that. It is central to this in the corporate setting or any business, any entity, any entity. So talk to me about this. Why is this important?

SPEAKER_01 1:44

So let's just frame what we're talking about. So the administrative uh health is really related to your policies, your processes, your tools. These are the the nuts and bolts of how you go about implementing your your programs and your operations. And, you know, in the last conversation we had, we were really talking about culture. And so if culture is kind of how you want to approach the world or how you want to be thought of, the administration is the way you execute on that. So, you know, culture, this is who you choose to be. Administration is how you get there. Um, and so I think when we're asking about when we're thinking about health, the question is do our administrative elements reinforce the culture that we have defined as wanting and or do they undermine it? And in so many cases, this is kind of that last mile where we sort of fall down. And we will do a lot of put a lot of effort into defining our values and you know, thinking about the culture that you know we want to have at the place. But then we have all these like nitpicky little bureaucratic elements that actually contradict what it is that we want to achieve. And that's because your rules and tools, those set up the incentives for people's behavior. And so, regardless of what you say, you know, people are going to act based on the tangible incentives that you impose upon them. And so if you say you want innovation, but you have a bunch of bureaucratic stuff that people have to do, they're gonna spend their time doing that bureaucratic, you know, paperwork, not blue sky thinking to innovate for the next big idea. So, you know, like if you say you want transparency, but you have no mechanism for information sharing, then you're not gonna get transparency, right? Or if you say you want a feedback culture, but you don't do anything with the feedback you get, or you don't tell people what you've done with it, then no one's gonna believe you and you're gonna stop getting feedback. So, you know, I think you can see how it's really important that you kind of get these underlying um guide rails right in order to get to where you actually want to go.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

There's a saying, and I'm thinking I'm gonna get this wrong, but uh so basically as the leadership goes, the mission goes, essentially. And and so you can't another one I really like is do first, then teach. It's the idea of the administrative systems, the people in administration, the owners need to be living and breathing and walking in this, or else it doesn't stick. Yeah, it doesn't stick. It's like a parent saying, Do as I tell you, not as I do. You know, you know, don't smoke cigarettes, but they're there smoking cigarettes in front of you. The kids are gonna end up smoking cigarettes, probably, you know. So the this it really kind of is it goes without saying it. This gets this is oftentimes missed because in many corporations, I'm sure you've witnessed this. Sometimes it's like, oh yeah, it was founded by so-and-so this year, but then the CEO came in and he was left, and there's a new CEO, and then they had a new person, and that and you end up having all these different systems from different periods of time, all kind of like, and none of it makes real sense, but it's kind of the way it's been done, and sort of go in and reform it. You have to understand why these things are put in place to begin with.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah, yes. Well, and certainly that problem that you're you're referencing gets worse the bigger and more mature the organization is, because you just have had more turnover, you've had more sort of administrations, if you will. And the people who are, in theory, making these high-level decisions are just further away from the day-to-day activity. And so they'll be like, well, why aren't we getting X done without taking the time to dive into that pillar of work, that workflow, to understand, well, there's 98 barriers to doing X. You know, we can't even think about X because we're stuck in, you know, this bureaucratic nightmare. Um, like one great example of this, um, you know, thinking, and this is very specific to physical health. Um, but I happened to have the opportunity to interact with this large um, you know, personal storage organization. Like they run these big places where people can rent personal storage units. And um, you know, it turned out that, I mean, that's, you know, it's a little physical, it's not heavy manual labor. There's some like light maintenance. We're not, we're not talking about like major um, you know, physical labor here. But apparently, when there were injuries, the vast, vast majority of them were like were related to like one specific thing. And that was people opening up these big sort of garage doors, right? So you have your storage unit and you pull up this big rolling, you know, corrugated metal door. That's how you get in and out. Well, you know, this company had actually studied this. They knew this, so awareness was not the problem. And in fact, they also had guidance. There was very specific, um, like physical technique you were supposed to use to open these doors. So they were not callous. They were like, here, this is how we can help you avoid this injury. The problem was that nobody actually did it, and they didn't have people who were there on site to sort of enforce the proper physical techniques. And so I'm looking at them and I'm thinking, okay, I get it. But people generally are going to go for the most, this, the simplest solution, right? And it took a few seconds more to do the proper way of opening it. You know, you kind of grab the middle of the door, you raise it up a foot, then you grab down another lower one foot, raise it up again. It takes probably two seconds longer than just bending down, picking up the handle and raising the door. And I'm thinking, well, if you want people to lift from the middle of the door, why is the only handle at the bottom? Because that's the that's the worst thing everyone is gonna look for, right? They're like, oh, this must be what I do. I pick it like maybe they read the proper technique during onboarding, but like that goes out the window the second you see there's a handle there, you're just gonna grab the handle. So, you know, I think that sort of perfectly encapsulated for me that you can have the right intent, but if you haven't really looked into the specifics of the work, you're probably missing a lot of the the nuance.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So at the in the first uh episode of this series, we talked about the work and then we talked about the culture. And you talked about how essentially if people, if if the business is not people-centric, right, or human human-centric, it's just not gonna work. And so how can an administration what are some things that you've seen that administrations should have in place as kind of like system or a check and balance or something that ensures that things remain human-centric within systems and organizations?

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Um, the number one thing, I think, is having a really good feedback system. And administratively, you know, that can get very big and complex, but it can also be very simple and low-tech. And the reason that I think that is so important is because if you want to be people-centric, you have to understand what people's interests and incentives and concerns are. And, you know, the you're gonna have to probably try to solicit that information in multiple ways. I mean, some people are pretty forthcoming. Others, particularly if you're newer or younger, are gonna feel some trepidation, especially if they're sharing feedback about something that they think it may not be super welcome feedback. Um, but you can't address people's problems if you don't know what those are. And you should not assume that you know what the majority of people's problems are, because they may not be the things that strike you as the most obvious challenges. Um, so I think really having a good mechanism for sourcing feedback is like the absolute first place to start. And even if all that means is you get your managers to go out and ask one or two questions every quarter and compile that information in some centralized source where there's a person who is actually accountable for analyzing that information and proposing a solution, you know, that's a pretty low-tech response to that. But it gives you the insights you need to be able to put your people first, because then you can circle back and you say, okay, so we got this feedback. The majority of the feedback was about X, Y, and Z. Because of, you know, whatever these other business conditions or resources are, we decided to focus on X and Y. Here's what we're doing. Here's what we hope the benefit of that will be. We're gonna circle back to you in, you know, three more months and ask you how that's going. First, you've connected the dots, like you've solicited the feedback, you've taken action on it, and really, really importantly, you've told people what you're doing with that feedback. Because if you solicited that feedback three months ago, six months ago, a year ago, depending on how long it takes you to figure out what you're gonna do, people forgot that you solicited that information. They're busy and they need to know and feel validated that you're taking this action, not just because you're a great person, but because you're responding to the needs they communicated to you. Um, and so I think that one, it gives them that sense that you are putting their interests in front, and it also encourages more feedback. So when you go back a month later and you're like, how is this going? you're gonna get feedback on it. And also when you go back and you say, Okay, now we want information on this other thing, you are gonna have more buy-in, you're gonna have more response because people have seen that you take the feedback to heart and you're taking action on it. So I think that's like that's very quickly a virtuous circle that you can get going.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

From a holistic wellness standpoint in the workplace, from an administration systems standpoint, what are the factors when we think about people's well-being physically, emotionally, mentally, et cetera, that an administration needs to keep in mind? What are the boxes they should be checking?

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yeah, I mean, the big ones are policies, benefits, and procedures. Like that covers a very large majority of the sort of administrative state, if you will, within the organization. And within those, you want to be thinking about are your policies and guidance documents and benefits addressing the physical, mental, and emotional health of people? Are they reinforcing those, you know, constructive cultural aspects that you want? And the more that you're answering yes to those, the better off the like comprehensive collective wellness of your individuals and the organization as a whole are going to be. Um, you know, like I can think of one very specific example when COVID hit, um, I was sort of embarrassed that it took that for me to start thinking about this, but we realized that as an organization, we had a pretty narrow bereavement policy. And so at the time, we were also trying to recruit and hire more senior talent. And my sort of like first pass take was I don't think our policies and benefits are aligned with an organization of our stature and our maturity. I think we're probably losing out on really top senior talent because we just seem immature and we're not like aligned with their needs and interests, probably. And so I we started looking sort of at the entirety of our benefits and our leave policy in particular. And so I started thinking about the bereavement issue. That spurred me to think more broadly, just about sort of crisis issues in general. Like there were so many things when I started talking to people, I was like, hey, I'm revising this policy. What do you think? And people were bringing up things that just didn't fit neatly into that bereavement category. Some of them were physical, like personal health issues. Some of them were more mental-emotional. Like, does miscarriage count? Like, did someone die? Does that count under the policy? Um, you know, people were like, How what do I do about um, you know, if there's someone in my family has like an addiction issue and there's like some urgent thing we need, we're doing an intervention, or this person just needs like critical care for this short period of time. Anyway, long story short, I developed this kind of long list of things. And I was like, Well, we're not creating specific policies about all of these things that could have really challenging implications for our staff. That's sort of ridiculous. But what we did end up doing was we created sort of a blanket leave category, which we I just called acute leave. So it was for any sort of acute situation. It's a little bit on your honor code, but we gave some examples of like likely things that fell into that. And then we ended up having, I was sort of surprised because at the time we had, you know, a staff population that was relatively young, relatively well off. You know, you would think, you know, on the scale of humanity, probably have a lower number of acute problems. But to my mind, a surprising number of people took it for a surprising number of reasons in the first year. And so, you know, I think you can, that was just an example to me of how thinking about, you know, just one component of people are never gonna give you great performance when they're grieving. And so I started out just thinking about how we were addressing this emotional mental challenge that staff were gonna run into as an employer, sort of broadened out into thinking about a whole different category of things under the umbrella of thinking about, you know, how how were we attracting the right kind of talent? Um, so I think, you know, there was there was a lot, there were a lot of elements in that. Um yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

That's a good example. And and you know, I think that's what it really comes down to. I mean, uh it's common sense sometimes, you know. If we think about like like you said, sometimes policies are policies, that's all they are, but they're not factoring in the human component. If we think about grief and bereavement, it's not only death, it could be a divorce, it could be many things, uh postpartum depression, you know. There could be many, many factors, right? And I think that entities need to think about the bottom line. I mean uh the employee turnover, it's pretty major with most places, right? And so you want to retain your staff because it takes a lot more money and a lot more resources to hire someone new, get them trained with the risk that they might quit, than to retain someone who knows what they're doing, loves being at work, and looks to want to stay long term, right? And so there are so many factors that you know, again, it comes down to I I would say it was in the last episode, well, how do you, how would you want to be treated in this role?

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And you know, there's so many, um there's so many different aspects of your administration. I think people, I think employers sometimes get a little nervous at the thought that, well, I I can't be responsible for every aspect of my employee's life and well-being, right? No, of course not. Like I don't want to suggest, I wouldn't suggest that you know employers are 100% responsible for somebody's mental or emotional well-being. That's crazy. There's so many things that factor into that. But if we're being comprehensive in thinking about how the work impacts the people and how the people impact the work, then it is equally crazy to say that they bear no responsibility for it when, you know, most people spend a third of their lives swimming in the ecosystem of their workplace. So, you know, the more that we are thinking about this holistically, as opposed as you just pointed out, in these siloed ways, is the bottom line, you know, just the amount of revenue that's coming in the door. How are we factoring in? How much turnover affects that, how much you know, sick days affect that, how much employee loyalty and you know, those those considerations and our culture determine whether people want to stay here, whether they want to and or are able to put forward their best effort. Then you really start realizing, oh God, there's all these little things we could do. And it's like the opposite of nickel and diming people. You know, it's like somehow you're you're positively nickel and diming them by like making this a little bit easier, making this other thing a little bit better. And cumulatively, suddenly people are like, oh, this is a place I love working. It's not even just that the work itself is something that I really love to do. Like, hopefully that's the case as well. But you know, you could be doing the most boring work in the world, but you feel like you have a home at this place, you're being taken care of, your well-being is a very specific consideration of the company in order to deliver on whatever this, you know, high-level company mission is. And for people to feel like they have purpose and they understand how their work is valued within the organization, that can be more impactful than, you know, whatever the day-to-day, you know, you could be doing, I don't know, I don't want to specify something to make it sound like that's not that exciting, but you know, whatever your day-to-day is, you may not love it, but you may love that organization. Yeah, recognize that this is an amazing culture that says this culture has attracted an amazing group of people. And together we're trying to, you know, make our best selves. This company is actually trying to help me be my best self so that I can help the company, and so the company can do this thing, and that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Yeah. You know, an analogy came to my mind as you were sharing, and I hadn't thought about this before, but you know how some people will have like a tub for like disaster or like a you know, like a like a fund? Like no, like uh I'm not talking about business, I'm talking about people's in people's homes. Like they'll have like there's a disaster, there's a fire, there's an earthquake, there's a flood, or whatever it's like. You have your emergency kit, you have your emergency kit, you got your food, your staples, and and it's all there in the event that there's an emergency. You have your generator, you know, it's all There in the event that you have the most often you won't need to use it, right? It's not there that it's not necessarily like it has to be used, but but you do have to check that every couple of years the stuff's not expired, it's still gonna work in the case that you're not a sitting duck when there is a disaster, right? So what came to my mind was like these policies and procedures for like bereavement or health or wellness or any of the things, sick days, you know, we want to whatever you want to call it, it doesn't necessarily mean that every single person is gonna experience a death right now. At some point they will. You know, depending on how long you're gonna come, everybody's gonna experience something. So it's there and it's in place. So it's not so much that the administration has to carry the weight and the burden of people's personal problems. They preemptively carry the weight of it in the relation to its work by having the policy and the procedure in place for people to tap into when they need it. And that's what I hear you saying. And I think that's really, really brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

Absolutely. I mean, I I think there are so many great things to what you just said, but one of them is just that um, you know, the emergence of like some incident you haven't planned for always drives a it always takes you way more effort to figure out how you're gonna handle that, just because it's like first of its kind. We don't really know what we're doing, we haven't dealt with it before, we're trying, we're like inventing this plane as we're flying it. You're always going to have some level of that, right? Can't predict the world. But to the extent that you can put in some of that bare bones infrastructure, just have a prioritization matrix, just have a decision-making scheme so that that like tax of figuring that part out is already done for people, and they can put more of their thought and energy into figuring out the specifics of okay, how do we handle this contextual situation? You have like removed barriers, you have been thoughtful about their well-being. You're saying, I'm respecting your time because I am making this thing easier for you. I am helping you resolve conflicts with people because I'm giving you and you know, all of our folks here a shared vocabulary and a shared approach that makes this not just so you can, you know, inform your arguments for why you shouldn't think we should do A versus B in this shared framework. You're not having to invent that whole cloth. And I think people really, especially at like young and growing organizations, there's sort of a dismissive attitude to having some of this administrative stuff in place because it feels less important than whatever that frontline work is, you know, like getting the service provided or getting that widget made, whatever it is. But for the sustainability and the resilience of the organization as a whole, it's so important and it is so much more valuable than people realize. And then at an individual level, if you ever have gone from a place that has a really robust infrastructure to a place that hasn't, I think that's when people realize like, oh man, I was so well off at that place that I was because there was so much support infrastructure for me that I didn't even realize. Like, like you said, it's the culture, it's in the water. People don't even think about it. They just know it's there and they can rely on it. Just like, you know, culturally, maybe they know that they can rely on people appreciating and welcoming feedback or appreciating and welcoming that you have flagged this mistake rather than lambasting you for it. It just removes this entire like multiple levels of mental and emotional burden that you didn't realize were a part of your work until they suddenly are front and center and you're like, oh shoot. Oh yeah, this is not the same. Um, so anyway, yeah, I think the the physical work itself uh still gets like the majority of the attention in like pop culture when we talk about wellness. Um, but having all of these administrative pieces in place is probably the sign of an organization that's really taking this seriously and it's kind of started to figure out how to tweak things to their advantage and to their workers' advantage.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

So good, so good. Whitney, you have been a wealth of information and I've loved this three-part series. Uh and for those listening, you can learn more about Whitney and connect with her on LinkedIn. We've included her link in the description box and give her a follow. Connect with her. Uh Whitney, as we conclude, is there any final thoughts you want to share to those listening?

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yeah, I guess the one thing I would say is just get started. You know, this can feel like a very overwhelming adventure when you suddenly step back and start to think of it as, oh gosh, there's these three areas and there's so many elements to each one of them. But um, the real key is just to get going. Nobody does it perfectly, none of us have it perfectly figured out. Um, but start small, find something that can work for you. People will appreciate that, and they'll help you, you know, continue to iterate and get better at it.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Love it, love it. Whitney, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for joining us at Riddit and Wild.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Thanks. Look forward to hearing more from you.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Absolutely. And for all those who are with us. Until next time.